My Journey to Become a Campus Ambassador at bitgrit, a Japanese AI Startup
Returning from college after summer vacation last year, I came back to a message in my inbox about an upcoming seminar hosted by a Japanese startup called bitgrit Inc. The topic was data visualization and ethics in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). I signed up for the seminar, never expecting that it would be the start to one of the most fruitful and rewarding journeys of my life.
At the seminar, I met some amazing people from the bitgrit team, including Community Managers Baljender Singh and Sarfraz Petkar. Baljender explained bitgrit’s company overview and mission to all the attendees. One thing about the seminar that really stood out to me was bitgrit’s vision of democratizing AI and making it accessible to the general public, not only the people and companies with the funding to afford it.
I stayed in touch with Baljender following the enlightening seminar. As a member of the Microsoft Student Partners Club at my university, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, I discussed with my team about organizing our own workshop in collaboration with bitgrit. We made this a reality in October last year, for a workshop on the topic of blockchain and decentralized AI led by bitgrit’s Technical Advisor Saksham Kukreja. We were delighted to see attendance of around 100 students at our workshop.
The following month, I heard the news that bitgrit was revamping its Campus Ambassador Program, a group of student interns who facilitate similar workshops and promote bitgrit along with high tech topics. I was delighted to hear about the opportunity and immediately filled out the application to join.
It wasn’t long after that when I received an email from bitgrit’s Campus Ambassador Lead, Anagh Rao. He kindly informed me that I had made the first cut and would be proceeding to a final-stage interview. During the call, I was able to discuss the program in more depth with Anagh and offer my skills and experience for the opportunity. I thought it went well, and my intuition proved correct when I received an email warmly welcoming me as a new member of bitgrit’s Campus Ambassador Program.
The atmosphere was electric when all the selected Campus Ambassadors (or “CAs” for short) introduced themselves remotely — a necessity since bitgrit’s CAs are located all over the world, including India, Malaysia, and Nigeria. It wasn’t all fun and games though, as Sarfraz outlined our new responsibilities as bitgrit CAs, principle among them to build a community focused on high tech topics at each of our university campuses.
Together with my talented classmates, we decided to establish a community centered around data science. bitgrit’s vision and mission was one of the biggest driving forces behind us establishing this community — their vision of democratizing AI and making it accessible to everyone resonated with all of us, and it quickly became our mission, too.
At the start of 2020, our new Data Science Community (abbreviated DSC) received approval from both bitgrit and SRM Institute. We are so incredibly grateful for the support and generosity of bitgrit’s team in helping us establish the DSC, SRM’s first data science-themed student group. We have dedicated this community to research and study around data science topics. You can learn more about us by clicking below.
DSC’s goals include conducting real-time projects and research, as well as organizing workshops on data science, machine learning, Al, blockchain, IoT, web development and other technical topics. We guide and teach all those who aspire to work in these fields and help them attain a wider skill set and deeper knowledge of these exciting disciplines.
I would like to mention a few people like Hritik, Anush, Pratyaksh, Hariom and Takshil whose endeavors were critical to the successful establishment of our community.
The first event we hosted was on the topic of data science and an introduction to R programming. The event was a huge success with around 300 registrations. The event was led by Data Science Community members Hritik Bhandari, Anush Bhatia, and myself. The event mainly focused on the statistical programming language R, and participants were introduced to the language from the ground up and then taught data visualizations. The event was jointly sponsored by bitgrit and CodingBlocks.
On top of being a CA for bitgrit, just last month I received a message from Anagh and Sarfraz that I had been selected as a technical intern for bitgrit and would be contributing to their development team. I look forward to using this opportunity to learn even more about the technical and professional aspects of working at a startup in the ever-growing field of AI.
I have met some of the most experienced and imaginative people who are driven by the vision of democratizing AI and making it more accessible to the public in my time as a bitgrit Campus Ambassador. I am thankful to the members and management at bitgrit for organizing such an incredible program and providing great opportunities to each and every CA.
How you can become a Campus Ambassador?
If you are interested to join the bitgrit Campus Ambassador Program yourself, email cap@bitgrit.net to be considered. It’s a splendid and memorable program for anyone who wants to democratize AI and make it accessible to anyone.
About bitgrit
bitgrit is an ecosystem of data scientists, where we bring bring together passionate data scientists from around the world and connect them to companies in need of AI solutions. We are democratizing AI to make it accessible to all developers and firms.
You can also find more information about bitgrit on their website here or their LinkedIn page here.
bitgrit also hosts regular events around the world, and recently also online in response to the novel coronavirus. To learn more about these events and online seminars, check out bigrit’s Meetup here.
