I attended an event hosted by Galvanize Austin that I found on the Austin Data Science meetup.com site. Galvanize is a for-profit data science and coding school, and the organizers of at least a few different Meetup groups (presumably so they can advertise their services).
The event was a talk entitled “Star Trek Bridge Crew: Artificial Intelligence in Virtual Reality with IBM Watson“. I had trouble finding a strictly deep learning or neural network event, but because those topics are so closely connected to artificial intelligence, I thought this talk would still be relevant to my interests.
There were many things that surprised me about this event, including:
The People
Because the theme was Star Trek-related I was expecting the audience to be a lot, well, nerdier in a stereotypical way. I was really impressed by how diverse it was. All different genders, races, and ages were well represented.
The Food
The event was from 6 – 8pm, so I thought there might be snacks, but I definitely didn’t expect all the excellent food (spring rolls, mac & cheese bar, etc.) and free beer and wine too! I mean, that alone made it a worthwhile event to go to (starving grad student and all).
The Presenter
The presenter from IBM was much more engaging than I was expecting. I looked at his LinkedIn afterwards and it seems that he’s a pretty seasoned public speaker.
The Space
The event was held downtown at Galvanize Austin. The space was a lot swankier than I was expecting. It definitely had what I think of as a “tech workplace” feel (clean, modern, lots of windows, group workspaces). I’m guessing this is to impress current and potential students and prepare them for their supposed future workplace.
The Content
I had thought the talk would be more focused on promoting the Star Trek game, but it was actually more of a general overview on artificial intelligence and virtual reality. It was interesting to hear from an industry professional on current practices and what they thought the future trends would be.
Final Thoughts
Overall I had a much better time than I thought I would. The space and the free food and drinks made a great first impression, and the talk was more engaging and relevant to my interests than I thought it would be. I also had the opportunity to try out a VR headset for the first time and experience how AI voice commands work in the Star Trek Bridge Crew game. Honestly, I was expecting the VR headsets to be a lot more impressive than they currently are, but it was still really fun to try out. Galvanize promoted some of their future events, but they definitely weren’t too pushy about wanting to sign people up for classes.
I’m planning on attending some of their events during the Cognitive Builder Faire. If anyone else from class is interested, you can use the code GalvanizeVIP to register for any of the tutorials for free and save $20.