Machine Learning for Mere Mortals (and Software Developers Like You!) With Hands-On Labs

Where:   Microsoft Offices (Charlotte) 8055 Microsoft Way, Charlotte, NC 28273 map
When:    Tuesday, January 30, 2018 1:00pm - 4:00pm (12:00PM Sign-in begins, 12:00 FREE Lunch. Event begins promptly at 1:00PM)

Machine learning (ML) is making headlines, but do you really know what it is and how to use it effectively within your organization's software applications? Of course, we're all concerned about someone creating SkyNet from The Terminator and we wanted HAL to open the bay doors in 2001 A Space Odyssey, but those are just science fiction movies, right? Well, sort of. Today's voice activated assistants like Alexa, Siri and Cortana have begun to blur the line between the movies and real life. Not surprisingly though, there is so much more to machine learning and artifical intellegence than science fiction movies and digital assistants. This event will open your eyes to how ML is being used in today's business applications and how you can begin to further your career by using it in yours.

Register today to claim your spot (seating is limited and we have reached capacity when hosting this event in the past) and you will learn that Machine Learning is based on the idea that machines should be able to learn and adapt through experience. Seems pretty simple, right? Everyday examples include:

• Live language translation
• Image and video analysis
• Self-driving cars
• Online recommendation offers like Amazon & Netflix
• Knowing what customers are saying about you on social media
• Fraud detection
• And so many more…

Come out and join Jim Duffy from CODE Magazine as he introduces you to the world of machine learning on the Microsoft Azure platform. You’ll walk away with resources, motivation and completed hands-on labs under your belt!

UPDATE: This question came in and what better place to answer it than here!

"I was wondering what the pre-requisites are for this class? How well versed in development do you have to be in order to not be lost in this class?"

Great question! The answer is "not very versed at all"! Machine learning can be more about statistics then it is about coding. No, this workshop doesn’t require you be a statistics wiz but you will certainly begin to appreciate how important statistics is in the big picture. 95% of the hands-on lab requires nothing but your laptop and browser. You will need an Azure account though and you will need to set up an Azure Machine Learning Workspace. The three steps here should get you ready to go! BTW, when creating your Azure Machine Learning Workspace you will have 2 FREE options, a Guest Workspace and a Free Workspace. You need to select Free Workspace because the guest Workspace doesn’t allow you to upload a dataset and we will be do that early in the labs.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/trial/get-started-machine-learning

One of the final steps of the hands-on lab requires Visual Studio. If you don’t have that on your machine you can download and install the free community edition here:

https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/

Just click the Download VS Community 2017 button and away you go…

That should do it for the pre-reqs and getting set up.