I’ve always found machine learning interesting, way back to some neural network toy programs I wrote in C# over a decade ago. But as the excitement around ML has been heating up over the past year, I’ve been learning more about the cutting edge of the algorithms, platforms, and applications of modern machine learning. It’s an amazingly exciting field and I firmly believe the most important area of active research in tech.
Recently I was asked to speak at an AI/ML conference as the opening talk to introduce machine learning to designers and others without prior ML experience. I wanted to focus on the practical opportunities for developers to put ML to immediate use without having to dive into the weeds of the underlying math. My talk “Machine Learning for Everyone” was a hit and I received great feedback from attendees and the organizer.
Although I’ve been presenting in front of huge hackathon audiences for nearly a decade, this was my first time presenting a long-form talk at a conference, so I’m quite proud of how it turned out. I plan on refining it and continuing to give talks at other conferences, so if you think you know an event where a practical introduction to machine learning would be valuable, please let me know!