March 25th, a Sunday, I got a direct message on Twitter from Christos Matskas, who I recently met at an event in the Netherlands. He asked if I could help host a meetup where his colleague Seth Juarez could come and give a presentation into deep learning and interact with developers interested in Machine Learning (what salespeople call Artificial Intelligence, according to Seth). Just one catch, it had to be either next Wednesday or Thursday.
I rarely worry about anything, so neither did I that day. Seth is pretty well known, so it felt like an honor to be able to host a meetup with him and I figured that it wouldn’t be too hard to get a great audience. So, I said yes as soon as I got a company (IBIS Software) to sponsor the location.
The next couple of days we spent on getting some PR for the just-once “pop-up meetup with Jeth Suarez.” This was actually (much) harder than expected, but we ended up with an enthusiastic crowd of over 25 people.
As requested by a number of attendees I am sharing the slides Seth used. The event was also recorded and can be viewed back here.
Again, thanks for being there Seth. IBIS, thanks for sponsoring a location, food and drinks!