My experience of teaching Public Speaking (teaching ML)!

Hello Everyone, I am Machine Learning Facilitator for Google’s ExploreML Program and I wish to share one of the proud moment of my life.

I was called to Nashik’s KBT College of Engineering to teach Machine Learning to their students. I was not sure to take this, because I was still scared of Public Speaking. It's not that it was my first time. I have taught ML to students of my college in Sinhgad Institute of Technology, Lonavala. But never done it in front of unknown people.

Oh wait? Did I said yes? Yes I did!!!

I agreed to his invitation and it was planned for 10 days from today. As the days went by, I was feeling more scared and nervous.

I have learnt that the fear only come when you are not prepared for it. When you are prepared of what you are going to say and who your audience is, the fear starts going far away.

So I start preparing my keynote 2 days before the workshop. The next day I left for Nashik from Pune (That’s where I live 😉, “aao kabhi”).

As soon as I reached there, some students from the college were waiting for me. They gave me a nice welcome bouquet 💐. Suddenly I was feeling like a celebrity. I was feeling awesome and confident. They told me that in tomorrow’s workshop almost 200 students will be there with some faculty as well as Principal Sir.

Now that made me nervous, really nervous. I was thinking of escaping from the guest house somehow and go back to home.

I am happy that I didn’t 😅. Somehow I was able to sleep as I was tired from travelling also I had to wake up at 7:00 am the next day.

Day 1:-

I took a great breakfast and a cup of tea. Went to meet Vice-Principal Sir before starting the workshop. The Vice-principal sir was shocked knowing that I am in the Third Year of my Engineering. He gave me blessings and congratulated me. Also thanked me for being there. I thanked him for calling me here.

We went to a stage where almost 150–200 students were sitting already with some faculty members.

I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. I never saw myself in this position. Sitting on with Principal Sir, Vice-principal and Head of Department.

After a wonderful introduction from one of the student, Principal sir felicitated me and I was told to continue with the workshop.

The fun starts from here.

I froze for about 30 seconds when I was called on the stage to start with the workshop. But I couldn’t let them know, right? I started asking them questions that came out of nervousness like in which year you are, and what languages are you interested in?

I was gathering my confidence up to talk in front of them with full passion and enthusiasm. I began the seminar by teaching what Machine Learning and what are the applications of ML. Google’s resources were so awesome that anyone could have been hooked to those keynotes. Students were having fun interacting with me, playing some games on the computer to understand what ML is.

I told almost everything about ML in the first half of the session and in the next half, we studied some ML algorithms. And yes they were boring for them. I agreed. I tried to simplify my words as much as I can. But yeah, nobody gets them on the first try. Later on, we had a hands-on session to practise what we learned today.

I taught them how to save a man if he is sitting on the Titanic 😂. Just kidding. We learnt to predict whether the person sitting in titanic, lives or dies using the Titanic dataset from Kaggle. The real-world problems made them interested. I was feeling good interacting with all those people.

After a while, a ma’am came to me asking to help in her PhD project. I was happy to help her out later. I felt proud that I was able to help her. It felt very good.

By the end of the day, I told them about the career opportunities in the field of AI. I told them my journey, and how I learnt these things. That was day one.

I was very happy for the day. I can’t believe I did that. I called my mom and dad, told them about it. That moment was very precious for me as well as my parents.

Day 2:-

The next day we started with understanding Neural Networks and Deep Learning. I told them why ML models fail in the real world and that’s where Neural Networks kicks in.

We had a hands-on session on both, Computer Vision Problems as well as Natural Language Processing problems. I gave them challenges that they have to complete in order to be eligible for some awesome swags.

After the workshop, it was time to leave. I went to my room for packing my things up. One of the faculty members came to my room. He gave me a letter of appreciation. He gave me lots of blessings and asked for help for his students. He said to me, stay connected.

One more thing I want to mention is that some students who were with me always were the best. They took care of my every need. Also, they took me for a ride to see their city. It was awesome.

That’s how my 2 days went. Now I am just more excited about giving more talks, teaching more ML to students.