Steve Nouri_mixdown.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:00] That was another achievement for me to overcome that feeling and fear of feeling reserved and vulnerable, because whatever you write will be seen by many, many people and there will be people who will disagree with you and some are going to love it and some are going to hate it. And that's the reality of sharing opinions. Right.

Speaker2: [00:00:38] What's up, everybody? Welcome to the artists of Data Science podcast, the only self development podcast for Data scientists. You're going to learn from and be inspired by the people, ideas and conversations that'll encourage creativity and innovation in yourself so that you can do the same for others. I also hosted Open Office Hours. You can register to attend by going to Bitly dot com forward. Slash a d. S o h. I look forward to seeing you all there. Let's ride this beat out into another awesome episode and don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave a five star review. Our guest today is a Data science leader who is evolving the way people look at A.I. and innovation. He's an entrepreneur, investor, author, academic and technical manager by

Speaker3: [00:01:42] Profession, and he's on

Speaker2: [00:01:43] A mission to inspire people through his involvement in the latest technologies,

Speaker3: [00:01:48] Trends and projects.

Speaker2: [00:01:49] But he started from humble beginnings as a software engineer and startup founder, working in various I.T. roles before joining the Australian Computer Society as the head of Data Science and A.I.. You may recognize him from LinkedIn, where he's a constant force of empowerment and is always sharing high quality education and learning materials to help prospective Data scientists through their journeys

Speaker3: [00:02:12] When he's not sharing

Speaker2: [00:02:14] Insightful resources. He's sharing some of the most

Speaker3: [00:02:17] Dope videos

Speaker2: [00:02:18] Showcasing everyday applications of

Speaker3: [00:02:21] Machine learning and artificial

Speaker2: [00:02:22] Intelligence. So please

Speaker3: [00:02:25] Help me in welcoming our guest

Speaker2: [00:02:26] Today, one of the newly minted LinkedIn top voices in Data Science and

Speaker3: [00:02:32] A.i. for Twenty Twenty.

Speaker2: [00:02:34] The Data Science Thunder from

Speaker3: [00:02:36] Down Under Steve

Speaker2: [00:02:38] Nory. Steve, my man, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to come on to the show.

Speaker1: [00:02:43] Also, thank you very much. Airfreighted. It was amazing. I tried to and still as a server of the best intro I've ever received and and the rhyme was also amazing. I just didn't think of it

Speaker2: [00:03:02] Is absolutely my pleasure, man. I'm really excited that you're able to come on to the show, really excited to learn more about you and pick your brain on some topics that I know I'm for sure going to be interested in. And the audience is most definitely going to be interested in as well. But let's learn a little bit more about you. Where did you grow up and what was it like there?

Speaker3: [00:03:22] So I'm originally

Speaker1: [00:03:23] From Iran, immigrated to Australia six, seven years ago. And Iran is a very interesting place to learn tech and engineering. Pretty much a lot of young students would love to get into engineering by default. And from that regard, we have a lot of resources

Speaker3: [00:03:49] And great

Speaker1: [00:03:51] Community to learn from and interact.

Speaker3: [00:03:54] And that that was

Speaker1: [00:03:56] A major push for me to get into software engineering. And I was lucky to have an uncle that was a kind of a software engineer before I even know what is what is computer and what is programing. And I guess that that was another push for me to to start with as a career. But yeah, that's

Speaker3: [00:04:28] That's the kind

Speaker1: [00:04:29] Of, you know, interesting coincidence to have a family member in this industry and also being surrounded by lots of engineers like my dad and my family, other family members. So it was a kind of a no brainer to pick one of the engineering topics. And this one sounds a little bit more interesting because I was a very good computer player, um, and I played a lot of computer games. Honestly, I just spent a lot of time playing and enjoying my time with these games. And I thought, let's give it a try. And maybe a computer engineering is similar to computer games, which is not. But back then I thought there is a connection and you would enjoy the same kind of, you know, a vibe that you do on when you're doing some games. But, yeah, it's a lot more tougher than that.

Speaker2: [00:05:37] Yeah. I mean, I could tell you, a hardcore gamer, you got like the proper gaming chair going on. That's it's really, really nice. Chairman. So, yeah, it's interesting. There's a lot of similarities between our culture. Like I'm Indian by my heritage. Engineering is huge, obviously, in the Indian culture and Indian community as well. Where I live here in Winnipeg, that's a huge population of Iranian people as well, most of them studying engineering and stuff that if I recall correctly, I keep seeing one particular university pop up. I think it's called like Amirkabir University. Is that sound at all familiar?

Speaker1: [00:06:14] Yes. Yeah. One of the top universities in the country.

Speaker2: [00:06:17] Yeah. Yeah, I see a lot of students from there and I'm like scouting people on LinkedIn that are here in Manitoba when my wife's really good friends, actually Iranian as well. Um, she's come from the Baha'i faith. And when I lived in Chicago, I had an opportunity to go to the Baha'i temple there. And it was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful man.

Speaker1: [00:06:37] Amazing. Amazing. That's great. Yeah. I think that's the kind of sherriffs culture for loving the high tech and engineering

Speaker3: [00:06:47] In that

Speaker1: [00:06:47] Region. Everybody wants to kind of pursue one of the rather than careers. And then, um, so that that that's kind of, uh, a privilege for someone like me to be among those people and learn from them.

Speaker2: [00:07:07] So when you're when you're in high school, like, you know, as a as a hardcore gamer playing video games and stuff in high school, what did you think your future was going to look like?

Speaker1: [00:07:16] So like back in high school, there was a lot of good news about software corporates kind of success like Microsoft. And I was always kind of in my dream. I was always thinking that I would be also an entrepreneur having a similar kind of journey, making some amazing software that everybody's going to love and use on a daily basis. And and then I guess a little bit later, we, um, I heard about the Facebook success, which was also a very great story. So I was always thinking it will be online platform, that people are going to use a daily basis for something. I didn't know what it is going to be.

Speaker2: [00:08:17] You ended up doing a little bit of entrepreneurial work, right? So how do that kind of come about where you just like looking for opportunities? I guess. I guess what I'm trying to determine is like, is there like a certain mindset for an entrepreneur? You were like, do you like when you're trying to go out and start a business? Like, what is it that you're looking for in the world around you?

Speaker1: [00:08:36] Yes, I'll always love to make new things, so when I was a gamer, always play the strategic games, but that was like go to for me things like SIM City and civilization and and all the things related to strategic. I just loved it from, I guess, my childhood, and I guess that's kind of the soft skills that I brought in as a software engineer with myself to think big plan and. Come up with strategies in the long term. So that's kind of it, that kind

Speaker3: [00:09:22] Of mindset, I was always thinking about what

Speaker1: [00:09:26] Project can can be interesting for people can add value and

Speaker3: [00:09:33] Can scale up and be kind of

Speaker1: [00:09:37] Interesting to invest with that.

Speaker3: [00:09:40] I tried many things, I guess at least

Speaker1: [00:09:43] Three startups, one back when I was in Iran and two here in Australia and the last. Two projects that I'm working on. One is the Hack Maker Project, which is about helping companies and I guess organizations run hackathon in a kind of SaaS model platform. But it is very early stages and you're trying to, you know, scale it up. We had two successful events in the last couple of months. One was the global hackathon and the other one was the cybersecurity hackathon, which was concluded a couple of days ago. All of them with huge success. Four thousand participants were the first one and two thousand two hundred for the Asia Pacific Cybersecurity Hackathon, which is a very niche kind of topic. And not a lot of people will be interested. So that's great. So what I believe will be interesting and something that will resonate with myself is a project that would add value to the public directly and give them some kind of some sense of upskilling and learning. And they feel that they will be more successful in their professional life through interacting with this platform. And that's why the hackathon was one of them. And the second one is the spot that I which I'm crafting some courses. The first one was about LinkedIn master class, helping people to understand how to be more successful on social media. And that's my own take on social media with my own experience for a couple of years that I've been active on LinkedIn. And I guess it's a kind of a different take, like joking people. That's the Data scientists take on LinkedIn. It's like a little bit different from the, I guess, the classic way of looking at social media, probably those that are marketing managers and marketing experts. They will look at it from different angle. But I'm 100 percent sure it will add value to my audience, and that's why I'm passionate about it as well.

Speaker2: [00:12:19] Yeah, actually, I signed up for the course that it was like at the time of this recording released a week before the time of this recording, it was on sale for like twenty five USD. I got the presell for it. So I was like, do this pretty cheap. I'll check it out, see if I can listen to that Steve Nordea Magic and get me two hundred seventy thousand followers. Man how did you do that. How long have you been to LinkedIn. So you started you said a couple of years. You actually get like two hundred plus thousand followers in a couple of years. What was that. Was that trajectory like.

Speaker1: [00:12:46] Yeah. First of all, thank you for signing up for it. Of course. One hundred percent. Sure. There's some interesting stuff that everybody will kind of get value from this cause and hopefully you'll also enjoy it. I literally signed up to LinkedIn, I guess, eight or nine years ago. And back then I was thinking like LinkedIn is for experts to share something insightful and for others, it's a place to put your resume and every now and then update your resume. And when you want to change your job, look for new vacancies. That was the mindset. So if you think about it, I, I was

Speaker3: [00:13:34] Kind of every now and then

Speaker1: [00:13:36] Logging in, liking and sharing a couple of random posts, if I see it on my feet and not looking for anything specific. And that that was it until I guess three or four years ago when I was a lecturer at university. I was getting a lot of questions about how to learn I and Data science and from my own students, it was like, you know, any resources to learn Python or I want to brush up my SQL career skills. And I was searching, researching about these resources to give away to my own students and I was getting a lot of these interesting sources that seemed really useful for anyone who is interested. So I thought, why not give it a try, see if anybody else around the world has the same question. And because I was doing it anyway, it wasn't something that I planned for LinkedIn specifically. So there was no effort, no thinking, just putting it in a post and say like these are a couple of resources to learn SQL Server. There's a couple of resources for Python programing and that just like organically grow. And I kind of got shocked based on the, you know, in interactions and engagement I received on my post. It just went super viral super quickly. And I wasn't expecting that I, I still had a mindset that LinkedIn is for just very few people that are super expert in any particular field. And yeah, I, I think that that started me to think more, doing research, learning more about social media engagement, personal branding. And I guess from three years ago I started ramping up my activities and and building the same community from there. No regrets. Spend a lot of good time on an LinkedIn and I'm totally enjoying the results.

Speaker2: [00:16:14] Was there like a particular post or particular resource? You share that just all of a sudden just wild fire and you just started gaining followers or was always just a little bit like discrete chunks of of followers consistently coming through.

Speaker1: [00:16:31] It was pretty much always consistent of there was a couple of posts that went super viral. And I guess like in shock moments, for me, it's like when I. Quit last year by one of my posts went for more than a million views and I was like, that was the first post that went a million B for me. And I was like, wow, like one million people in the world have seen my post. And that's a lot of people. And that was very, I guess, moment of truth for me, that how powerful social media can be. But then there's no one hundred percent correlation between the views and the number of engagement or also no, you know, followers that you will get because of that that particular post. There's like always a complex relation between these things. And and then the last kind of Wirral

Speaker3: [00:17:45] Post I had was, I guess, three or four

Speaker1: [00:17:48] Months ago, which had

Speaker3: [00:17:49] Three million views and around

Speaker1: [00:17:54] One hundred K fights and interactions. So what I found through this journey, it's about consistency. You will not get any benefit because of one anomaly. And people will not start trusting you just because one of your posts went super viral. And it's a long game.

Speaker2: [00:18:24] Yes. Interesting point about that consistency and trust when you're on that platform. So if I can kind of just summarize what what I've got over the last few minutes here is that, you know, the key really is to just add value to whoever it is that's following you and whether that's in the form of sharing a resource or putting your idea out there. You don't necessarily need to be an expert to do those things right. You don't need to be an expert to help somebody. That's like saying that if I saw somebody, like, about to run into the street and get hit by a bus, I need to be an expert at saving lives for real. Watch out. Don't do that. Right. So that's kind of that. You don't need to be like the utmost authority on something for you to provide content that could help somebody and give them value and then just do that on a consistent basis with just high quality material, I guess. And it just accumulates just a little bit. Chunks at a time, chunks at a time, until suddenly you've got this massive, massive reach, which I can imagine as public. Such it's probably an interesting feeling to know that you did something. And then there are literally millions of people all across the world who see your name attached to this piece of content. And what is that like?

Speaker1: [00:19:45] To be very honest, it's a little bit terrifying because then you feel yourself exposed. Do you feel that you are being watched by many people and all of us may feel that there are vulnerabilities there? And what if there is a typo in my post? And what is there something that's not 100 percent correct?

Speaker3: [00:20:08] And I kind of

Speaker1: [00:20:10] That was another achievement for me to overcome that feeling and fear of feeling reserved and vulnerable, because whatever you write will be seen by many, many people and there will be people with who will disagree with you and some are going to love it and some are going to hate it. And that's the reality of sharing opinions. Right. I can see that the same is happening for a LinkedIn. Whenever I want to summarize or come up with some kind of short wording for encouraging people, there will be people are going to love it and some were going to disagree, which is totally fine. I'm getting kind of used to it. As long as you add value and you stay open to discussions, then that's totally fine to have disagreement. Also, typos is another thing that just makes me feel sometimes nervous when I share super quickly is like people say, oh, there's one I'm missing in your sentence and I really want to have high quality piece of content and make sure people understand that I take my time and put effort into generating content. So if there is any error and misspelling it to just break my heart a little bit,

Speaker2: [00:21:46] I mean, some people are just always. Hegemann, they're always was, they pick on one little thing, right? But that's that's interesting point. So. I get messages from people and they're asking me like, oh, my God, how do you how do you post? And, you know, why aren't you afraid of posting something? Like, I barely put anything out there. But that fear, I think, is a very common thing that a lot of people have to wrestle with and grapple with. How do you suggest somebody who is facing that or feeling that like push past it and overcome that?

Speaker1: [00:22:18] I guess that the first step is just connect and interact with others that are sharing and there are more competent and feel more, I guess, open to sharing on LinkedIn. And by interacting with their post, you will get some kind of insights and by disengagement, you will feel more relaxed to to share your own insights online. Because any way I comment is kind of a

Speaker3: [00:22:57] Similar piece

Speaker1: [00:22:58] Of content that you can share it as a post, but it will be seen by less people there. They're less, I guess, um. Vulnerability is there no risk, it's your opinion and you can just try it and see how it goes, if if that feels natural and feels more of your character than you can try to step up and share things as your post. And it can be just. I've seen this post. It was amazing. And go and check it out and can be very sure it doesn't need to be something hundred percent or regional to start with. A lot of time people think that they need to have. Original piece of content to start, which is not the case, you can always add value by Resharing Uta's post and just having one sentence from yourself as as a comment that will showcase

Speaker3: [00:24:16] Your knowledge or your

Speaker1: [00:24:17] Opinion. And that's the point that people will start resonating with you. I guess that's a good way for, um, for people to step into becoming more active.

Speaker2: [00:24:29] Yeah. So you got a voice user. You've got the ability to say something. Share your opinion. You're really doing the world a disservice if you're holding yourself back from sharing something because you're afraid that you might get laughed at or somebody might comment that they didn't. You you misplaced an eye in one of the world. Who cares, man? If you have an opinion, then and share it and be heard and contribute value. Right. Because you never know who that could impact further down the line. I totally agree. So you probably get bombarded with a bunch of messages on LinkedIn, I'm sure, you know, with two hundred seventy thousand plus followers, people are probably hitting you up quite often. What is your favorite type of message or your favorite type of question to get from your audience?

Speaker1: [00:25:21] So that's right, and that's that's something that I need to step up because I receive around 50 to 100 messages daily, and that's the part from the comments that will be shared under my post, which is around five hundred for post. So if you think about it, if I'm posting two or three times a day, I'm going to end up with at least a thousand or maybe more of comments and messages. And it really takes time to get back to all of them. So I do my best and sometimes even I put a day aside for getting back to these messages and try my best to acknowledge and share some quick tips and guide guidance as much as I can. And along the way, I get a lot of interesting messages from thanking and appreciating what I shared before, or generally acknowledging and appreciating the effort that I've put into my post. So I remember a couple of the highlights that I that just motivates me to do more. One was from a Ph.D. student. He just send me a message and is like your post made me to change my course to become a PhD student in machine learning. And I was learning something else, which is totally good and fine. And I, I just love all the courses. But that just made that person to be interested in changing

Speaker3: [00:27:27] Kind of his

Speaker1: [00:27:28] Career. And he was so happy with his current studies. And it's like, yeah, that totally resonates with what I want to do for my life. So that was for me, it looked like changing somebody's life, and that's very touching. Also, I received another message a couple of months ago from venture capital in us telling me that they have found some of some of the startups that they have funded through my post. And they have one particular person that just like following all my posts daily and read

Speaker3: [00:28:14] Some insights

Speaker1: [00:28:15] Down to to understand the trends and get more insights from there. So that's also something I wasn't expecting. And that was kind of so encouraging for me to make sure, first of all, I put more effort to do more and have higher quality because people are kind of relying more and more on the insights as well. And yeah, my favorite ones are those that people share their own life story, that if they got something out of my post that kind of impacted their career or life in a positive way. But apart from that, I get many of these messages that are just simply, uh, about how to become the data scientist, how to become more successful in the career. There are

Speaker3: [00:29:20] Also create

Speaker1: [00:29:21] Because they pop up very frequently. I guess that's something I usually try to address through my posts, because that's something that will kind of help and touch more people at the same time. Some of the funny ones, I guess, people asking me to do their university assignments, that's kind of funny. One that I receive every now and then. It's like somebody is like, oh, my due date is next week. I touch is so difficult. Can you do my assignments or sending me their source code to debug their program is also something funny and interesting.

Speaker2: [00:30:08] That's going to be my next question is what type of questions annoy you? But I think I got that that answer at the tail end there. But yeah, I agree with you that some questions are just so easily Google Apple. I like those questions. Like, how do I become a data scientist? Well, I mean, obviously, like, you can quickly Google that and figure that out. But I get messages where people are like giving me their entire life history and then they're like, what should I do with my life? And I'm like, man, like, I don't even know you. I can't. Why are you trusting? And that's a lot of pressure on me till I tell you to take in life, like, should I come to us and abandon my green card to do what I do? I can't touch that.

Speaker1: [00:30:50] Yeah, that's that's true. Deep. Yeah, I understand that that's exactly what I perceive as well, like, so Googling is something I every now and then I share about as a as a meme or as a fun joke, whatever it is, just to make sure people understand how much Googling is important because so that's another funny story. So I'm not lecturing anymore. But when I was a lecturer, I was getting some very random but very simple questions that can be found super easily online. So I was, um, I'm not proud of it, but I was forcing students to search on Google and show me their search first before asking me that question. And that's something, I guess, I hope that some people's lives, as well as like pushing that, because I was telling them in real life, if you have this question, you cannot just literally go to your supervisor and say, you know, I don't know how to pray in Python and can you show me? And it's like there's lots of documents and ways to understand. There's you don't need to just take some senior engineer's time for this kind of stuff. So I was asking them to do that. I received a lot of good results. The worst one is just like they found it, but they cannot understand it. It's just so fine. I'll help them to just understand the document because some of the documents are actually a little bit complex. And that's why there are lots of other courses and learning materials out there. Otherwise, just everybody just read the library's documentation and become the best programmer in the world.

Speaker2: [00:32:51] What artists? I would love to hear from you. Feel free to send me an email to the artists of Data Science at Gmail dot com. Let me know what you love about the show. Let me know what you don't love about the show and let me know what you would like to see in the future. I absolutely would love to hear from you. I've also got open office hours that I will be hosting and you can register by going to Whitley dot com forward. Slash a d. S o h. I look forward to hearing from you all and I look forward to seeing you in the office hours. Let's get back to the episode. And Google is a very, very important skill. I think everybody should at least spend some time getting familiar with Google Advanced Search and being proficient with that, because it just makes your experience looking for information so much better if you're able to to do those advanced searches. Speaking of Googling, how the hell do you find these videos, man, like these videos you posted online? Where do you come up with? Like, I tried looking for some. I don't know. I don't know what your secret is, is that the Secret Service

Speaker1: [00:34:06] And that it's not a secret. So that's very interesting is that there isn't even I started the sharing these videos because so when I kind of stop being an academic, I joined a startup and then start a war. There's always a question about what's happening in the world, like what's the cutting edge where who is doing similar stuff in MySpace? That's something that you constantly are monitoring. And I was monitoring the same space as well to try understand what are the opportunities and who is doing what. And that was something normal daily for me. And then again, I started sharing that passion of mine, that something that I was doing for myself with the rest of the world, so it was no extra efforts. I mean, maybe a little bit, because you need to still put some time to frame it for your audience. But then the content was ready. So what I was doing in the beginning, I was just. Checking all the news like these major news providers in tech, I.T. and. To understand who is doing what if there's a new sort of raise some money, I'll try to go to their website and see if they shared any more information about their product and if their product is presentable. Because if this is something that they don't have any marketing material, then I. I can now just share it, so that's that's how easy as it was, but right now I'm actually, to be honest, I'm getting help from my followers and connections. So I'm asking them to share it with me. And I have a form in my

Speaker3: [00:36:06] Linkedin profile asking

Speaker1: [00:36:08] People to share interesting stuff with me. So I get like maybe hundreds of them daily and I go through them and kind of frame it for my next couple of hours or next day. And that's pretty much as easy as it is. I'm getting a lot of interesting projects and that and people just send me messages like, Hey, Steve, have you checked this robotic arm making coffee and have you seen that? I don't know, drone delivering stuff. And that's how I get to find these new materials.

Speaker2: [00:36:53] Are you subscribe to any, like, newsletters or periodicals that you get from from the industry to keep up on times?

Speaker1: [00:37:03] Yeah, I do receive some newsletters as well, but I find it a little bit. I guess late if I want to just rely on news, the weekly newsletters, by the time that I get those news, it's

Speaker3: [00:37:18] Already

Speaker1: [00:37:21] Kind of shared. And I would say I would I would lose the momentum with those newsletters. I would rather to be on top of the fresh news from the better updated resources that the things that will accumulate and be shared kind of periodically.

Speaker2: [00:37:45] What are some of the new sources that we should follow if you want to be keeping up on on the latest and greatest in machine learning, Data science and I.

Speaker1: [00:37:54] Um, so the way I do this, I would usually spend like one or two hours a day. Just checking the space like big tech companies, because they usually have something cooking, always there's something under the hood, like if you check Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Invidia, Open, Heyy, you always get something out of them. Other than that, it's also the trends on social media. And Google is the best way to understand what's coming out. And then I kind of find the best and most interesting news for my audience every day and try to at least share three to four posts a day, it just depends on my availability and how busy I am through the day. But I will try to make it more than two or three to make sure everybody's on top of the news and updates.

Speaker2: [00:39:04] So when somebody says, like the word leader, what does that what does that mean to you? Does that is that something that just is keeping up on the cutting edge or is there more to it than that?

Speaker1: [00:39:14] I believe a thought leader is a person that shares, I guess, their own opinion and kind of has some original content added to the latest trends and cutting edge. If it is a technology or if it's thought leader in any specific topic or area, it needs to be more than just, I guess, the news feed. And you need to add value by either crafting some kind of, I guess, understanding your understanding or coming up with some

Speaker3: [00:40:08] Interesting insights that

Speaker1: [00:40:10] You receive out of all these trends and.

Speaker3: [00:40:17] You know, views

Speaker1: [00:40:18] That are available for

Speaker3: [00:40:19] Everyone, so it's a

Speaker1: [00:40:21] Little bit more than just just sharing, it's taught leadership needs, I guess, a deeper understanding. And that's kind of one of the reasons that I think I'm putting more effort into adding more value by adding my own insights, because I would like people to kind of. Hear the story from different angles, sometimes by making it more simpler, sometimes by adding kind of a little bit of a spin, sometimes a prediction or sometimes aggregation of all the different kind of stories that are happening in this same area.

Speaker2: [00:41:13] So where do you see the field of A.I. headed in the next five years from now until twenty, twenty five?

Speaker1: [00:41:22] That's a very difficult question. The prediction of future, I guess is is the most difficult one. But what I can see right now because of the call with, uh. We are going to be hit a little bit from the commercial perspective. It seems the investments are becoming a little bit slower. The pipelines are getting slower and fun. Things are not getting to as many start ups that we would like to see. But at the same time, I guess corporates and just big companies are getting more and more Data because of our engagement with online ad forms. And that's that's a kind of a different trend in the corporate world out there. I thought data science projects are going faster forward and you can see the speed and the quality will will change in the next couple of years. And also, I would say augmented reality and A.I. is a kind of a next trend, and in the next couple of years you will see a lot more of these two coming together to either just drop something or or augment or shape some new kind of tools or platforms. As an example, I just shared a post about,

Speaker3: [00:43:13] Um, a Japanese

Speaker1: [00:43:15] Retailer that we're using augmented reality to kind of control and cool, interesting robot doing the the work in the retail store on behalf of the employees. And that employee was working at home and controlling the robot itself, which was really interesting to watch. But at the end of the day, they were actually getting a lot of data about how to do the job itself that might be used in future to train the robot to be totally autonomous. So this is like kind of using AI and

Speaker3: [00:44:04] Are kind of

Speaker1: [00:44:04] In combination to kind of shape the future of the work in that particular area. And I can say that there are lots of more interesting updates when that they especially that they there are upgrades on like our glasses. And so, yeah, the Japanese

Speaker3: [00:44:30] Retailer,

Speaker1: [00:44:33] They use augmented reality and A.I. to get more information to, you know, later automate the processes. And I think the same will be happening in different industries. And specifically, when they upgrade the art classes to become more higher quality, less expensive and easier to wear, then that will be the game

Speaker3: [00:45:02] Changer and people

Speaker1: [00:45:03] Will start interacting and buying more of those devices.

Speaker2: [00:45:07] So do you see a certain industry really starting to bloom and blossom because of this cozied world that we now live in? Because there's always like Data scientists, like, you know, as part of this dream job of getting twenty five hundred mentees and then people messaging me on LinkedIn, asking questions and everybody's like, I want to be a data

Speaker3: [00:45:25] Scientist, but I don't know

Speaker2: [00:45:28] What I want to do as a data scientist. Is there a particular industry that you think people should really

Speaker3: [00:45:33] Start researching

Speaker2: [00:45:34] Upon getting really familiar with and understanding the types of problems that they're facing the industry?

Speaker1: [00:45:40] I guess so. There are two folds that this question. First of all, if you want to be a data scientist and you don't know what you're passionate about, I guess just give it a try and see what will stick, because you never know. It's better not to just stick to the trends because trends will come up and die and you will be left with doing something that you don't actually like. Right. So that's always my suggestion to anyone asking me if I like what's hot right now. I'm like that. This is maybe hot right now, but next year maybe it's not hot anymore. And if you're going towards something just because of being trendy, you will probably miss a lot of opportunities. So that's from there for enthusiasts.

Speaker3: [00:46:37] But at the

Speaker1: [00:46:38] Same time,

Speaker3: [00:46:39] If you just want

Speaker1: [00:46:40] To know what will be the trend for the next year, I guess health care and education are going to be the major industries that will

Speaker3: [00:46:52] Leverage I.

Speaker1: [00:46:54] It already started for health care this year and last year, but it will continue being, I guess, one of the trendy topics and education will start kind of blooming, I guess, from this year on, and it will get even become even faster because a lot of people are online using courses and using online materials. The engagement, you know, money will help them to, I guess, develop things faster and add more features. And I think that the future, I guess, in corporate world would be kind of reliant on a couple of large companies that are delivering education, maybe in a different way, maybe some value added, and they will become some kind of next Google Microsoft in the

Speaker3: [00:48:00] Next three to

Speaker1: [00:48:01] Four years.

Speaker2: [00:48:03] Speaking of education, both both you and I are fairly educated, we've got graduate degrees in our fields. But do you think that Data scientists necessarily need to pursue graduate training or do they need to go to university? What's your thoughts on that? What's your views on that with so many, you know, online resources, you could take the entire MIT computer science curriculum online on your own for free if you wanted to,

Speaker1: [00:48:29] So that the quick answer is no. You don't need a university degree to to be a professional and Data science specifically. But I think you're kind of moving towards the time that a university degree is not mandatory for kind of. Any any courses, I guess, at least the part, at least for engineering, I guess, and because the similar information is available everywhere on the Internet, even the university courses are available. The syllabus is in to, as you just mentioned, are easily accessible for everyone around the word. But there are a couple of things more to it, I guess university will also bring some other advantages of like being among a very smart cohort. Of people that are learning the same thing at the same time, it's kind of similar goals will all be super helpful. It will push you towards your goals just because of having people with the same goal. And also, there are lots of opportunities of

Speaker3: [00:49:45] Finding, you know,

Speaker1: [00:49:48] Co-founders like lifelong friends and and colleagues. And these are also some advantages of being among that kind of cohort of

Speaker3: [00:50:05] Smart people, which usually

Speaker1: [00:50:07] Needs a bit of

Speaker3: [00:50:08] More of

Speaker1: [00:50:10] Face-to-face time to feel that bonding. Right. If you think about the tech giants in the world, I guess Google, Microsoft and Facebook specifically, they kind of they were born out of university by university students. And I guess they were kind of the co-founders all kind of from the same university. They found each other and they trusted each other through this kind of interactions. So I guess universities are going to be something more than just course material. And also the mentoring piece is also very important. You cannot undermine being exposed to it. You know, these amazing professors and lecturers that are delivering the course. But also you can tap into their own own journey and experience, like working with Andrew and or some of the some of these professors that are pioneers in the eye. It's inspiring. And you will get more than just the course material. Definitely.

Speaker2: [00:51:30] So the real value in pursuing the education at that level in the actual physical university, not necessarily the fact that this course is teaching you this thing better than that other university over there. It's the entire atmosphere being around like minded individuals, being around prestigious professors and things like that that really make that experience so unique. Yeah, 100 percent when it comes to learning. Right. And I think that to be a data scientist, you for sure have to be like a lifelong learner. You always have to continually be learning. And that's what I love about the field, is that. Every day I probably learn something new. I mean, not probably, absolutely. Every day I learn something new and I absolutely love that. But I get this this question from one moment where it's like, oh, what's the best resource for this? Or what's the best resource for that? When it becomes honestly, like the the concepts are the same across all the resources. Right. What makes something like it? Is it really trying to work these questions? So I apologize. Is it the internal drive to learn something that's more important than the resource you're learning from itself, I guess, which is more important in this equation when it comes to learning something new?

Speaker1: [00:52:48] Yes, you touched on an interesting point. All the fields are advancing super fast, but in particular A.I. and data science is just crazy. Like you literally go to sleep and wake up the next day. Just the whole world changed. Like you have new libraries. You have a lot of interesting tools and platforms available and things are becoming more automated, faster, easier, more convenient. At the same time, there are lots of many choices available, so sometimes you need to learn a couple of different way of doing one thing, which is totally fine and understandable, but then that that makes A.I. and data science kind of. Students to become super active on learning, and I guess one particular skill that will be very important for them is just understanding how to learn, understanding how to learn as it is in skill. And because you don't have much time to waste. Right. You don't have one. So if you search Python right now and Google, you will find probably a couple of thousand courses and you don't have a chance to try them all. That's not possible. And that's even only one very small specific area that you need to tap into to become a data scientist. So then I guess that's that's the skill to find the right resource and the right resource can be different for different people. And that's totally fine. So there is no one

Speaker3: [00:54:39] Winner at all.

Speaker1: [00:54:41] And that's a great news for us as a teachers and lecturers, because whatever we provide, there would be some specific students that would kind of resonate with the way we're providing those courses and there's no one size fits all. So. So first of all.

Speaker3: [00:55:03] If you want

Speaker1: [00:55:03] To have a balance between the drive to work and the resources itself, I would say

Speaker3: [00:55:13] It's pretty much

Speaker1: [00:55:16] More towards the drive because when you are

Speaker3: [00:55:21] Passionate

Speaker1: [00:55:22] And and kind of enthusiastic

Speaker3: [00:55:24] About learning,

Speaker1: [00:55:26] You will spend a little bit of more time and find more and more resources. And you find your way

Speaker3: [00:55:34] Within the, I guess,

Speaker1: [00:55:35] Noise as well. There's always going to be a noise. And yeah, it's just us to push through all these noises to find the best material. So I guess that's the major skill and more important than resources itself, because that's that's something still subjective and you can never

Speaker3: [00:56:00] Be 100 percent

Speaker1: [00:56:02] Accurate about it.

Speaker2: [00:56:04] That learning how to learn is a super crucial skill. It's crazy that at least in, you know, being born, raised in North America, going to school here from elementary school, I do not want to remember taking a class on how to learn every class I've been through there, like teaching me stuff that saying things to me about other things. But no one has ever taught me how to actually learn something. That is something I have to go and learn on my own. And it's interesting, like I've got like a seven month old baby upstairs and babies have to learn how to sleep right? And we train them to teach them how to to go to sleep. It just only makes sense that we should learn how to learn.

Speaker1: [00:56:43] Yeah, I think that's kind of a new phenomenon. All that like people are thinking about learning how to learn as a thing, as I guess it's not a very long time ago that we found that that's going to be crucial. And that's because just things are going so fast forward and there are lots of materials out there and you don't get the chance to

Speaker3: [00:57:09] To just

Speaker1: [00:57:10] Try and error, kind of like do a trial and error for a very long time. You'll miss the opportunity. Right. So that's where it became super crucial for people to be very effective and efficient. And I guess that's something that you I think I found it as a gamer, because whenever there's a new game, you need to super quickly learn how to be the A.I. or kind of the the bot that your opponent.

Speaker3: [00:57:43] And it's a sort of

Speaker1: [00:57:47] Like a mindset and a structure learning of how to become more efficient and more skillful in anything.

Speaker2: [00:58:01] And Data says one of those fields where they definitely have to learn there's a lot to learn, but it's like learning is not enough, right? I've got a lot of mentees who they're like, oh, I learned linear algebra, I learned programing. I've learned all these classic machine learning algorithms. I can't get a job. Why can't I get a job? Is there something that that I learned? Deep learning children, these children that and it's like, is that the reason people aren't getting jobs? Is it because you need to continue to learn more? Or is there something else you need to do with everything that you have learned?

Speaker1: [00:58:35] Yeah, so I guess there's lots of reasons for Alerta not finding a job. And that's that can be lack of experience. It can be, um, not deeply understanding the topics and many other reasons that can't be solved, the skills. But as a rule of thumb, always ask people to be more hands on because at the end of the day you want to join a company to deliver some value. And even if you know how to calculate back propagation on paper, that's great. That's totally understandable. But, uh, that might not to directly translate to any value for that company. Right. So you need to understand how to do, for example, end to end production of your machine learning algorithm. And you don't do it necessarily when you're learning materials, because there's not much incentive into doing things like this, because it's something that you would like to do when you're delivering some value for the for your users. Right. And also, a lot of time, we kind of are very soft on ourselves. For example, if you're solving a problem, you would probably find a Data said online. And that, Data said, might not might not be representative of the war that's already occurring. It's already collected in an Excel sheet or CSFI format. And everything is kind of you were exposed to the like, unrealistic situation. And that's not something that you all get in in your future job. So I guess my suggestions to everyone will be try to find some real world problems that can be through a hackathon, that can be through cargo competitions. I'm not saying cargo competitions are all real world kind of experience. That's not that's the reality. If you think like you're you're going to work like you're doing in the capital, fighting for one percent or half a

Speaker3: [01:01:07] Percent, spending

Speaker1: [01:01:09] A couple of months, that's probably not true. And we haven't seen many of our data science leaders and cargo like, I don't know, Andrew in has done much cargo competitions or Jeff Hinton is even trying to win a cackle. So that's not for everyone. That's not 100 percent the reality, but is still that's something that's available and you can get some value out of it from there. You do need to have some internship. You need to offer some free voluntary time to to learn more. And I always say just reading papers and books is not going to give you any chance to find a job in this very competitive environment.

Speaker2: [01:01:59] And even if you don't get like an internship or a research assistant position, you don't need to have a job to get Data science experience necessarily. If you could put yourself through a apprenticeship phase where once you've learned and mastered the basics, you can then say, I want to do a project and I'm going to do this project as if I was doing it for work, as if this was a real project that I was going to present to stakeholders and treat it like that,

Speaker3: [01:02:28] Work in

Speaker2: [01:02:29] That professional type of manner. And you can replicate that experience. And in some ways, I would find that more impressive because that shows that somebody is disciplined, interested in the field and is has the fortitude to put themselves through this this type of process and lead themselves. Say, I definitely believe that, Steve. I know we're getting short on time. So I'm going to ask you one final question before you jump to a random round and we'll do a few questions round around here. It is one hundred years in the future. What do you want to be remembered for?

Speaker3: [01:03:04] So I would like to

Speaker1: [01:03:06] Be remembered as, I guess as an evangelist that help encourage and inspire a lot of people to get into this field.

Speaker3: [01:03:18] And innovate and

Speaker1: [01:03:20] Experiment, that's I guess that's the most important thing I would like

Speaker3: [01:03:25] To be

Speaker1: [01:03:27] Known of, and that's kind of my personal branding that I'm exercising on social media as well to add value directly by showcasing what are the opportunities out there and what can be done by this. Amazing. I guess technology and how I can make more people interested and empowered to do more interesting stuff.

Speaker2: [01:04:00] Absolutely love it, Steve. Absolutely love that. Let's jump into a quick random round. First question is, what is your absolute favorite video game of all time?

Speaker1: [01:04:09] I guess civilization is the most favorite game of all time for me. I still, uh, every now and then would love to

Speaker3: [01:04:21] Just play with a couple of hours of building a new nation and playing a little bit, but that I don't get that much chance

Speaker1: [01:04:31] These days. If you could be any

Speaker3: [01:04:33] Video game character, who would it be?

Speaker1: [01:04:36] I guess I remember playing Warcraft a couple of years ago and there there is a game called Data. I don't know if you've

Speaker3: [01:04:48] Heard of it, but Dota is a game in the

Speaker1: [01:04:51] Warcraft and I like the characters in Dota. They're like awesome characters that they have their own interesting skills. I guess for me, I know through Ranger would be a good one.

Speaker2: [01:05:04] When do you think the first video to hit one trillion views on YouTube will happen? And what will that video be about?

Speaker1: [01:05:12] You made the video about the game,

Speaker2: [01:05:15] Not just any video on YouTube right now. The current leader of most views is the baby shark video. And that has something like eight billion views or something like that. So I'm curious, when do you think the first video to get out one trillion views will be? And what would that be about?

Speaker1: [01:05:36] That's that's also tough because I love YouTube, but I don't actually don't analyze any of the trends on YouTube. I just randomly watch some some interesting videos related to either my field or randomly some entertainment things about food or different countries. So I'm not sure if I I can give you any good prediction there, but if it's me, it would be something about an interesting 3D technology that maybe augmented reality to that would be kind of out of this world technology that will be available in the next couple of years and people will just go super crazy about the thing in like having that kind of access to this particular technology.

Speaker2: [01:06:46] What are you currently reading?

Speaker1: [01:06:48] So, as you know, I do a lot of reading and searching and and

Speaker3: [01:06:55] Exploring on the

Speaker1: [01:06:56] Internet, and that's not necessarily like just reading a particular book. Um, more on top of the trends, if it is article coming out, papers and projects some more kind of into learning the the latest trends by checking the articles and papers. But I have received the book from Andrew Burkhoff, it's about Data engineering, and this is something I would just read through if I do have extra time out of my very busy day.

Speaker2: [01:07:42] What song do you currently have on repeat?

Speaker1: [01:07:47] Maybe Dance Monkeys, one of them.

Speaker2: [01:07:49] I have to check that out. I haven't heard that one yet. Let's do just a couple of quick questions out of the random question generated here. Pizza or tacos, pizza? What's your favorite book,

Speaker1: [01:08:00] I guess if you you want to think about the computer science book A, it would be Andrew Nicotine's Machine Learning Yarding.

Speaker2: [01:08:14] That's a good book. What was the best compliment you have ever received?

Speaker1: [01:08:20] I need to think about it, but I just I would rather just say people sending me messages about how some particular content inspired them to to do something great. That's that's the most interesting, impactful kind of, I guess, thing that I would be more proud of.

Speaker2: [01:08:43] Final one here. What's one of your comfort foods

Speaker1: [01:08:47] That comfort food would be? Ramen, I guess. Nice.

Speaker2: [01:08:53] Steve, thank you so much for taking time of your schedule to come on to the show today. I really, really appreciate you taking time on your schedule and talking to us about what it takes to be a LinkedIn influencer and just everything else. Thank you.

Speaker1: [01:09:07] Thank you very much, Jared. I enjoyed it a lot. It was, um, very, very kind of casual and enjoyable to talk. We'll also get something somebody out of it.