Tech conversations in the Silicon Valley

It was a confluence of many buzzword technologies this week at the Global Data science conference in Santa Clara, CA. The event had 4 parallel tracks — Data science, Blockchain, IOT and Predictive analytics (yes, this was separate from data science). I spoke here on Visualization of Machine learning.

With parallel sessions in each track and over 250+ speakers across the 3 days, the audience was spoilt for choices. In case one was looking for more action, the venue hosted other technology conferences, including one entirely on Blockchain. It is indeed raining tech conferences in Silicon valley every day.

It was an interesting mix of participants from across organisations and roles: chipmakers, software companies, R&D labs, universities and data consuming enterprises. No doubt it was a great networking opportunity to talk about serious industry problems and latest tech innovations in the works to solve it.

The sessions covered several sophisticated work in Deep learning, crazy optimisations in GPU computing, some wacky AI applications, several use cases of machine learning in healthcare, and problems from other domains.

With chats on hot technologies and promising startups, the Angels and VCs were promptly in attendance. There were frenetic startup pitches and funding discussions underway, by the sidelines of the conference.

Here are the slides from my talk. Interesting as it was to interact with this eclectic audience, it was also a struggle to wean away audience from the blockchain tracks which had crowds swarming, like kids in a candy store!

Look forward to be back in the bay area to connect more with the analytics practitioners, in the backyard of the tech giants. Perhaps, also in equal measure for the inviting warmer weather of the coast.