Ken Washington, PhD

I agree with all of these contributions and would add that nurturing and using your professional network is a full time job where opportunities to make connections can happen at essentially any moment in your life. I’ve made useful connections on the plane, on vacation swimming in the pool, hiking in the mountains over the weekend, at the movies with friends, and even during the mingle time after worshipping at church. The point is be alert to possibilities at all times.

In my experience, reaching out isn’t enough. You need to contribute and find ways to create investments in the institutions of interest, especially if they are a university. These groups get tugged on a lot, so if you show up with money and/or leverage you will increase your odds of a meaningful engagement several fold.

I agree, but these days there are so many AI events and conferences that it isn’t easy to pick the ones that matter to attend. We only have so many attention units to devote to on such events so be discerning. GTC is a must attend in my opinion. Similar events sponsored by the hyperscalers are also good but pick one or two at most. Finally, add one specific to your industry and domain and work to get a speaking slot.

In my experience the two most important things needed to learn and improve are to capture real world data about how the solution performs in the field, and reward those who use it to drive change. This requires a ruthless focus on tangible metrics and a commitment during the design phase to build telemetry capabilities into products. This isn’t always feasible, but it usually is and those who do this create a culture of learning from data and improvements that work.

I agree, and I have had good experience with inviting customers and other stakeholders to the table to bring clarity to the problem to solve. Another tool is to hold a brainstorm session with the ground rule of no judgment - just ideas flowing freely. This works great when you have a truly diverse team from different backgrounds and cultures. Bring it home by capturing the most clear and complete ideas into a problem statement that everyone uses to drive future steps in the process.

I agree with all of this, and I believe negotiation will help the team avoid racing to the bottom with a lowest common denominator consensus position. Communication is essential on an AI team because the disconnects will accelerate at high speed.