For those who’ve been asking why I’m not so active in NI…..

Errrm, I haven’t. So far 2019 has thrown some joyous curve balls. Some good, some challenging but the pointers to learn from were in plain sight.

Not Much Conference Talking….

Last year, 2018, was full on tech talks and as much as I love doing them it felt like I was treading old ground, a bit like keeping the old classics in the set even though you hate doing them.

In terms of local talks, I stopped. The transaction costs weren’t that high but I certainly wasn’t getting any value back. Plus the amount of sponsored meetups, hackathons and events were pushing out any realistic assessment of the AI/ML landscape locally, just an opinion.

I’d lost my joy for conference talks, I wasn’t talking about the things that mattered and it wasn’t until I back tracked my roots and realised how I was missing talking about real world retail and customer loyalty….. I know some of you had asked about me doing more of that, I’m still finding an interesting angle. (That and no one asks me now).

This year also saw me more involved in the international conferences that I do love. I’m now part of the programme committees for O’Reilly’s Strata Data Conference in London and San Jose, and also ClojureX in London.

And remember, no one should feel pressured to talk. If you want to do it, do it. If you don’t, then don’t.

Machine Learning Book 2nd Edition

Work has now started on the update to Machine Learning: Hands On for Developers and Technical Professionals. More machine learning at scale on the JVM (in Java and Clojure) and more on Deep Learning, Kafka, Image recognition and text mining.

Release won’t be until the end of the year or into 2020. Not my call, depends on how fast I can type…. If you don’t see me then I’m probably typing.