The Fifth Elephant 2026 Winter Edition: Call for Data Problems and Proposals

4-5 December 2026
A conference for data practitioners across industry, non-profits, society, economy, psephology, statistics, analytics, and more. No engineering talks.

Timelessness and the shape of data are at the core of conversations at The Fifth Elephant 2026 Winter Edition.

This edition is for data practitioners across domains. Whether you work in industry, the non-profit sector, public policy, economic data, psephology, statistics, analytics, or other data-facing worlds, you are welcome to participate and share what you are working on.

We are looking for new ideas, classical problems, unfinished work, failed attempts, unexplained results, and datasets looking for questions. Your work may involve linear regression, noisy neighbours, statistical methods, analytical frameworks, data interpretation, or newer techniques.

This is not a call for engineering talks. The Fifth Elephant Winter Edition is not about data pipelines, infrastructure, tooling, or implementation stories for their own sake. It is about the practice of working with data: the questions, methods, uncertainties, findings, failures, and judgments that shape data work.

The science has not gone away, but the techniques have changed. We are not here for preservation or lament. We are here to collectively rediscover what is getting formed as data science, and what may emerge over the next three years.

The Winter Edition is also a platform for collaboration: a place to discover people, ideas, support, and resources for your journey and problems.

Key takeaways for attendees

• Discover new ideas that may inspire you or bring fresh creativity into your own work.
• Meet people and build networks, because there is a world of humans beyond Claude and ChatGPT. Find friends, collaborators, and co-conspirators.

Meet the Editors

• Karthik Shashidhar — AI and data consultant; founder
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthikshashidhar/

• S Anand — LLM Psychologist
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanand0/

• Prasanna Bhogale — Founder at Romulan AI; author
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/pbhogale/

Session Types

1. Classical data talks that used to happen at The Fifth Elephant conferences
   Share what you learned, what failed, and what you are still trying to understand. We are looking for introspections filled with techniques and fewer jargons. We explicitly seek unfinished work: failures, WIP, unexplained results, and datasets looking for questions.

2. Showcase
   Show an innovative idea you are working on. Your idea need not be in production. Use the stage to tell us why it is cool. Toot the horn, maccha, in 20 minutes only.

3. Problem wall
   Reverse-engineer your submission and tell us about a problem you are working on, along with the ideas, expertise, or collaborators you seek. If the Three Musketeers like it, your problem may go up on the wall and find more humans and their shoulders.

4. Birds of a Feather sessions
   Facilitate a BOF session. Say it in more than words. We’ll get you a whiteboard, flipchart, or anything else you need. Heck, even a spaceship, if that can land at the venue.

5. Poster sessions
   Show your WIP or project visually in the alleyways. We are looking for applications of concepts to problems and scenarios in industry, society, economy, and even the Silo world.

Not Sure Which Session Fits Your Work?

Don’t hesitate. Submit your idea here: https://hasgeek.com/fifthelephant/fifthel-winter-call-for-problems-and-proposals/sub
You will receive suggestions, feedback, and perhaps even more questions.

You can also join the weekly sounding board calls on Fridays, 12:00-12:40 PM: https://meet.google.com/jqd-fvvp-tho Calls start on 11 September and end on 9 October. Get in the queue, or as AI calls it, ‘the room’.

Deadline

Earlier is always better. Classical talks and showcase sessions have seven slots each. Send in your proposal by 11 October 2026 at the latest.

Questions?

Write to info@hasgeek.com or call/text 7676332020.