Tag: Conference

Explainable AI

Last week, I attended the Re Work Explainable AI mini summit. I am really loving so many great speakers being accessible online, particularly in a three to four hour format, which makes it easy to fit in around work commitments better than an in person summit – had it not been online I would have missed out on some great speakers.

Explainability is something I’ve been really focussing on recently. While it’s always been important, my frustration has been in research focussing on tools for machine learning engineers and not on clear explanations for the general public – the very people using, and being affected by, the systems we build. I was keen to attend this summit in particular as a refresh of where we were in terms of current best practise.

Continue reading Explainable AI

Conference season online

October has always been a super busy month for me. I’m usually starting a new OU module and travelling around speaking at conferences and meetups, all while doing my day job, spending time with my family and enjoying my hobbies. Sometimes I’ve not got the balance right! 2019 I remember was particularly hectic. I optimistically submitted conference sessions at the start of the year on a variety of different topics and, as the year went on I was invited to speak at various meetups in the UK and even stepped in to do some last minute presentations where other speakers had dropped out. This time last year I had just finished 8 weeks where I had a week’s holiday, spoken at 5 conferences, 2 breakfast briefings and 8 meet ups, all of which were on slightly different topics!

Continue reading Conference season online

Rework London 2019 Part 1

The ReWork Deep Learning summit in London in September has become one of my must have go to conferences. It’s a great mix of academic talks and more practical sessions regarding applications of various types of Ai in business, so I couldn’t miss it this year either. Here’s a summary of Day 1

Continue reading Rework London 2019 Part 1

ReWork Deep Learning London September 2018 part 3

This is part 3 of my summary of ReWork Deep Learning London September 2018. Part 1 can be found here, and part 2 here.

Day 2 of rework started with some fast start up pitches. Due to a meeting at the office I missed all of these and only arrived at the first coffee break. So if you want to check out what 3D Industries, Selerio, DeepZen, Peculium and PipelineAI  are doing check their websites. Continue reading ReWork Deep Learning London September 2018 part 3

ReWork Deep Learning London September 2018 part 2

This is part 2 of my summary of the Rework Deep Learning Summit that took place in London in September 2018, and covers the afternoon of day 1. Part one, which looks at the morning sessions can be found here. Continue reading ReWork Deep Learning London September 2018 part 2

ReWork Deep Learning London September 2018 part 1

Entering the conference (c) ReWork

September is always a busy month in London for AI, but one of the events I always prioritise is ReWork – they manage to pack a lot into two days and I always come away inspired. I was live-tweeting the event, but also made quite a few notes, which I’ve made a bit more verbose below.  This is part one of at least three parts and I’ll add links between the posts as I finish them. Continue reading ReWork Deep Learning London September 2018 part 1

Presentations and speaking at conferences

Me presenting at Continuous Lifecycle London 2018

One of the things I’ve been doing more this year is speaking more at conferences and meetups. I always take the time to speak to the audience afterwards to see if there were aspects they didn’t get or enjoy, so I can hone the presentation for the next time1. Even when under embargo of product details, there’s usually lots of things that you can talk about that the wider community will find interesting and I have been encouraging people to break their presentation fear by talking at meetups.

Following on from my “Being a Panellist” post, I’ve been asked a lot how I go about writing a presentation and what I do to prepare, so I’ve gathered my thoughts here. This isn’t the only way, but it is what works for me! Continue reading Presentations and speaking at conferences

AI Congress London 2018 Day 2

AI Congress (still making me think of  @jack_septic_eye – let me know if you get that…)

If you’ve not read the day 1 summary then you can find that here.

Day 2 had a new host for track A in the form of David D’Souza from CIPD. His opening remarks quoted Asimov and Crichton and encouraging us not be magicians and to step back and think about what we should do rather than just what we could. Continue reading AI Congress London 2018 Day 2

AI Congress London 2018 Day 1

AI Congress (not @jack_septic_eye – I feel I may be in a very small subset of AI professionals who get that…)

London is a hive of AI activity. The UK is positioning itself as a leader in AI technology and you can barely walk around London without passing an AI company or meetup or training course1. If I didn’t actually have a day job, I could fill my time with AI conferences without actually doing much more than my daily commute. That said I am quite picky about the ones I go to. I’d never been to the AI Congress before and liked the diverse set of speakers and topics.  I was lucky that the team at Logikk had invited me as their guest for the two days. So how did it stack up? Well, day 1 was at a much higher level than some of the other conferences I’ve been to, with a lot of implementation and enterprise discussions and far fewer talks on the technical implementations. If you’re senior then these conferences are for you. If you want someone to talk about their latest paper on arxiv then there are far more technical events that will suit you better.

One of the biggest problems I had was that there were three separate tracks and only one of me, so if I didn’t make notes on a particular talk then hopefully the slides will be available after the event at some point. I missed some of the high profile talks, in preference of other speakers, on purpose as I’d already heard those speakers at other events. Continue reading AI Congress London 2018 Day 1

Being a Panellist at a Tech Talk

Being a panellist – expect to be recorded

Following on from the meetup talk I gave on building your own personal brand, I’ve been asked a few questions about speaking at events and being a panellist.  I felt it would be a good idea to write a few posts on this for reference.  This one is particularly about panel sessions. Continue reading Being a Panellist at a Tech Talk