This talk shares the presenter’s experience with open source tools in data science competitions. In the past several years Kaggle and other competitions have created a large online community of data scientists. In addition to competing with each other for fame and glory, members of this community also generously share knowledge, insights using forum and open source code. The open competition and sharing have resulted in rapid progress in the sophistication of the entire community. This presentation will briefly cover this journey from a competitor’s perspective, and share hands on tips on some open source tools proven popular and useful in recent competitions.