Many organizations hold technology summits that can be filled with blank stares and passive listening.
AIM’s recent technology summit turned that expectation on its head with a hands-on engagement of everyone on our organization’s full-time team.
Cultivating Tech Summit Engagement
“I usually go into these things with a jaded eye. I’ve been in IT for almost 40 years, and I’ve been to a lot of tech summits and lunch-and-learns,” shared Andy Pope, AIM’s Director of Application Development.
“But it has been very refreshing at AIM – the tech summits and offsites are approachable, they’re easy to understand, and there’s an element of enjoyment. The more of these things I participate in at AIM, the more enthused I am for the next one.”
The half-day, biannual event crosses roles and backgrounds, including software developers, software engineers, project managers, scrum masters, and more.
Microsoft Azure Machine Learning
During the most recent tech summit, more than 70 members of our organization gained experience in Microsoft Azure Machine Learning.
AIM’s team members logged into the Azure ML platform and built, trained, and ran natural language processing in native Python ML models. They also trained, published, and used image processing for handwriting recognition machine learning models with Python in Jupyter Notebooks.
This exposed people from a variety of backgrounds to the fundamental concepts and essential mechanics of how Machine Learning is implemented to provide artificial intelligence services.
“I usually go into these things with a jaded eye… But has been very refreshing at AIM – the tech summits and offsites are approachable, they’re easy to understand, and there’s an element of enjoyment.”
Andy Pope, Director of Application Development
“The team that put together the event did a great job of trying to balance and keep it interesting for both individuals who had a significant technical background and those who did not,” said Pope. “I really appreciated how there was a technical bent, but it was presented in a fun and approachable way that seems to be the way AIM handles all challenges.”
Understanding Machine Learning
“The topic of machine learning is obviously at the very forefront of our clients’ minds right now. You hear buzzwords all the time, but this was a chance to learn where the technology truly is today and what’s possible with it,” explained Tish St. Germain, our Principal Consultant of Delivery Leadership.
Pope agreed, “While I had worked with artificial intelligence and machine learning previously, the fundamentals taught were something I had never learned in working with those technologies before. I now have a better understanding of how machine learning works, and where it came from, than I did before the event.”
Jake Skwarcan, AIM’s Lead Data Engineering Consultant, shared how significantly the event reflects AIM’s culture. “The key to being an AIMer is an openness to expanding things outside your immediate purview. The chat going on during the technology summit was extremely active, which illustrates that people in this organization are interested in what others are doing and participating in it.”
He added, “Curious people thrive in this organization. Even if you don’t have the background knowledge to do something, if you are curious and ambitious enough to pick it up, you’ll fit in at AIM.”
Interested in Challenging Yourself & Doing What You Love?
AIM is made up of explorers of knowledge, innovators through action, and engineers who are focused on people above all else. If you’re interested in challenging yourself, doing what you love, and working in an environment that supports continuous learning and growth, check out our open positions today.
