SDS 287: How To Be Social About Data Science

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome to the SuperDataScience podcast. My name is Kirill Eremenko, Data Science Coach and Lifestyle Entrepreneur. Each week we bring you inspiring people and ideas to help you build your successful career in data science. Thanks for being here today, and now let’s make the complex simple.

Kirill Eremenko: This episode is brought to you by our very own data science conference, DataScienceGO 2019. There are plenty of data science conferences out there. DataScienceGO is not your ordinary data science event. This is a conference dedicated to career advancement. We have three days of immersive talks, panels and training sessions designed to teach, inspire, and guide you. There are three separate career tracks involved, so whether you’re a beginner, a practitioner or a manager you can find a career track for you and select the right talks to advance your career.

Kirill Eremenko: We’re expecting 40 speakers, that’s four, zero, 40 speakers to join us for DataScienceGO 2019. And just to give you a taste of what to expect, here are some of the speakers that we had in the previous years: Creator of Makeover Monday Andy Kriebel, AI Thought Leader Ben Taylor, Data Science Influencer Randy Lao, Data Science Mentor Kristen Kehrer, Founder of Visual Cinnamon Nadieh Bremer, Technology Futurist Pablos Holman, and many, many more.

Kirill Eremenko: This year we will have over 800 attendees from beginners to data scientists to managers and leaders. So there will be plenty of networking opportunities with our attendees and speakers, and you don’t want to miss out on that. That’s the best way to grow your data science network and grow your career. And as a bonus there will be a track for executives. So if you’re an executive listening to this, check this out. Last year at DataScienceGO X, which is our special track for executives, we had key business decision makers from Ellie Mae, Levi Strauss, Dell, Red Bull, and more.

Kirill Eremenko: So whether you’re a beginner, practitioner, manager or executive, DataScienceGO is for you. DataScienceGO is happening on the 27th, 28th, 29th of September 2019 in San Diego. Don’t miss out. You can get your tickets at www.datasciencego.com. I would personally love to see you there, network with you and help inspire your career or progress your business into the space of data science. Once again, the website is www.datasciencego.com, and I’ll see you there.

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast, ladies and gentlemen. Super pumped to have you back here on the show. Tony Robbins says that success is 80% psychology and only 20% strategy. Very interesting thought. Something to think about, that it’s 80% psychology. And on this podcast we’ve had lots of different guests, lots of different episodes which talk both to psychology and strategy. However recently we had quite a few episodes that were lined up to get your strategy in order to give you tips and advice on how to progress your career. Give you tools that are necessary to empower you to be a better data scientist. Give you examples, case studies of successful careers. That’s all strategy and that is amazing support to have.

Kirill Eremenko: However it’s also very important to look at the psychology of how to take your career, your involvement in the space of data science to an absolutely next level. Today’s episode is one of those episodes that will inspire you to take your data science career to the next level. So you won’t find any technical aspects here. We deliberately didn’t talk about the tools and the algorithms and so on. So if you’re looking for that, this is not the podcast for that. But this is the podcast that will take your mindset to the next level about skyrocketing your career.

Kirill Eremenko: So who is Ashwin and what did we talk about? Ashwin is the person behind the meetups that are organized as the ongoing DataScienceGO service to the community of data scientists. So as you know we have the DataScienceGO conference which happens around September or October. This year’s at the end of September. 27th, 29th, 29th September in San Diego. But at the same time we actually also have monthly meetups that happen at this stage for now only in San Diego. But nevertheless monthly meetups with exciting speakers where the community of data scientists get together and network and discuss and learn these things. Those meetups are called Let’s GO Data Science. You can find them on meetup.com and join them if you like.

Kirill Eremenko: Ashwin is the person behind that. He’s the person that’s been arranging all that. So in this podcast you will find out the following things: First of all, why it is very important to attend meetups? What benefits it brings to you? What are the advantages? Ashwin has actually seen data scientists who attend the meetups have these advantages and get these extra benefits that you will never, ever get anywhere else except for in-person connection, with speakers, with other data scientists, with peers, with people you can network with, people you can learn from, mentors. Some very interesting, some fascinating stories will come out here. Hopefully that will inspire you to see how you can incorporate some in-person connections with data scientists in your own life and how that can take your career to the next level.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s why I mean when I’m saying the psychology behind these things. Because you need to know what is in it for you, and see these examples in order to act on it and actually see how much value it can bring to you. Then we’ll talk about standup comedy. Ashwin actually does standup comedy, and his experience in that and what it has taught him. I think that was a pretty cool part of the discussion. You’ll also hear Ashwin’s personal story. How attending meetups, attending conferences such as DataScienceGO has changed the trajectory of his life. I found it to be a very inspiring story.

Kirill Eremenko: So that’s what today’s podcast is all about. You’ll also hear about how the meetups that Ashwin is hosting have grown and Ashwin will announce the next meetup, which is on the 29th of August. So if you’re in the San Diego area, or somewhere nearby, I highly, highly recommend you getting out. It’s actually in partnership with UCSD. It’s the first one that we’re doing in partnership with them. So it’s going to be very exciting, with a very exciting speaker Bradley Voytek, the very first data scientist at Uber. So there we go. That’s in a nutshell what this podcast is about. Get ready. Get prepared to have your psychology taken to the next level, and that will unlock huge potential for your career.

Kirill Eremenko: On that note, without further ado, I bring to you Ashwin Chirag, a good friend of mine, public speaker, and data scientist.

Kirill Eremenko: Welcome to the SuperDataScience podcast, ladies and gentlemen. Super excited to have you back here on the show. And today I’ve got a very exciting guest, a good friend of mine, Ashwin Chirag, calling in from San Diego. Ashwin, how are you going today?

Ashwin Chirag: Hello Kirill. It’s been a while. I’m doing good. How’s it going?

Kirill Eremenko: Very good. Very good. Thank you. Man, so pumped to have you on the podcast finally. Since we’ve met in person, since we’ve been actually working together on DataScienceGO, meetups, and things like that I’ve gotten to know you. And, man, this is going to be fun to talk about your life, your vision, and things like that in data science. Are you pumped for this podcast?

Ashwin Chirag: I am very excited. I’m very excited that I’m on the podcast and I get to talk to you for like a few hours, or an hour. I’m very happy about it.

Kirill Eremenko: I’m excited as well. I’m excited too. First thing, this was so crazy. I found out when I was reading a bit about your bio, you do standup comedy. How cool is that? So tell me more. That is insane, man. You’ve done six so far?

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah. I’ve done it six times now. It’s just something I wanted to do because I watch standup in my free time, when I’m just calming down from my day and just relaxing. It’s something that I like. I like laughing. So I watch a lot of standup all the time. So I was like, “You should go try it out.” I’ve been to a few, all these open mics around in San Diego, mostly at this place called Mad House, downtown.

Kirill Eremenko: Mad House.

Ashwin Chirag: Mad House Comedy.

Kirill Eremenko: Was it hard to get up there the first time? Because this is something I’ve always wanted to do myself. But I don’t even know what I would say. How did you feel getting up on stage?

Ashwin Chirag: Oh, man, the nerves. The first time I went on the stage for standup, I was behind the stage, behind the curtain. I was just jumping. I was jumping, kind of let my blood flow and sort of get those nerves out. When I went on stage I had a list of things that I’d written on my notebook. I memorized them in my head. I was going to read through them. But then I get on stage and I look at people. It’s this big stage. Everyone’s just looking at me. And suddenly I forget everything. I forget every one of my jokes. My routine gone out the window. I brought my book on stage and I just placed it slowly next to the chair. I was leaning in and looking at the jokes and it was just going bad. 

Ashwin Chirag: Everyone was looking at me like … It was just an awkward silence. And then I think after the first maybe quarter of my act, which is like the first two minutes, I took the book and I just threw it offstage. Everyone started clapping. They were like, “Oh, this is exciting now.” I just started talking about things in the crowd. I just started making fun of people. I just started talking about things that were happening in my life. It became more natural and I got a few laughs. My first show was really interesting, very interesting.

Kirill Eremenko: Wow. And you weren’t discouraged from that. You kept going.

Ashwin Chirag: I kept going. It was really cool. It was like this weird adrenaline rush. I’ve been on stage a few other times, but it’s different when you have to get on stage, and it’s like snap, on command, you need to make a bunch of people laugh. The things about it is people are sitting there like, “Okay you think you’re funny? Okay, then. All right. Let’s hear your jokes.” So you really need to be funny at that point, because people are expecting that at a certain point. So it’s a different ballgame.

Kirill Eremenko: Wow. Man, wow. When we catch up I want to pick your brain more about this.

Ashwin Chirag: No. No. When you’re in San Diego I want to take you to one of these open mics and maybe you’ll do a performance.

Kirill Eremenko: Oh, man. I think I’m going to faint. This is crazy. One thing is getting on stage and talking about data science and the stuff that I know about. But making people laugh, that’s crazy. Huge respect. Huge respect there.

Ashwin Chirag: You have a good stage presence. I think you can do it.

Kirill Eremenko: Thanks. I’ve got to give it a go. As much as I’m afraid of it, I’ve got to give it a go. This is going to be fun. And, hey, and maybe I’ll have a new career. I’ll become a standup comedian.

Ashwin Chirag: There you go. There you go. No more data science. Quit everything.

Kirill Eremenko: I’ll put it all into this one. Oh, man, good times. Good times.

Kirill Eremenko: Well, that is insane because as I told you, when you get on stage for DataScienceGO, or for these meetups, which we’ll talk about in a second, I feel that confidence about you. I feel that presence when you’re are talking to the audience and everybody’s actually leaning in, listening. And I always had the suspicion it’s not a coincidence. Skills require development, right? Skills require some kind of training and so on. And standup comedy is by far the most extreme way you can train your stage presence or communication skills with an audience. I think it resonates. Do you feel that practicing, for these six times, standup comedy has massively improved how you communicate to a data science audience for example.

Ashwin Chirag: First, thank you. That’s very kind. I appreciate that. Yeah, I think so. Because when you put yourself in ridiculous stress and you’re not used to that situation, it’s easier to go in front of a crowd that’s not expecting anything of you and you just need to speak. So it’s like magnitudes. It’s the same thing with data science, I would say. With my experience with data science, usually when you think of really complicated model, where you’re thinking of GANs or where you’re thinking of neural networks or deep learning and that kind of thing. And you really need to understand the network. Then when you come down to a smaller scale and an easier kind of model, say linear regression, which is one unit of a neural network. I mean [inaudible 00:14:28]. And when you think about linear regression and SVMs it becomes easier because the intensities are different. So you’ve already dealt with something harder and you’ve accomplished something. So it’s easier for you to tone down the intensity and you can just really run with it.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s totally true. And it goes for anything in life. I was listening to the Joe Rogan podcast maybe a couple of weeks ago and he was giving this example of a boxer that had a match in Boston. So what he did was for the 50 days before the match in Boston he ran from LA to Boston. He was doing a marathon per day for 50 days. Before his match. You think you’re completely wearing yourself out. He did a marathon on the day of his match because the matches are usually in the evening. So he did a marathon, the 50th marathon, or something like that, on the day of his match. Comes to the ring and completely destroys the other gus. Simple because he’s taken himself to such an extreme that his body is already used to it. “Okay. That’s what we’re doing. We’re running a marathon per day.” His body is operating on a completely different level and then he destroys this other poor guy.

Kirill Eremenko: To you point, whether it’s standup comedy, whether it’s physical endurance, whether it’s even data science, analytical creative problem solving skills, you put yourself to the extreme in training environments on purpose. Then when it’s time to perform you’re already hitting above, way above, what you need to be hitting.

Ashwin Chirag: Right. You have that buffer.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. You deliver. You deliver, man. That’s crazy. That’s very cool. That’s very cool. Well, speaking of meetups. Tell us about this. So for those who don’t know, on our podcast haven’t talked about this much before, this is time to unleash the beast, the knowledge of this. So DataScienceGO, which is happening 27th, 28th, 29th September this year. 2019. It’s our third time running DataScienceGO. We’re very pumped about that. But not only do we do this once a year big event, we actually every month we do a mini-event, a meetup, where people can come together and listen to one speaker and discuss, get to know each other, connect with the community.

Kirill Eremenko: The person in charge, the person behind all these meetups and making all this happen is actually Ashwin. So Ashwin, please, take it over from here. Tell us about DataScienceGO meetups. How did you get involved? How is this project going and what’s the benefit to people attending these meetups?

Ashwin Chirag: Sure. So the meetups, we have them in San Diego. The name of the groups is called Let’s GO Data Science. It’s a little different from DataScienceGO. It’s for anyone who wants to come to a community and really connect with all the other data scientists. There’s a difference between listening to someone off a computer and being there in person because now you’ve made the time sacrifice of being there. You’ve made the sacrifice of commuting and taking time out of your day. You need to schedule things and you’re there physically at the meetup. So when you do that you automatically pay more attention to the speaker.

Ashwin Chirag: The other exciting thing about it is it’s a really good networking place. I would say we have data scientists who come to this thing. We have people who are transitioning into data science. And we have people from universities. Those are the big demographics. So you really get a good understanding of what everyone is doing to either get into the field, or what people have done to be in the field, and what it takes.

Ashwin Chirag: It’s really cool because you get to ask them for advice. You get to pick their brain about what you’re doing. You get to ask them for help with maybe a project that you’re working on and you can’t wrap your head around it. I’m saying these things because I’ve done all of these things. These were things that I used the meetup for. And really I would say the best part of the meetup, which is really similar to the conferences, is … Man, the last two conferences that I came to with Let’s GO Data Science, every single time I left the conference with a ridiculous amount of inspiration, drive, and knowledge on how to do it. When you see people doing it and when you’re in that air of people doing these things, people doing the things that you want to do, it’s really inspiring. It feels just a little more reachable and you get to talk to experienced speakers because we have pretty impressive speakers, which we’ll get to in a moment.

Ashwin Chirag: But, yeah, I would say that’s one of the cool things about the meetup. I started this meetup maybe … When was it? It’s been a year and a half.

Kirill Eremenko: It’s been a while.

Ashwin Chirag: It’s been a while. We’ve been doing them for some time.

Kirill Eremenko: And it’s getting recognized. Congratulations on the whole partnership with UCSD, University of California San Diego. That’s going to be really cool. Tell us a bit more about that.

Ashwin Chirag: Thank you, yeah. So recently partnered with UCSD and not just UCSD but they have their own data science institute which is kind of separate from-

Kirill Eremenko: HDSI, right?

Ashwin Chirag: HDSI, that’s right. It’s Halicioglu-

Kirill Eremenko: Data Science Institute.

Ashwin Chirag: Data Science Institute. This is at UC San Diego. They have this big building and they have really accomplished lecturers and these speakers who’ve just been working on data science for a long time. They’re here to spread the knowledge and teach all the students. I met with the person from industry relations, and I met a few other associates at UCSD. I met them maybe a few months ago. We talked about what we can do to team up and get more momentum, get people more knowledge, get people what they want.

Ashwin Chirag: And the best part: We need to keep the event free. All our events are free. From the start, they’ve always been free. We give you free food too. So, yeah, free food is a pretty cool plus. It’s one of my favorite parts.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s awesome.

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah. We recently just started that. Our next meetup is going to be the first meetup at UCSD.

Kirill Eremenko: It’s going to be hosted at UCSD?

Ashwin Chirag: It’s going to be hosted at UCSD.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s very nice then. That’s really cool. You mentioned some exciting speakers. Can you give us example of, I don’t know, maybe three speakers that you’ve had recently that are very inspiring?

Ashwin Chirag: Sure. I would say a lot of these speakers are just exciting I think because of our connect with DataScienceGO. We get to invite a lot of competent speakers, which is one of the things that sets us apart from usual meetups. Because it’s a meetup but we have CEOs, we have directors, and we have senior data scientists and managers, and normal data scientists, like everyday data scientists coming to our meetups, which is kind of ridiculous. But everyone I would say has value. But if I had to name a few, I really like Beau Walker.

Kirill Eremenko: Beau Walker.

Ashwin Chirag: You were one of my favorite speakers. You were on our meetup.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, it was a while ago actually, man.

Ashwin Chirag: It was a while ago. I think that was in July.

Kirill Eremenko: July last year.

Ashwin Chirag: Right? That was a super interesting one. 

Kirill Eremenko: That’s really cool.

Ashwin Chirag: I’m sorry. Continue.

Kirill Eremenko: We got quite a lot of people and so many questions along the way. I was very impressed by the quality of questions I was getting. The presentation was an hour or something, but then the questions were another hour afterwards. People just stayed until late asking questions. It was really cool.

Ashwin Chirag: I don’t think you remember it. It was more than two hours.

Kirill Eremenko: Oh, wow.

Ashwin Chirag: It was more like three hours. People just wouldn’t leave. We didn’t have enough space to seat the people at our previous location that we were hosting it at.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. I remember that.

Ashwin Chirag: That’s what happened.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s crazy, man. And what I really liked, even at the end after all the general questions, while everybody that was seated was finished. Then people were coming up to me and asking questions. There were pockets of people talking to each other. You could see people discussing topics or connecting, networking. That’s what I really like about meeting up in person, building those real connections.

Ashwin Chirag: You know that’s one of the things I make sure I do at every event. I go to the place early. I set up and I wait for the people. When everyone comes in I try to talk to them and get a conversation going as opposed to just leaving people there sitting by themselves and feeling awkward. I try to talk to everyone who comes in and try to get their point of view of why they’re here for the meetup. What do they expect from it? What are they doing? Is there any way I can help?

Ashwin Chirag: I keep doing that with everyone I see. And if I see two people who I think would be oh, these people should talk, I’ll do that. I’ll be like, Hey, you should talk to Rich right here because Rich is working on this. And then they’ll start talking. Most people just start talking in groups, which is cool. But I like forming communities. I like getting people to start talking to each other and having that air. It should be welcome. One of the big things that I want to keep about this meetup is the informal friendliness that’s on it. It doesn’t feel like a formal corporate event. It feels like a family owned business. That’s what I’m going for.

Kirill Eremenko: Nice. That’s really cool.

Ashwin Chirag: I’m glad you observed that. That’s one of the big things I aim for with these meetups.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s very cool. That’s very cool. I remember at the start of my presentation I said, “All right guys and girls, everybody in the room. One of the reasons we’re here is to listen and to learn. But the other reason we’re here is to connect, so turn to the person on your right and introduce yourself.” And then I was going to say turn to the person on your left, introduce yourself, and they just kept going. For a good five minutes they forgot I was there.

Ashwin Chirag: You weren’t at a normal meetup. You were at one of the Let’s GO Data Science meetups. People interact. I haven’t seen it [inaudible 00:26:40] too much. I like it. I like that people do that.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, it’s awesome. So you mentioned Beau Walker, a great presentation. He’s presented at DataScienceGO as well. I’ve spoken to Beau. He’s a data science mentor. Fantastic. Fantastic person. Who else could you name? As you said, everybody is great.

Ashwin Chirag: Neelabh Pant.

Kirill Eremenko: Neelabh Pant, right?

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah. Neelabh Pant. He was a really great speaker at the meetup. And we had Alexis. Alexis Perumal. He works at Illumina. Oh my God, that was one of the really interesting talks. He’s the associate director of global cloud operations at Illumina which is pretty cool.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s a very high up position.

Ashwin Chirag: It definitely is. He talked about the Human Genome Project. It was done in 2003. It captured the full sequence of the human genome. It cost three billion to do that. But the thing is they did it on one human genome. Their aim is to do it on a huge population of people. They want to do that. If they do that they will have terabytes of data that they can analyze. He was talking about really exciting things. It’s been a while but that’s some of the things that pops up to me. His talk was absolutely just engaging. Everyone was just sitting there, asking him questions. People were asking him questions through the whole thing. They stayed after the talk. He was really impressive. Really [inaudible 00:28:36] person. We had Alfonso [inaudible 00:28:41]. I’m sure you know him. 

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. Alfonso from Qualcomm, right?

Ashwin Chirag: Right. Right.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. Very cool. Any exciting speakers coming up?

Ashwin Chirag: So our next speaker at UCSD is going to be Bradley Voytek.

Kirill Eremenko: Wow. That’s really cool. Bradley Voytek. For those who don’t know, who’s Bradley Voytek?

Ashwin Chirag: He is the first data scientist at Uber/Associate Professor/founding faculty member of HDSI data science program. The first person who taught the Intro to Data Science class at UCSD/been on your podcast. No big deal.

Kirill Eremenko: No. He’s great. He’s so much fun to talk to.

Ashwin Chirag: He’s great.

Kirill Eremenko: And like the first data scientist at Uber. Come on. Like of course you can learn so much from the first data scientist at Uber. This is insane. If you go online and just read some of his blogposts from back in the day where he was at Uber. Just mind-blowing the things that they got up to and how he built up the division. I’m really curious. I wish I could be there. When is this talk happening?

Ashwin Chirag: Happening on the 29th of August.

Kirill Eremenko: 29th of August, and it’s absolutely free. Anybody can join.

Ashwin Chirag: Absolutely free. Anyone can join. You just need to find parking. I think it’s $2, $3 for parking at UCSD. We couldn’t do anything about that. But, yeah, that whole thing’s absolutely free.

Kirill Eremenko: And that’s in the evening, right?

Ashwin Chirag: It’s going to be in the evening at 6:30 PM.

Kirill Eremenko: Got you. That’s really cool. For my talk I remember we had people driving down from LA just to attend the talk. I encourage anybody who’s listening, if you’re in the area, if you can be in the area, get there. Because Bradley Voytek is really, really cool to listen to. I’m sure he’s got something exciting to share.

Ashwin Chirag: For sure. I spoke to him on the phone a few days ago. I like to speak to all the speakers right before and just get a conversation going, a dialogue. Yeah, he’s a great guy. Apart from the data science part he seems really interesting. Great guy. Spoke to him for about, I think, 40 minutes. But, yeah, I’m really excited.

Kirill Eremenko: Do you know what he’s going to be talking about?

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah. He’s going to be talking about the art of parameterization. The thing about biological data, they say there’s a lot of data but you can’t really infer that much from the data. But I think this might be a dimensionality issue or there might be … People aren’t processing the data properly. They need to mine the data so that you can get good inferences from it. So he’s going to be talking about one of the big important things that you will learn about data science, which is the data cleaning and getting the data to be formatted properly, getting the data to be a certain way, annotating … Just getting the data to fit your model so that it works is one of the most time consuming parts of the whole pipeline process. So he’s going to be talking about that. He’s going to be talking about really breaking it down. And, yeah.

Kirill Eremenko: It’s very exciting. And very [inaudible 00:32:24]. I’m sure you can learn some tips there too. Speed up this most time consuming part of the process. Very, very cool. So how does this work? If I want to register for a meetup and come attend, do I have to go on meetup.com. Where do people follow these meetups?

Ashwin Chirag: Sure you would go on meetup.com and search for Let’s GO Data Science, and you should be able to find it. Or you can go on Google and type in Let’s GO Data Science San Diego. And you should be able to find it.

Kirill Eremenko: Fantastic. Very cool. We talked about a few values that people get from meetups. For instance some people might not be able to attend Let’s GO Data Science in San Diego. Maybe they’re in New York and it might not be worthwhile flying all the way. Or it’s time consuming to get there and things like that. Nevertheless there’s lot of meetups around the world that you can attend, like Let’s GO Data Science is one of them.

Kirill Eremenko: So let’s list what are the benefits again. So listening to an exciting speaker. Learning something new. Connecting with people. What other benefits do people get, that you have seen people get at Let’s GO Data Science? What are benefits that people gain by attending these meetups? Like getting out of home and driving and spending time? What value do they bring to their lives this way?

Ashwin Chirag: One of the big things is they get to ask the questions that are relevant for them. If they’re working on a certain project, if they don’t know how to approach it, they could ask data scientists in the field. Because I’m sure that’s one of the best places to get these questions answered.

Ashwin Chirag: A big part of it is really you could find someone who you might want to work on projects. This has happened in the past. People have met up at the meetup. I think at Alexis’ talk a few months ago, I saw two people meet up randomly and then another guy joined. So three people ended up forming a group and they were asking Alexis for advice on how they can move the project forward. Alexis was super helpful. He gave them few contacts that they could get in touch with to move their project forward.

Ashwin Chirag: So it gives you momentum in that sense because it’s hard to find people who have the same vision, or the same kind of dedication that you do. Probably a good place to find people like that is people who would put away time from their day to actually be at these meetups. I would say that’s really important. Forming a team is a hard thing, but if you have a big project and you need help, this is one of the places that you can find that.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s really cool. So it kind of acts as a filter, right? People who go there already a priori they are people who are willing, or see so much value in data science, are so passionate about it and want to progress further to such an extent that they’re willing to put in the time to be at that meetup. It’s this kind of barrier. Being part of a meetup actually acts as a filter to the quality of people that attend these meeting.

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah. I guess it would be a filter because that’s exactly what’s happening. These people who come to these things are really motivated and they want to switch their careers. Or they want to do better projects. Or they’re trying to find something from the meetup. So it’s a good place to find those people.

Ashwin Chirag: And another thing about the meetups is the networking part of it. Sometimes you’ll have experienced data scientists and they’re looking for people to employ.

Kirill Eremenko: No way.

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah. I’ve seen it happen twice in front of me. They were looking for more data scientists. Yeah. They got people’s information and yeah, they went away. I’ve been asked for my resume a couple of times too.

Kirill Eremenko: Wow. That’s very cool. That’s very cool. Yeah, I guess if I was looking for a data scientist that would be my first place to go to because, again, you benefit from that filter. The people that are there, you already, half the screening process is done for you. Because the fact that they’re there means they’re driven enough and they’re capable of learning, and they have this resilience. They’re not, just want a job in data science, they’re actually pushing.

Ashwin Chirag: Interested.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s very cool.

Ashwin Chirag: I would say the most important thing about the meetups is if you want to get into data science, or you want to get better at data science, like in any other profession, the thing that I’ve seen is most effective is surround yourself with that thing you want to do. So if you want to get into standup, try doing open mics. Try being in the presence of open mics. Try talking to people who do that. Get advice from them. Watch a lot of standup. Go to standup comedy shows in person. Try to meet people. Try to see if you can find someone. It doesn’t have to be a means to an end, but I think because thing sort of happen in ways you can’t expect. People need to see that you’re interested and you’re committed to something, and that’s how you get opportunities. You hear a lot of people saying, “Yeah, and this random thing happened. But I was just there. But it happened.” The reason it even happened was because you were there.

Ashwin Chirag: So I think surrounding yourself with your objective. If it is data science, in this case, that would be that best thing to do. Because you’re at a meetup. You’re doing data science at your work, or you’re doing courses in data science, and you’re going to conferences. That’s a really good place to get your foot into the network. And that’s when it really starts paying off.

Ashwin Chirag: This incident happened recently. So we had one of the speakers at the meetup, Khai Pham.

Kirill Eremenko: Who’s also been on the podcast.

Ashwin Chirag: He’s also been on the podcast.

Kirill Eremenko: Awesome podcast by the way.

Ashwin Chirag: It is. That episode was really interesting. I remember listing to that. And another thing, he’s going to be on the conference too, DataScienceGO.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah.

Ashwin Chirag: That’s going to be really cool.

Kirill Eremenko: Sorry. So, yeah, Khai was at the meetup.

Ashwin Chirag: Khai was at the meetup and he was presenting his reasoning network, which basically to sum it up, most of data science now that we have, at the core of it, it’s more of a pattern recognition system. Because it looks at a big amount of data. It analyzes this data and it makes predictions based on probabilistic models. Just from observation, because that’s what data science is.

Ashwin Chirag: But Khai has been working on his own proprietary technology. He’s developed a reasoning based system which is subtle, but it’s completely different. It’s not pattern recognition. It works based on knowledge, so it kind of resembles the way humans think. It’s similar to the way humans think, how the mind operates. Say you have one of those puzzles … I’m sure you’ve heard of this puzzle. They say, Oh, there’s two doors. Behind Door A there’s a princess. Behind Door B there’s a tiger. No, they’ll say there’s a princess and a tiger behind each door. And then they give you like five, six statements about it. They’re like, Oh, princess is behind door A, and behind door B. But it’s princess is not behind, and tiger’s here. And then they give you a few other statements like that. The way you solve this is you think about logic. You’re like, Oh, princess can’t be in Door A and Door B. Okay. That’s not true. And then you walk through each point like that, right?

Ashwin Chirag: So his reasoning network can solve those kinds of things because it’s thinking like a human, or it’s modeled on the way that humans actually think. That’s what it does. And he demoed it for us towards the end of the lecture. I’ll tell you, through the whole meetup, through the whole meetup, everyone was jaws open. People didn’t believe it. It’s like, Really you developed a reasoning based network? Why isn’t this on the news? Why isn’t this part of some top secret government funded project? This is crazy. I’m at a meetup. Why am I seeing this here? Right?

Ashwin Chirag: And sure enough, by the end of it he demoed it and everyone was just floored. Everyone couldn’t believe it. So I kept emailing him. I’m this person from the meetup. I kept emailing him. I’m like, Okay, when’s your next talk? And he’s like, Berkeley. And I’m like, Okay, want to do another talk in San Diego? And then he was like, I don’t have anything planned just yet. And I’m like, Can I have your presentation? He’s, No, it’s a little confidential at this point. I’m still using it. I’m like, Can you send me that one slide with the puzzle because I want to explain your reasoning network to my friends? And he sent it to me. Eventually he was like, Do you want to maybe help us with some of the things that we’re doing? And I was like, Yes.

Ashwin Chirag: So you can get opportunities from anywhere. You just need to put yourself in the space and things will pop out of nowhere. It’s really important. It’s different from sitting at home and doing all the work. That’s the trap of the tutorials which I see a lot of students get into right after they graduate. Or when they’re in school. They only do tutorials. Tutorials aren’t bad. Tutorials are amazing. But you need to pair that up with actual action.

Kirill Eremenko: I love that you said that. Let me put this into quite a famous quote that I really like. The quote goes the following way: Luck, the definition of luck is when opportunity meets preparation. And essentially by doing all the tutorials, by studying really hard, or practice exercises and so on. That’s preparation. That’s really important. That’s a core component.

Kirill Eremenko: But in order to get lucky and get a job, make a connection, start a startup, or have a breakthrough in your career, you need another component. You can’t just always prepare, prepare, prepare. You need to create opportunities for yourself. You need to put yourself in spaces to have an opportunity. That is exactly why attending a meetup, is you are opening up to opportunity. You’ve already done the preparation. You already know what you’re talking about. You already know what you want and things like that. But now you put yourself into the environment where the opportunities will come to you. And then when the opportunity does come, because you are prepared for it, that is when luck happens. When you are actually lucky. So being lucky isn’t just a random, magical event, act of nature that has nothing to do with how you’ve been behaving towards it. It’s actually, it can be engineered through preparation and putting yourself into spaces where opportunities can find you.

Ashwin Chirag: Right. That’s perfect. Yep. You phrased it perfectly.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah.

Ashwin Chirag: That was exactly what I’m saying. Yeah.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, man. Well, that’s really cool. That’s very exciting, and I’m glad these things are happening for Let’s GO Data Science and the people attending these events. What is your vision, by the way, as the leader, as the creator of these events. You’ve taken it to the next level with this partnership with UCSD. It’s taken one and a half years to get here of resilient work and constantly inviting speakers and making this happen. I can only imagine. I’ve been to one of these. I’ve seen how much work goes into it.

Kirill Eremenko: So what is your vision for this meetup going forward? Where are you going to take Let’s GO Data Science? And what is it going to be in the next couple of years?

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah. That’s a good question. So I would say my vision keeps, it’s obviously changing as time passes. Because when I first started the meetup I had a more fuzzy, blurry view of what my vision was. But I would say the more I’m doing this and the more I’m getting involved, the more I’m getting more people involved in this, it’s becoming clearer.

Ashwin Chirag: When I started it was more about forming a community, and getting people to just sit down and just nerd out about data science. And helping each other. So that’s still the vision, but I would say I want to take it to the next level now. I think I was a little small minded when I started this. I wouldn’t say I’m small minded, but I was a little apprehensive of what this meetup could accomplish, and I didn’t know what it could do. So I was happy with having 40 people per meetup.

Ashwin Chirag: But now I would say I want to form a big community of people. I want to form the biggest meetup for data science in San Diego. And I want to get hundreds of people to come to this thing and have this at UCSD. Make this process easier for everyone, whether it’s working with skilled people, or whether it’s trying to get a job, or whether it’s networking, or whether it’s finding out new knowledge, I want to make that process easy for everyone. I think the perfect place to do this is at a university. We’re already making plans to get bigger rooms, bigger presentation rooms, to accommodate all these people.

Ashwin Chirag: I want to help people even more, and hopefully this will be a big resource and I can start doing meetups at other places. Maybe I can start one in LA. Maybe I can do two meetups a month in LA, eventually. So this is my current vision for where I want to take the meetups. It’s more I just want to form a big community of people who are just into data science. And I want to be the person who helps all these people get together. So that’s the core. That’s the core of it.

Ashwin Chirag: I think the scale has really increased with what I want to achieve with the meetup, because I think I have the resources with DataScienceGO. I have the resource with having certain connections. So I think I can the right people to come to these meetups. I think I can get really interesting people, because I want to inspire people. I want to inspire people at every one of these things. I want them to leave the meetup smiling with hope, with convictions, with their own aims and drive. Because that’s what I’ve experienced at a lot of my own meetups. I drive home and I’m constantly, Wow, possibility. This is a possibility. This is a possibility. And it opens avenues. It opens my mind. It gives me positivity. It gives me real hope, you know.

Ashwin Chirag: Of course, every meetup isn’t going to be perfect, and you won’t feel that way for every meetup. But hopefully, that’s the aim. The aim is I want to make every meetup that intensity.

Kirill Eremenko: That’s fantastic, man. I’m really glad you said that. That’s a very inspiring thing to hear because ultimately these are free and this is you giving value to people. You creating the environments for people to come and get value and bring value to each other, exchange value. It’s a fantastic, really noble thing to do. And heck man, I believe in you so much because I’ve seen you. I’ve seen your drive, your passion, how you stay up late and you do these things. I think you have the power to take it even further, like San Diego, LA, further. New York. Boston. Texas. Europe. Go all over the world. Have this plan and vision. I think, yes, start here in San Diego, LA. Maybe San Francisco, grow there. But eventually I think you, and I feel you have the power to take it not just nationally but internationally.

Kirill Eremenko: I want to make a shout out to anybody listening. If you are from a university in the US or outside the US, and you have facilities and you want to create something of what Ashwin has just been talking about, like a meetup for data science. You’re passionate about data science. You want to help create this. Reach out to Ashwin. Hit him up and have a conversation about it. And Ashwin can come fly to you, meet you in person, and make this all happen in your city, in your university. You can be the first university to be hosting the Let’s GO Data Science meetups in your city.

Kirill Eremenko: I think the potential is there. You already have a working model of how to do this. Now it’s just a matter of copy-pasting it and helping more people around the world because that’s ultimately the goal, getting data scientists together and helping each other.

Ashwin Chirag: That’s right. It’s just execution from this point. I completely agree. And everyone’s welcome to get in touch with me. That’s definitely a great idea.

Kirill Eremenko: What’s the best places to find you? Where can people get in touch who are interested to help you? And not just universities, maybe volunteers in certain cities, get in touch with Ashwin if you want to be part of this. Whether you’re in San Diego or LA or wherever, you want to contribute and help, get in touch with Ashwin. And when we come to your city then he’ll be back in touch and you can be part of it.

Kirill Eremenko: So where can people contact you about this?

Ashwin Chirag: You can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. So my name is Ashwin Chirag. That’s A-S-H-W-I-N C-H-I-R-A-G. Send me a message.

Kirill Eremenko: And we’ll include the url in the show notes for this episode as well.

Ashwin Chirag: Yep.

Kirill Eremenko: Fantastic. Fantastic. Okay, well, Ashwin, this slowly brings us to the end of this podcast. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners?

Kirill Eremenko: Before we go, so just to confirm, 29th August, 6:30 PM, UCSD, is the meetup with Bradley Voytek, right?

Ashwin Chirag: That’s right, at HDSI.

Kirill Eremenko: HDSI. Anything else you’d like to share with data scientists, whether aspiring data scientists or professional data scientists, data science managers, leaders, who are listening to this and are feeling excited, inspired about attending meetups? Anything else you’d like to share with our audience?

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah. I have two last things to say about this. So first, if you want to present at the meetup, please feel free to reach out to me. We can get in touch. We can talk about it. As you can tell, I don’t have any kind of restrictions on the kind of people who are on here. I just need to know what you will be talking about and if we can make it work. And we can hash things out from that point.

Ashwin Chirag: The second thing is the conference. I am extremely excited for DataScienceGO, because last year it changed the course of where my life went. Quite literally. It really inspired me. I think all the speakers were amazing. Shout out to Paige Bailey, Matt Dancho, Neelabh Pant, Pablos Holman, Rico Meinl, yeah, Mollie Pettit. It was great. It was great.

Ashwin Chirag: I had a great time. It was a funny story. I almost forgot to mention it.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. Yeah. What was it?

Ashwin Chirag: Do you remember this? I was maybe five minutes late for the conference, and it was the first day of the conference. I come in and I’m like, “Oh, damn, I’m a little late but let me try to find a seat in just watch the conference.” And I see you in the back. You are talking to a bunch of people, and you see me, and you go like, “Hey, Ashwin, come here.” I was like, “Oh man. Did he notice I’m late?” And I walk over to you. The other people walk away, and you ask me, “Hey, do you want to host a conference?”, like maybe the first half? And this was not planned in any way in the past, and I was completely taken and I was like, “Yes. I’ll do it. That’s amazing. This sounds like a plan.”

Ashwin Chirag: And you got me a tee shirt and I hosted the first half of the conference, which was amazing. I had a good time. I never got to talk to you about that.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. I know. I remember that, man. I put you on the spot because I was being torn apart. We also have this DS GO X for executives, which runs in parallel to the main event. I was being pulled into some talks there that I needed to attend, a panel for executives, or participate in the discussions. I was excited for both and I was like, “Ah, I can’t do both at the same time. Who can help me out here?” I saw you walk into the room, I’m, “Ashwin, can you come over here a second?”

Ashwin Chirag: It’s just a bigger meetup.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. Oh man, that was good. You were in front of what?, like 350 people there. Much bigger.

Ashwin Chirag: 350 people, yeah.

Kirill Eremenko: That was really cool. You did great. All the standup comedy experience came into good use. Man, that’s very cool. Oh, you mentioned that DataScienceGO radically changed the trajectory of your life last year. I’m really curious. Tell me how. How did it change the trajectory of your life?

Ashwin Chirag: Basically with the inspiration. Like I said, I made a lot of connections. I kept those connections, and I had a lot of people who I talked to on the meetup, and attend the meetup too. We kept talking. They gave me really good ideas of what to do. At work they gave me really good advice. They guided me. They were sort of mentoring me, which was amazing.

Ashwin Chirag: The other thing was it gave me a new level of interest and drive, and I realized what it takes to push even farther, you know? So if anything it gave me, like I said at the beginning of the podcast, it gave me the knowledge. It gave me the drive. And it gave me the reasons to go after it and not make excuses. Because of that, I ended up … Immediately after the first conference what happened was I started the meetup. I started seeing more on data science classes at college. And I was also the VP of the AI club on campus, which was how I got to the first conference because they gave a few free tickets to the leadership team on the AI club. I got to attend the meetup. I would have paid but they were free tickets and I hadn’t heard of the conference before that.

Ashwin Chirag: That was the first time I came to this thing and it just … It convinced me. It convinced me that, you know, this is something I’m really interested in because this keeps my interest, gives me passion. And it’s something that has all these other disciplines merged into it. It’s never boring. It’s always interesting. Keeps my attention. It was amazing. And that’s what I wanted to do with my life. That’s what made me take my first step into data science. Even more.

Ashwin Chirag: And then after the second conference, I got my data science internship. I started doing way more online courses. And, yeah, here we are today.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking on the podcast.

Ashwin Chirag: That’s right. I’m on the podcast.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah. No. I can see. Very exciting. You know what’s the most inspiring thing for me? What was the most inspiring thing in this second DSGO we had last year? The most inspiring thing for me was to see, to acknowledge or even just process the fact that people from 23 different countries were there. How crazy is that? 23 different countries. I still can’t put that together in my head.

Ashwin Chirag: It’s insane.

Kirill Eremenko: It’s a conference in San Diego. I understand somebody maybe flew from Mexico, from Canada maybe.

Ashwin Chirag: Germany.

Kirill Eremenko: Yeah, but from Germany. You know there’s people from Czech Republic. Somebody from Brazil. Like a 27 hour flight from Brazil. I’m like, “My. Some people have so much determination to be successful and to achieve this greatness in what they’ve set out to do.” I have huge admiration for that.

Ashwin Chirag: That was amazing. Yeah. We had that map outside that connected all the places.

Kirill Eremenko: With threads?

Ashwin Chirag: Yeah, with threads. So from each place you where people flew to the conference. And that thing was just red everywhere. Yeah, it was great. That’s a good point. It was pretty cool that people care that much. People are into the same thing, just like us. Yeah. It’s pretty impressive.

Kirill Eremenko: Man, that’s very cool. Well, look, I’m really looking forward to DataScienceGO as well, and to catching up with you there. But equally I’m looking forward to what you will create with Let’s GO Data Science. I think it has huge potential, and I’m super pumped that you are leading this enterprise. That you are driving it, because I know what drive you have. And hats off to you. Very inspiring to see what you’re doing.

Ashwin Chirag: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Kirill Eremenko: All right. Well, thanks man. On that note we’ll wrap up. Good luck with this meetup with Bradley Voytek. And I’ll see you at DataScienceGO.

Ashwin Chirag: I’ll see you at DataScienceGO.

Kirill Eremenko: So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. That was Ashwin Chirag. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you’re interested in asking Ashwin some additional questions following this episode, then good news, Ashwin will be doing an ask me anything session in the SuperDataScience Slack community. So if you’re part of the SuperDataScience membership, part of the SuperDataScience club, then head on over to Slack. You’ll see some announcements there. This will actually be happening on the 21st of August, evening time US. So exactly one week from when this podcast will be released. So on the 21st of August at the end of the day US time, Ashwin will be our guest at the ask me anything. So you can ask him any questions that you might have about this podcast.

Kirill Eremenko: I recommend checking it out. You can find it in the SuperDataScience membership Slack community. In addition to that, what a cool episode. How cool is it that Ashwin does standup comedy just for fun in order to take his skills to the next level? I thought that was really cool. And hopefully now you see what I mean about psychology is 80% of success, or what Tony Robbins when he says that what he means. The things that we discuss here about putting yourself in extreme situations, like standup comedy, to practice your public speaking and communication skills. That’s really cool and that’s an example of taking the psychology of success to the next level. Or attending these meetups. Attending conferences where you can meet people, you can put yourself into situations where opportunities will find you so that in combination with the preparation that you’ve been doing, that can unlock massive potential in your life and for your career.

Kirill Eremenko: So that what it’s all about. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are in the San Diego area, if you are somewhere around, I highly recommend attending one of the Let’s GO Data Science meetups. You can find it on the meetup.com app. The next one is going to be on August 29th with the first data scientist at Uber, Bradley Voytek. You don’t want to miss that. So put that into your diary. 6:30 PM on the 29th of August. That’s a Thursday.

Kirill Eremenko: And on that note, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you know anybody in the San Diego area, anybody who would be interested to take their data science career to the next level and attend these meetups that Ashwin has created and is hosting, then send them this episode. Let them get a feel for what it’s like and see all the benefits that they can get. Hopefully that will inspire them to come and take their career to the next level. As Ashwin mentioned, it’s all absolutely free. It’s for the community, for everybody to get together, and learn from each other, and grow together.

Kirill Eremenko: On that note, thank you so much for being here and spending this hour with us. I look forward to seeing you back here next time, and until then happy analyzing.