Highlights from My First NIPS

The first few hundred registrations received a mug.

As a machine learning practitioner in the Los Angeles area, I was ecstatic to learn that NIPS 2017 would be in Long Beach this year. The conference sold out in a day or two. The conference was held at the Long Beach Convention Center (and Performing Arts Center), very close to the Aquarium of the Pacific and about a mile from the Queen Mary. The venue itself was beautiful, and probably the nicest place I’ve ever attended a conference. It’s also the most expensive place I’ve ever had a conference. $5 for a bottle of Coke? $11 for two cookies? But I digress.I attended most of the conference, but as someone who has attended many conferences, I’ve learned that attending everything is not necessary, and is counterproductive to one’s sanity. I attended the main conference, and one workshop day, but skipped the tutorials, the Saturday workshops and the industry demos. The conference talks were livestreamed via Facebook Live at the NIPS Foundation’s Facebook page, and the recordings are also archived there.

This may make some question why one would actually want to attend the conference in person, but there […]

Some New Year Resolutions for This Data Scientist in 2017

I’ve never been very big on New Year’s resolutions. I’ve tried them in the past, and while they are nice to think about, they are always overly vague, difficult to accomplish in a year, trite, or just don’t get done (or attempted). This year I decided to try something different instead of just not making resolutions at all. I set out some professional goals for myself as a Data Scientist. So without further ado…

1. Don’t Complain about It, Fix It: Contribute to Open Source Software (More)

Open source software is only as good as its community and/or developer(s). Developers are human and typically cannot manage all bugs and feature requests themselves. My goal is to routinely contribute back to the community either with new features, or by fixing bugs that I discover. This not only helps the community at large, but also helps me as a software engineer. There is no better way to become an even better engineer than by wading through someone else’s code. While this is something I did all day every day at my $DAYJOB, I do it less while on my sabbatical.

Some of the projects I use the most and that I […]

It’s Been a While

This past three years has really flown. It’s time for me to finally get back to my roots and also start blogging more, like I did previously.

My last post was about Strata 2013. During this time period, I was taking a break from working full-time to finish a Ph.D. dissertation that I had neglected during my previous two positions. I learned my lesson the hard way, never work externally if you want a Ph.D. in a reasonable amount of time! I quickly got my dissertation from an intro to the first 65 pages or so during this gap. I then received an offer from Facebook. I was ready to move to Silicon Valley and enjoy all the things I had been envious over for so many years: the perks, the culture of innovation and intelligence, and the technology community. This was an opportunity I could not pass, and the dissertation went on the back-burner for another two years as I spent the majority of my waking hours, both during the week and the weekend… and on holidays… coding into a frenzy. I was looking forward to living in a world where I was entrenched in the technology and […]