My Experience at Solving The Algorithm: Women in Machine Learning Conference

P.s. This is my first article here on LinkedIn, I am used to text post. This is me trying out something new.

The Joy in my heart when I received this mail that I have been selected to be part of the African women to attend the first-ever women in machine learning conference in Africa. It has really been a rough year with lots of rejection emails and finally an acceptance mail to travel to Accra for a conference. It felt like a dream and I kept pinching myself even after reading the mail. Finally, the year is ending well!!!

It was an amazing 3-day conference in Accra, Ghana between 5th -7th December with the theme: “ Solving the Algorithm”, about 100 women out of over 700 that applied were invited. Different ladies in Africa including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania were present so this was a mixture of countries, tribes, cultures, and languages. 

My Arrival/ Day One

I arrived at Kotoka International Airport, Accra with my friend, Mary Belo who also got accepted to attend the conference. After getting our luggage we headed straight to the exchange office at the airport to change some naira to cedis. We were really excited about holding a different currency that isn’t naira. We called the hotel (La Palm Royal Beach hotel) to confirm our arrival and not long after a taxi came to pick us up from the airport to the hotel. All through the journey I kept daydreaming of the great experience I will have in Accra and I kept disturbing the taxi driver by asking questions upon questions and he was really kind and kept responding to my questions. Accra is really a beautiful and Clean city!

I got to the hotel around 2 pm, checked into my room around 2:30 pm and we were told to come out by 5 pm for the yoga session. I had a shower rested for a few hours and woke up to go for the Yoga session. Walking down to the venue where the yoga will take place I was welcomed with the sound of the sea breeze and a background beat from the live band which was really refreshing. I decided to talk to some ladies I met so as to connect with them and get to know more about them. That was how I met the amazing Brenda Nyaringita from Kenya. The yoga session started with a welcome address by Diana Wilson, the CEO of YaaW (Yielding Accomplished African Women) and she introduced us to Babs (Yoga tutor), who took us through a session on “Celebrating your Achievements”, we did a lot of reflections. This is the last month of the year, this reflection came in handy as I was able to reflect on my success and failure and celebrate all my achievements. I also got to know I am not alone in my struggles as a woman.

There was another session on the power of positivity. We danced, played and laughed so hard to end the yoga session. It was a wonderful way to prepare ourselves most especially our mind for the conference which will be starting proper the next day, we concluded the day by eating some continental dishes for dinner. I enjoyed the serene environment we used for yoga. The sound of the sea breeze helped in thinking!

One major lesson I learnt from the session is: Always counter your negative thought with positive thoughts, trust me your life is not as bad as you think. There is always something to be grateful for!!!

Day Two

The machine learning conference itself kicked off on the second day with a welcome address by Diana Wilson, she told us why she started the conference and charged us up on what to expect. Diana Wilson is a cool and Amazing woman btw!

We had a keynote speech by Lady Omega Hammond, She talked about the importance of personal development, preparation, execution and being a changemaker. She told us her story and how she is finally in the tech world thanks to those who believed in her. Her story emphasizes the power of celebrating little success and also celebrating those who gave us a chance in our journey and above all, the power of writing things down and reflecting on them later. She ended the keynote with the "#IAMRemarkable because…" challenge..

Takeaways:

• “it’s in the little things that the big stories are told”
• "Whether you think you can or you cannot, you’re right" — Henry Ford
• “your testimony is tied to someone else’s testimony, even if people don't say thank you, history will say thank you”

On that same day, our facilitators also took us on "Introduction to machine learning" by Derek Kweku Degbedzui, "Machine learning proper and Problem framing" by Kimberly Milam, "ML fairness" by Kristi Jindal.

We were introduced to Machine Learning, Model training, How to reduce loss, Machine learning problem framing and we worked on the cloud fundamentals lab which is the practical aspect of the conference, we worked on two labs on the second day

• Extracting, Analysing & Translating text from Images using Google Cloud ML APIs
• Getting started with BigQueryML.

 The cloud fundamentals lab was engaging and interacting. We concluded the second day with a session titled "People + AI Research". There were breaks in between the sessions, we had snacks and lots of food. And I got to meet other amazing ladies including Yoma Okobiah from Nigeria

Day Three/Final Day

The third and final day, we had sessions on “Building Models with AutoML” by Kimberley Milam, “Introduction to TensorFlow 2.0” by Zoey sun and “Building a Data Pipeline”.

We also had Hands-on-ML Lab sessions namely:

• Classifying Images in the Cloud using AutoML Vision API
• Using Tensorflow on Google’s AI Platform.

 We ended the conference with a closing keynote titled “Building a powerful personal brand” by John Appiah Affaidzi, a Ghanian entrepreneur, and human capital development specialist. He spoke on the importance of Personal Branding. This is also one of the many sessions I really enjoyed in the conference!

Takeaway:

Social media is a great tool for personal branding and marketing. The attributes that can add to your personal brand are your intelligence, character, attitude, communication Skills, and appearance.

Conclusion

I am really grateful to Diana Wilson, Yielding Accomplished African Women (YAAW) team and Google for this great opportunity I had. It was really a refreshing and impactful conference with a lot of amazing sessions and practical lab work. Appreciation to all the keynote speakers and every other speaker who shared their amazing stories. Shout out to the organizers: Brian Fleischer, Afua Boateng and others. Thank you for encouraging women in Technology!