This week, a summary for kdnuggets.com about MLconf, and what the industry leaders are saying about machine learning. We are so excited to not only be featured on KDnuggets, but ecstatic about the speakers we’ve been able to and plan to host in the machine learning community.
Covering quite a bit of info in his short report. Every year our conference is growing, and we are working hard to ensure that the industries leaders, and the smallest start-ups leave with more knowledge than they came in with. At the very least, we want attendees to leave with new tools and methodologies to consider, and a whole new set of questions about Machine Learning and Data Sciences.
In this post, it also discusses the different topics we cover at MLconf. From new algorithms, to scaling, to deep learning, and everything in-between, MLconf is providing an educational experience for everyone. If you want to check out the report, click the link at the bottom of the post, and be sure to grab your tickets to the MLconf nearest you in 2015!
Of course we want to thank our sponsors for making every MLconf possible, and giving us the ability to grow with machine learning each year.
We look forward to learning with you.
Click here for the feature!
Data Elixir Interviews MLconf
Our past Technical Chair and I recently spoke with Lon Riesberg, of Data Elixir, regarding The Machine Learning Conference. As MLconf considers itself a community event, we found Data Elixir to be a great newsletter/information hub for the machine learning community. Check out our conversation below!
Lon: Why did you start MLconf?
Courtney: The Machine Learning Conference (MLconf) began in 2012, as a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University’s GraphLab team, to gather the thought leaders in Machine Learning, specifically Graph Databases. In 2013, MLconf became a separate event, devoted to the Machine Learning and Data Science community in San Francisco, agnostic of any tool, platform or company. MLconf events host speakers from various industries, research and universities to discuss recent research and application of Machine Learning methodologies and practices. In 2014, MLconf entered NYC and Atlanta, as well as San Francisco. In 2015, MLconf will host conferences in NYC, Atlanta, Seattle and San Francisco, with plans to enter additional US cities in 2016, and the UK.
Lon: Who’s the ideal attendee?
Technical Chair: We usually try to answer the opposite question; how can we be ideal for people who want to keep in touch with what is happening in machine learning. From our registration statistics (yes we also do machine learning) we see that our attendees are data scientists focused on the machine learning aspect, engineers or Phds who are transitioning to datascience, grad students and some executives/Venture Capitalists. Attendees typically attend MLconf, to enjoy a quick, one-day conference that includes talks from companies like Google, Yahoo, Netflix, etc or other upcoming startups that present on what algorithms, methods and tools have already been tested and proved efficient.
Lon: Who are the presenters? (e.g. typical backgrounds, some well-known presenters)
Technical Chair: The presenters are Research Scientists/Engineers and Professors. Some of them are machine learning veterans like Corinna Cortes from Google Research as well as influencers like Claudia Perlich with industrial and academic backgrounds. MLconf events also host speakers with strong experience in complicated machine learning engineering implementations like Xavier Amartian from Quora (formerly Netflix). The MLconf program committee searches for people who have an interesting track record in machine learning and interesting topics to present. We spend a lot of time working with the presenters to make sure that the math level the style and the content meets the expectation of the audience. We absolutely do not allow presentations that are sales and marketing pitches, or make strong arguments that are disrespectful for the community. Every presentation should have a clear message, not heavy in mathematical details and references for further and deeper study if the audience wants to learn more.
Lon: What can attendees expect to get out of MLconf?
Courtney: MLconf offers busy professionals a quick and digestible day of presentations to help stay current on the application of machine learning tools and techniques within the community. Grad students may find certain presentations that influence their direction in their studies, they will learn about new tools/software and, of course, network with companies that are hiring. MLconf offers students a glance at what the Machine Learning methods are used in industry and how to pursue such professional experience within hiring organizations. Academic Professors seek collaboration to the industry and they often evangelize new algorithms and paradigms accompanied by open source software. Additional attendees benefit from the sharing of knowledge and networking during the extended lunch break and coffee breaks.
Lon: What do you hope for the future of MLconf?
Courtney: As I mentioned before, we want to cross the US borders and have MLconf hosted in European cities. In terms of the content and the format of the conference we are experimenting with new features. Last year we added the book exhibition where publishers contribute several ML books. This year we are adding the short talks that answer technical questions on machine learning topics. This year we launched a job search section on our website. In this free service, our goal is to smoothly and confidentially connect interested attendees with hiring companies within the community.
Today’s adventures in applied Machine Learning
Machine Learning is changing the way businesses operate today, the same way that databases changed the corporate world more than 30 years ago. There are currently many prestigious conferences in the space, including: KDD, NIPS and ICML that cover recent inventions in machine learning. Although information is readily available, time constraints prohibit busy data scientists from staying current with the various advances in ML. Even if somebody manages to attend all the sessions or go through all the proceedings, it is impossible to implement and discover the algorithms and business processes that really work and fit your needs.
This is the gap that MLconf is here to bridge. MLconf speakers come from top machine learning companies and share their experience from use cases and distilled knowledge of solutions to real machine learning problems. MLconf talks cover useful information such as: how Google is mining time series, how Yahoo is mining infinite streams of email data, which algorithms Twitter and Netflix are using for recommendations, or what type of data advertisers find useful for targeting. Apart from big established companies, MLconf hosts smaller startups that innovate in the ML space, attacking non-traditional high tech domains, like law and energy or developing new machine learning platforms and tools that are in great demand. At last, every MLconf always includes pioneers from research labs and universities that present the future of Machine Learning.
Although it is possible to fathom the the ML trends by reading blogs, articles or watching videos on the web from the MLconf speaker roster, attending MLconf offers you the opportunity to network with the speakers and a crowd of 300+ data scientists, business executives, engineers and grad students that deal with machine learning in their everyday life. All of that happening in a nice environment, with plenty of coffee, food, and about 70 titles of machine learning books to browse.
So, whether you are a busy professional or a student who wants to find out about Today’s adventures in applied Machine Learning, it is worth investing a day for broadening your horizons in ML by attending MLconf in the city near you. Register now for MLconf SF, which is this Friday, 11/14/14. Mention KDDNuggets and save 15% on tickets!
by Past Technical Committee Chair
The students are coming!
The University of San Francisco is sending 35 of their MS in Analytics students to MLconf in San Francisco on 11/14/14! This is great news! We’re honored that MLconf is considered an educational conference for students and professionals.
MLconf was created to host the thought leaders in Machine Learning and Data Science to discuss their most recent experience with applying techniques, tools, algorithms and methodologies to the seemingly impossible problems that occur when dealing with massive and noisy data. MLconf is independent of any outside company or university – it’s simply a conference organized to gather the Machine Learning communities in various cities to share knowledge and create an environment for the community to coalesce.
We couldn’t do it without our sponsors! We’re so grateful to the companies that sponsor MLconf – thanks to their contributions, we’re able to offer low priced tickets to the general public and students and encourage the sharing of knowledge for all whom seek it. Benjamin Franklin said “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” We couldn’t agree more!
We’re looking forward to seeing you all at Parc 55 on November 14th! Haven’t registered? Register Now and save, Early Bird Tickets are still available!
Call for Speakers for MLconf SF!
We’re just starting to plan for MLconf SF this November. If you’re interested in presenting, please complete our form here. Abstracts should be 75-100 words in length. Please reference abstracts and slides from previous MLconf events. We look forward to seeing you in November!
MLconf NYC is coming
We’re taking MLconf to NYC! I’m so excited to announce that we’re having our first conference in New York City this Spring!! I’ve been working with one of my trusted advisors to plan MLconf NYC. This event wouldn’t be possible without the help from Nik and my NYC based eyes and ears: Michael Moss. We have a great list of speakers and impressive companies in the Machine Learning space becoming involved.
We’re implementing some of the feedback that came from our last MLconf. You asked for an East-Coast based event- here goes!! You asked for more female speakers- we listened! See the great list of speakers here. We are excited to see Corinna Cortes, Head of Research at Google, present on the largest known ML deployment. Samantha Kleinberg will present her work with how she derives inference from uncertain data related to Diabetes and how that interacts with Google Glass. Irene Lang and Anqi Fu will present on the H20 tool and their “R” interface.
Edo Liberty, Senior Research Scientist at Yahoo, will present on social network graph algorithms, and how Yahoo overcomes obstacles with A/B testing. Josh Wills, Dir of Data Science at Cloudera, will present on his recent experience with Building Production Machine Learning Infrastructure. If you guys haven’t seen Josh present yet- you must. Josh is a great presenter! There are other interesting presenters on the agenda- don’t miss out! The agenda is packed with interesting presentations and we’ll also host demos and an expo from companies in the space. We couldn’t host these events without the help of our sponsors. We expect to have a presence from Databricks- the folks behind Spark in the expo. Our friends from GraphLab will also be at the event. We’ll have Tapad, 0xdata, and HiringSolved in the space. More companies to be announced soon! See you on 4/11!