Amazing Conference
First, I want to say how amazing KCDC was this week. From the hotel, the venue, the people, and the crowd were all top notch. I will measure the rest of the conferences against this one. The group that puts this on needs all of the praise.
Setting Up For Failure
Now, on to the point of this post. I bombed. I created a new presentation for this conference where I was going to focus on the deployment part of machine learning. I knew there are concerns with each extra external source you need to have work during a live presentation. I had 4. The first was a web site I could host in VS Code using Live Server. But, the next three all could cause major concerns. The Android application needed Android Studio and an emulator. Google Cloud required a billable project as well as a working AI platform. Azure requires a resource group, storage, and the machine learning studio. Way too many moving parts.
My Failure
I had a working presentation on Friday but on Saturday I tried to add a working Android application. This wasn’t smart. I am using my oldest’s computer. It isn’t a development machine. I shouldn’t have tried to make it one. Once I booted up Android Studio and started the emulator the laptop was toast. Presentation over.
The flow of my presentation SHOULD have been creating a Celsius to Fahrenheit TensorFlow model, then taking that and converting the model to TensorFlow.JS and put it in a web site. I would then convert the model to TensorFlow Lite and put it in an Android application. Then, I would take the full model and place it in Google clouds AI engine. Finally, I would place it in Azure.
Since Android Studio made the machine almost worthless I decided to do the Android part first and then close Android Studio. This made my presentation out of order with absolutely zero flow. But, at the moment, I didn’t know what else I could do.
After I got control of my computer back 30+ minutes into the 60 minute talk I was left with trying to cover as much as possible.
Changes
If I had to do this again (and I will at a future conference) I would skip the Android Studio and just show code. Running the demo isn’t worth it with my current hardware.
I also need to figure out how I want to handle the two clouds. I think that I will make those steps screenshots and just show the end result. I need to take some of the variance out of my talks.
Where to go now?
Well, I guess I learn from my mistakes and clean up the project. Add the screenshots to ensure a solid flow to the presentation. Then, only go to the working final solutions at the end of the project if I have time. I also need to dig into how I want to handle both of the clouds so I am not getting billed for all the days leading up to the presentation.
I am also planning to create a YouTube video of the presentation. That will let me do some editing as well as get into a flow.
Conclusion
I fell flat on my face at my largest conference yet. Now, I need to make some changes and move on. I need to ensure that my next presentation is great and not a waste of time for the people in the crowd that are giving me their time.
Links
My presentation slides: Github/ehennis
My presentation content: Github/ehennis
Evan Hennis's Machine Learning Blog 