Exploring ML Journey with Google: My story about Google’s Explore ML Program
We were very late for the first day of the Explore ML Program as our flight arrived late. Program co-ordinator Nikita Gandhi had already started the program…
Oh wait!! But how did it all started…?
It was the month of June and I was at home those days. Someone sent me a twitter post from Google India about the program to select facilitators for the Machine Learning. I read the post and found out it was about teaching and training other students in the field of Machine Leaning and Artificial Intelligence. As I was already a google cloud facilitator, I knew what they do. I was hell lot of excited and I wanted it badly because of two reasons.
I wanted to visit Google Office
I love to teach and guide to all who are interested and passionate about learning
I filled out the form, by making a video explaining any technical or non-technical topic (I explained about neural networks) and submitting a resume about my work in ML. I was very scared about the application because I started learning ML from just six months ago and was I confident about this program? NOOOOO!! After some days, results were declared and you may already know the results(else I would not have written this blog).
The batches were divided into two, one for Bangalore and one for the Hyderabad. I was selected for the Hyderabad Academy, which was going to happen on 14th and 15th of September.
Honestly speaking just a few days before the academy, I was scared of facing all the people and didn’t find myself very confident about the program. Also at the same time I was excited for it to experience something very different and learn new things.
We were three from the Pune for the program (Pankaj Chandgude and Shruthi Bhat with me). We arrived at Google Office, Hyderabad about at 2:00pm on 14th sept. The program was already started and Nikita Gandhi was talking about what’s going to happen for the rest of the day. We missed a game which was played before we arrived at the office. Winner of the game got international adapter as the prize.
The best thing about the program was Google provided us all the resources like travel expenses and food expenses.
Nikita Gandhi, who was the program co-ordinator for the Explore ML Program, explained briefly the overview of Machine Learning and what are we going to do for the rest of the day. She also mentioned the surprise that we have to work on the project for that night as a challenge and we have to present our approach in front of all. Next was Sayak Paul who was Google Developer Expert (GDE) in ML and is working with DataCamp and PyImageSearch. It was really great listening to him. Next was.. let me tell you a funny story.
The funny thing happened with me was that a boy was sitting just beside me. I saw him copying the code from Akshay Bahadur’s github repository. I knew Akshay Bahadur was Google Developer Expert(GDE) for Machine Learning. After few hours, he went to podium for the talk then I got to know that he was speaker actually. He introduced himself as Akshay Bahadur. I was shocked and thinking I was sitting beside the Akshay Bahadur which I was looking for code references as well as keynote references which he gave on the DevFest recently.
The day concluded with this and we went to our hotels(for which also the Google was paying. It was 4star hotel and food was amazing). The night was pretty awesome. We went to Akshay sir’s room to understand the problem which was given to us. He told us many things which are worth remembering for lifetime.
Second day was all about collaborating with team members and solving our problems. We got about 2–3 hours to work on our problem and present our approach for it. We came up with various approaches to solve our problem and made a presentation for it. We did it good but unfortunately didn't make it to top 3 presentations. But as it was all about working in a team, it was very very interesting.
After the presentations, Sidhant Agarwal gave a talk on, “Cruising on AI Wave” which was very interesting topic. He told us how AI can be used to benefit mankind by using it in healthcares, energy and other things which will help others. It was really a great talk by him.
Then Pratyusha Simharaju told us about the similar program called MLCC facilitator program which was held almost 5 years ago. She also told us about how to influence others around you. How to make everyone listen to you and most importantly how to speak so that everyone understands what you are saying. That was it. The short summary of our program. There are too many things which I couldn't add here but these was one of the best moment of my life.
