IAȘI AI 2019 — Year in review
We’ve had some incredible wins in 2019 and, as we easily step into 2020, it’s also important to look back, appreciate what 2019 meant for IAȘI AI community and learn how we can improve and scale.
If you’re reading about IAȘI AI for the first time, learn that IAȘI AI is a community of artificial intelligence enthusiasts, which started from the desire to increase the awareness of #AI and its applications among technologists, but also creating a favourable context for promoting ideas and initiatives.
First steps in AI, June 2019
One of our dearest initiatives, where, together with professors from “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Iași and “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University Iași organised an event for students and graduates where they have learned about the available academic programs and courses for the upcoming academic year (2019–2020).
Machine Learning workshop, August-October 2019
Lead by Andrei Șuiu, Data Scientist at Ness Digital Engineering and Petru Rebeja, Technical Lead at Centric IT Solutions Romania, between August-October we’ve hosted our 2nd community workshop on Machine Learning, where participants have been able to learn, train, visualise or troubleshoot common issues in ML. 👏
It was a great experience for everyone and I’m proud that the event itself and our community activity also got in the local newspaper — Ziarul de Iași. You can find it here (RO).
A conversation with Dr. Andrew Ng, October 2019
For our 23rd meetup, we had the opportunity to meet and join a global conversation with Dr. Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain, former VP / Chief Scientist at Baidu and currently co-founder of Coursera and deeplearning.ai. The event took place simultaneously in 10 locations: Iași, Berlin, Rotterdam, The Hague, London, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Antwerp, Ghent and Logroño.
The event (and the cover) have been also mentioned in the October issue of The Batch 😀
Award for civic involvement, December 2019
As we mainly focused on increasing the awareness of AI through presentations and workshops, we felt that it’s important to also get involved in other areas and deliver value whenever it’s possible. That’s why, in March, within Iași, a growing digital power conference we launched Iași Smart City app, a community initiative developed in partnership with Iași City Hall, which few months later won the Smart Citizen / Civic Engagement category award at Smart City Industry Awards, 4th edition. 💪
The award is highly important, as it symbolizes the voluntary involvement and collaboration between citizens and authorities having a common goal.
Looking back, we learned and accomplished a lot. 2019 has been inspiring and productive and we are grateful to have such an engaged and enthusiastic community, continuously interested in learning and sharing with others.
Thankful for our partners, Ness Digital Engineering who reached out and offered us their support, Fab Lab Iași and Hub 932 for hosting our events and Mugur Cadinoiu for always being present, capturing great snapshots.
Can’t wait to see how 2020 will be. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in the activity of IAȘI AI, check our website or drop us a message on Facebook.
