It has been more than three years since I started the non-profit Houston Machine Learning meetup at the end of July 2016. It’s definitely an amazing experience organizing such a great local machine learning community. I often get asked, “why do you organize this meetup?”. Well, simply put, I want to make my weekend more meaningful: learning something new and meeting new friends. And actually, there is never a plan, things just gradually work out themselves. But still, there is a lot more to tell and I would love to share this journey with you this Labor day!
Learning through presenting
Learning through presenting, this is how I got started. There are so many different types and applications of machine learning algorithms and I want to keep learning them after getting out of school. I always want to jump out of my comfort zone and broaden my expertise. I need some motivation, the motivation to learn. If I always learn by myself, there lacks some fun out of learning and it may not persist long, at least for me. There has to be another way of learning or some form of “test” that pushes me to dig inside out of the algorithms and think hard.
I figure out that presenting to others can be this form of test and it works very well on me. In order to present the materials well, I need to understand much deeper than what I am going to present. Especially for machine learning algorithms, most are not so straight forward to understand. I like the style of teaching that makes difficult concepts easy, and it is very difficult to achieve that. Because first, you need to understand the concepts or procedure very well yourself and this is only the first step. The next step is to figure out all the reasoning behind the concepts and procedure. For example, why the function takes this form, why do we need normalization, and why dropout is proposed for neural network, etc. It would take me most of the time figuring out these whys. Even when I present some algorithms that I’m well familiar with, such as ridge regression or decision tree, I can always learn something new during preparing the presentation. I enjoy the joy of digging out these reasons, like the discovery of new land. I cannot get more motivated without the goal of making a good presentation.
Then it comes to a stage: whenever I want to figure out a brand new algorithm, or a newly published blog/paper, the goal becomes to present it in an EASY way. It takes much more efforts than making tens of slides. I like the fun of making discoveries of the hidden treasure.
Making friends
After graduating out of graduate school, at one point, I was a little sad that most of my friends in my major left Houston and got their positions along west coast. Well, I’m happy for them finding their new journey, but I felt a bit lonely without them in the beginning. I know there are many talents alike in Houston and I don’t know them yet. How can I bring my community back, here in Houston! Having a meetup in the area I like definitely helps!
In the very first meetup, I already started knowing some people and making new friends, from different backgrounds and industries! I’m happy to see that people come together to learn something we are all enthusiastic about. The amazing part of having a meetup is “there is no limit”! Previously, most people I know are from my major, having very similar backgrounds. In the meetup, the attendees are from all kinds of industries, different types of positions, students or professionals. Well, it will be a challenge to the speaker since the speaker has to accommodate everybody from different backgrounds. It is always fun to discuss the topics from different angles and hear different stories in different industries. Having a diverse group like this definitely open up new opportunities and expand the horizons of the known. As more people join, there are more volunteer speakers. I so appreciate the contribution by these individuals, using their spare time to prepare for this. The meetup also benefits a lot from different speakers, definitely diversifying the topics we can deliver.
I’m so thankful for the attendees who come often, and we are very good friends now. I even met a friend from the same small town in China where I had a very happy childhood. The chance is very low because my hometown is not a big city and there will be several transportation transition before arriving here in Houston, first by bus, then by train or plane, and then there is a direct flight from Beijing or Tokyo to Houston. You can think of it as two people grow up in Brenham, TX, somehow meet and know each other in a local event in Shanghai, China. It is amazing to see such a low-chance encountering just happened, through meetup!
Making an impact
There is never a plan of how I want to grow the meetup. All motivation behind the meetup right now is just for fun of learning and making new friends. As the meetup grows itself over these years, I notice that it is gradually making an impact, on the local community, individuals and myself.
Over time, I have witnessed the successes of some meetup members, who have successfully transitioned to be a data scientist and excelled in their career. I still remembered in the very beginning, they came up to ask about how they could make the move and pursue something they are really excited about. Little by little, they are definitely progressing, volunteering to speak at the meetup to share what they have learned and gradually growing to become an expert. I feel so happy for them and glad that the meetup can help.
As the organizer of the meetup, I got invited to join the industrial board of ECE department at University of Houston, where I earned my PhD. It has been more than a year that I serve the board, and it is definitely amazing. Helping to shape the data science program in UH and advising students, I cannot be happier contributing back to the department where I studied engineering. It’s amazing to keep in touch with my professors in the department and meeting other board members, who are all distinguished scientists and engineers in the field. Moreover, as the organizer of one of largest ML/data science meetups in Houston, I got nominated to join the organizing committee of Rice Data Science conference, to help with the program and abstract selection. The annual Rice Data Science conference is definitely going to be the premier data science conference for Houston community. I’m so happy that I get connected to these top two universities in Houston and can spare my efforts in growing data science power in industry, as well as education.
I don’t think of myself as an extrovert. I’m not good at initiating the conversation with someone I’m not familiar with. Some people may feel me a bit silent because of that. Organizing the meetup kinda forces me to be open to talk. Meetup helps me this way in some sense, calming my nerves for public speaking. My heart won’t beat crazily before going to stage to speak as it did three years ago. Again, I want to thank all the support and help from fellow meetup members, who are so caring and encouraging.
That’s it! This is all about how I got it started and what I have learned so far. I cannot express more thanks to my fellow meetup members, who support and inspire me all along the way. I have learned so much from all of you and totally beyond my expectation. Together, let us grow the power of machine learning and data science in Houston, as ML enthusiasts!
Note: here is the link to join the awesome meetup :)
