This year there was the largest RecSys yet in terms of attendees, while it maintained a single-track format, with keynotes, oral presentations and even virtual poster sessions. No doubt the community is thriving and the future of the field is bright! Here goes my review. A Keynote I was quite interested by…

A Summary of the Second Workshop on Recommender Systems for Fashion, co-located with the 14th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems. Understanding garments enables a solid foundation upon which recommendations can be built. Color is one of the most identifiable characteristics of fashion garments, often used by users to find what they want to wear — for example, the Little Black Dress. In…

Prioritizing is as Much About the How as it is About the Why I’ve had many discussions and read a few (really good) blogposts about prioritisation. There are countless number of techniques that one can apply to prioritize the work of a team, yet where I think the conversation gets…

Why offline experimentation is a key part of the process of iterative machine learning product development — If you are a product manager working in a ML/AI team and you have not got your hands dirty in offline experimentation, this post should serve as a welcoming encouragement. If you want to work in a ML/AI team, diving deeper will help you prepare for when that moment arrives…

A Collection of News Articles by Popular Media that Explain Recommender Systems in a Way Everyone Can Understand. In 2004, Chris Anderson wrote “The Long Tail”, an article that motivates the need for recommender systems. In The Long Tail, Anderson depicts the shift from a world of content scarcity limited…

I started the year by cleaning up my calendar and following the advise of Fidji Simo on how to find intentional focus. …

A view on everything we do while A/B testing, Except running the A/B test. Over the past year, my team has simplified and optimized our A/B testing process. As a product manager, I either led or enabled some of that change. This has resulted in better A/B tests definitions and…

Breaking the Routine to Stay Creative — When Raf Simons left Dior few years ago, I remember reading that the previous year he had not attended a single museum exhibition, highlighting the strain from a very high paced creative process. While it is possible to create when not inspired, is it our best work? When talking about…

Some Things I Learned at SXSW about Fashion and Beauty Tech This year I attended SXSW ( Austin, TX) for the first time. One of the best conferences I have attended so far. I was impressed by the breadth and depth of the program, and also by the fact that…