CUNY IBM Watson Competition 2017

Baruch College Marxe School of Public and International Affairs

INSTRUCTIONS

MARCH 17-18, 2017 BOOT CAMP INSTRUCTION

INTREPID SEA, AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM –  West side of Manhattan on Pier 86, 12th Ave. & 46th Street

The Boot Camp Friday March 17th (snacks):

  1. Registration begins at 4:00 pm. Come across the bridge over 12th Avenue and enter the Museum from the bridge (GROUP ENTRANCE ON SECOND FLOOR) where the registration desk will be located.  Pick up your name badge and wrist band. (PROGRAM IN EDUCATION CENTER)
  2. Program: Starting 5:45 pm there will be Opening remarks by Stan Altman and a talk by Vince Masi, VP IBM Global Sales/Distribution And Brand Accounting
  3. Lecture on Watson/Bluemix: 6:00 pm -7:30 pm presented by Armen Pischdotchian, IBM, Academic Tech Mentor – Global University Programs.Friday’s lecture will cover the rise of NLU (natural language understanding) from NLP (Natural language processing), explore how Watson worked in the Jeopardy era (Logistical Regression) to how Watson works today (neural networks and derive the stochastic gradient descent algorithm). The lecture will also explore the future, year 2025…predictions on how AI will evolve. At the conclusion of the lecture, there will be a demo of the Discovery service, IBM’s latest flagship API, followed by a QA period. (suggest you watch the Davos video found on the  Resource Page)

The Boot Camp Saturday March 18th:

  1. Registration begins at 9:30 am (same entrance as Friday) (coffee and muffins outside of Auditorium) (MORNING PROGRAM IN AUDITORIUM – NO FOOD PERMITTED)
  2. One member from each team should bring a laptop on Saturday to participate in the coding and app development during the workshop.
  3. Prior to Saturday’s workshop follow the instructions on the instruction on the following worksheet Pre-req for Bluemix workshops
  4. 10:00 am – 10:30 am-  Remarks by Stan Litow, VP, Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs & President, IBM International Foundation,                Miguel Gamino, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), City of New York Mayor’s Office of Technology + Innovation, and Winning Team 2014 CUNY-IBM Watson Competition
  5. 10:30 am – 1:00 pm Workshop on Watson and Bluemix Services  presenter Armen Pischdotchian, IBM (at least 1 member from each team should bring laptop as there will be some coding). Group will work with the Conversation service and build a chatbot.
  6. 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Lunch in Mess Hall
  7. 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm team meetings and preparation for 5 minute presentation to review panel.  Presentations will start at 3:00 pm. Room assignments and schedule of presentation by each team will be announced Friday, March 17th.

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TEAM INFORMATION FORM-2017

Here are instructions for participating in the CUNY-IBM Watson Competition

Step 1: Make sure you are eligible.  Only CUNY students in a degree-granting program are eligible.

Step 2: Go to the home page and register in Eventbrite

Step 3:  We have created a LinkedIn Group called CUNY-IBM Case Competition Participants. We have created this group to facilitate the process of finding other CUNY students you would like to team up with.  If you already have a LinkedIn account, then simply join. If you do not have a LinkedIn account then create one and join our Group. Be sure to complete your profile so other students can get to know you and determine if you would be a someone to team up with.  Click on https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13512337.  Information on the students registered for the competition has been removed.

Step 4: Teams are usually formed in one of the following ways. A group of students decide they want to work together and then decide on a project to work on or an individual identifies a project he or she wants to work on and then recruits the other team members.

Step 5:  Your team can decide to work on any aspect of Higher Education or NYC Government Sectors you find interesting.  Also, a number of New York City agencies and nonprofit organizations have posted possible projects you might want to consider selecting as your project.  The project description are posted on the PROJECT page – this page will be updated as new project descriptions are received.   If you decide to select one of the projects posted send me email to [email protected] indicating the project you are interested in along with the names of your team members and I will send you the name and email address of the project’s manager. This will provide you with an opportunity to ask questions about the project before make a final decision about selecting the project.

You can also look at the publications produced by the New York City Independent Budget Office. The reports are organized by subject area and several of the reports discuss the operation of city agencies, suggest project that might lead to improving their operation.

6. As soon as you have formed a team, send an email to [email protected] and provide (1) a description of your project (no more than 125 words), (2) the names of all team members, and (3) the team member designated as team’s contact person. Everyone competing must be on a team no later than March 10 to attend the March 17-18 Boot camp and continue in the CUNY-IBM Watson Competition.