Nairobi AI partners with AI Saturdays Nairobi
As Nairobi AI, one of our key objectives is training the next generation of data scientists and AI experts through a series of community events, led by industry experts. Which is why we are excited to announce we have partnered with AI Saturdays Nairobi, led by Felicity Mecha as the AI6 Ambassador, to intensify our initiatives in accelerating the application of AI to solve impactful real-world problems.
AI Saturdays consists of study groups that go through materials used in universities such as Stanford, Berkeley and University of California, with cover cutting-edge techniques in AI and deep learning. The meetups are held every Saturday, adding up to four workshops in a month. Also, the learning content is very well structured to suit the needs of every person at any skill-level. It is community-driven and free-to-attend. AI Saturdays (AI6) is catalyzed by Nurture.AI, with its first cycle of AI6 having begun in January 2018 and ended in May 2018.
AI6 Nairobi was officially began as part of Cycle 2 on August 2018. Cycle 2 offers intermediate learners with the opportunity to pursue rigourous and quality learning by participating in the intermediate track. They can choose from one or more of the following courses : UCL course on Reinforcement Learning (UCL RL), Berkeley CS294, Stanford Natural Language Processing (CS224n) and Stanford Computer Vision (CS231n). It is also recommended for participants to complete both Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning and Deep learning Specialization on coursera.
So far, Felicity has run over 8 meetups successfully, held at various locations such as ONA.io, Africa’s Talking and USIU Africa. With a focus on beginner and intermediate learners in AI, AI6 Nairobi have covered a wide array of coursework, doing deep dives into the principles of linear regression and exploring principles such as the cost function and gradient descent in the first meetups. Most recently, they have worked on hands-on application of algorithms using Scikit-Learn, and exploring the perceptron algorithm. You can follow in on the advances of AI6 Nairobi on Medium through Felicity Mecha’s comprehensive blog series
Nairobi AI + AI Saturdays Nairobi
Having AI Saturdays as part of our community initiatives is a huge step in democratizing AI in Nairobi. We commend the efforts that Felicity and the team have undertaken to train the next generation of data scientists and AI experts.
Nairobi AI will host AI Saturdays meetups in the state-of-the-art IBM Innovation Centre, an event venue availed to us by one of our gold sponsors, IBM East Africa. We will additionally avail resources to facilitate meetups, and provide access to industry talent and community to assist in running workshops. To know when the next AI6 Nairobi meetup will be held, check our Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/NairobiAI/
We are also planning to facilitate a hackathon in partnership with AI6 and various partners and sponsors on board.
A huge appreciation to Mr. Ben Mann, IBM Chief Operating Officer East Africa and the whole team at IBM Innovation Centre for graciously facilitating the partnership, and committing to support the developer ecosystem in Nairobi.
About Nairobi AI
We are a convergence of researchers, developers, educators, data scientists,& general enthusiasts in and around Nairobi who gather to network, learn, and discuss emerging trends in AI.
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