2021 Solution Challenge: Best practices

Key Takeaways

[Music] i'm the ceo and founder of parthian education website that many of you are now familiar with um before this i interned to google a few times and i've worked with the google cloud team developer student clubs team android kotlin team a bunch of teams around google and i was always focused on developing great experiences for students just like you today we have an awesome event where we're talking to winners from last year we're going to pick their brains about not only how they design their solutions develop their solutions but also how they collaborated in a remote world and so there's a lot that you'll be able to learn from this uh team from this winning team from last year uh marva do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about what's going to happen sure definitely like this is marvel and i'm coming to manager for developer student clubs and uh today we have actually a really excellent teammates and we are from germany and probably you remember them their uh incredible project with free speak and today we have almo and maria with us so i'm super excited for today's event because like i'm looking forward to hear about more tips and what they have done like because it was a great like app and i saw it like uh so i'm super excited for that so let's say welcome to almo and maria for today hi hi hi welcome thanks a lot for joining us today thanks for inviting us elmo is that a drum set behind you yes you play the drums a little bit also another feature but i just tried myself awesome very cool yeah marvin you want to get us started yeah sure sure let's start like um i actually like the developer software uh that uses a modern machine learning and video analyzing tool which was super cool and by leveraging tensorflow and google class natural uh language to analyze presentations and give individual feedbacks uh and tips as a virtual coach and actually like i want to show a video that tells a little bit about more about their project and uh we can learn more and afterwards like we can ask some questions to them so you can also understand how they made it so let's start giving a good presentation is really hard [Music] now imagine this you are currently in a selection interview for a really big company you have two minutes in which you have to present yourself two minutes that will decide if you will get approved to the company of your dreams or reject it one presentation that can have a big impact in the future when we looked around at our local university we noticed something many tutors or people giving presentations have one thing in common they know a lot and can provide lots of knowledge but oftentimes the audience just falls asleep we have asked experts in the field of republican communication and what we have learned is that many people focus on improving their content but they forget one of the most important aspects of presentation body language and emotions now a presentation without proper body language and emotions is like foods without proper seasoning the problem is that our current education system just doesn't teach us important soft skills getting professional soft skill training is really rare to find and really expensive we wanted to change this we created the software that records the presentation analyzes it and gives personalized individual feedback and tips to improve your presentation using google speech api and google cloud sentiment analysis we can analyze data about the talking speed the recognized emotions in your voice or the content of your speech with tensorflow we can use machine learning to analyze the body language and facial emotional expressions in the video in the future we could add individual training exercises or analyze more aspects of a good presentation and with today's technical advancements the possibilities are endless what an amazing project like well done team like yeah i think it's awesome and i've um i mean i i do a lot of presentations and so i always wish that i had this and um also i've watched that video so many times so now that i'm finally speaking to the two of you i feel like i'm speaking to a celebrity so awesome yeah actually they're the celebrities those publishing challenges for the developers yeah so yeah uh i know that you love connecting with uh talented people or all around the world and exchanging the ideas with them and probably you saw that you can provide impact not on your local neighborhood and also uh around the world with healthy people as i can see from your project and i think there was a thing that motivated you to build that amazing project and how did you manage team communication um like how was it because i know that it's a new world it's a kobe 19 world and everything is like online and how did it go for you yeah so actually communication is actually one of the key parts of good teamwork and the thing is before like covet it was really cool if you can like sit together see like others are working on it can like say okay can you do this for me uh if you have questions you can ask them and like covet that had a really big change on it and i think what's really important is to have to keep the team members updated so for example we did like for example a whatsapp group and when we did the task we updated them quickly okay we did this and then we said like this snowball effect on each other that we saw okay uh he is working on this task that's really cool now i'm motivated to do this on my own i'm work motivated to another thing then um i can do this thing i can update what's like okay i dig this thing and the next uh sees it and then it has like this uh domino effect and everybody is uh keeping motivated wow that that's super cool and uh what are the best virtual collaboration tools for your team like how was it because i know that like for this year also so many teams are working on their solution challenge projects so do you have any suggestions for you i know that you follow up with the like a great uh like collaboration skills but like uh what was the best ones for you what do you think um so uh we actually use like whatsapp as the main source of communication for like just sending quick messages and updates and when we did like hackathon sessions we usually always use discord and stayed there in our private server the whole day long so yeah also something for good collaboration is maybe nero um nero.com that's where you can have like a virtual whiteboard with post-its and something there's also something on uh on the google platform or just google docs for ideation and something and gather town is also a really good tool to like work especially in big teams um you have just a character and you can build like small rooms together and when somebody wants to do something on it on her or his own this person can just go away from this room and like yeah be in complete silence that's awesome yeah uh i just i i personally in the last session i brought up miro as well i think it's a great tool for doing things like design sprints and kind of recreating that in person experience right where you don't have sticky notes and you can't sit next to each other um and so i i have another question for you related to um kind of this shift to virtual um i remember when i was in college one of my favorite things to do was like go on campus and find some room somewhere in the library or in a dorm room or something just me and my friends lock ourselves in there and finish the entire project or finish the entire homework assignment and we would motivate each other by being around each other right and like get really gross snacks and play music really loud and finish the project right then and there right so how do you stay motivated how can you kind of recreate that experience and stay motivated as a team when you're not together um so i think for me the most important thing was that i was really motivated to implement the idea that we had i think that if if you maybe participating in a project where you don't really like the idea and don't really feel like motivated to work in it then there won't be any teamwork um so i think the most important thing is that everyone likes the idea and really wants to do something with it and the second thing is like i already mentioned frequent updates or even daily updates are really important so that everyone can see that the work is going on and so that everyone can everyone can be included in the work that is going on right now um which is also pretty important everyone should be up to date um and also frequent calls like we did also uh helped us to stay uh motivated and to work together in the project very cool so staying insane that's constant communication yeah please and i would also say that uh for example visual studio code has a really nice feature when uh where two persons can code at the same time in the same same editor and we also use that and this also helped us a lot to work like together and to recreate the uh real-life meetings awesome yeah that's great that's really really cool yeah yeah now i'm thinking yeah i agree about this also like over communication is the key i guess like for the project development and those kinds of things because like like when you're writing code or making a project you feel a bit lonely so sometimes it's better to communicate and someone needs to push the others and also like hey you can do this now we are at this stage so the next stage is coming we're gonna finish it soon like it's something like that so it's yeah it's a great strategy like over communicating and i have a question for you almo actually like what do you think about like what are your most important skills for becoming a strong teammate and contributor because i know that you have a great like a strong communication with your team what do you think about it what is the most important skills so i think especially if you're like one of like the founding teams or like the core team and you're the start of the project it's really important to always have like the overview to know what has to be done so like if it's a bigger team for example then maybe some people don't know what's going on on the other half and they have to ask like their boss or their boss and then they have to say okay do this do this but especially in smaller teams i think it's really important to be really autonomous so then you can be really efficient when you communicate so you don't have to say okay we have to do this and maybe it isn't the right thing and if everyone has like the overview and like his own initiative to give it's it really makes a big difference interesting very interesting yeah um so then i kind of want to shift tones a little bit and ask about like again i'm trying to reminisce a little bit about my own college experience and think about like i remember when i was in college homework was like a lot right and balancing that was it just took so much time and um also like applying to jobs right there's a lot there's a lot on your plate already as a college student um and mix into that uh global pandemic that has kind of shaken up our entire world right and so how do you balance solution challenge with your school work with your college or not like job applications with everything else going on in your life how did you balance all that maria um so actually uh the the we did our main implementing month or two months during our semester break and we hadn't had any classes there but i think um yeah actually we are still working on this project up until now and we were balancing uh working the work on this project with our uh school university stuff and so on and what we just did uh was that we just met up once a week to discuss everything and to set up a few things that we can do up until next the next week up until our next uh meeting and then discuss the progress uh the next week again so we just found a time that suited everyone and just worked on it and on some days we were where we were more free than the others we just did some hackathons very cool yeah and it also like as you're speaking it reminded me of something that you had said earlier which is that um you just cared a lot about the solution right um and personally i i found that when i was in college i would make time for things that i really cared about right so like if there were a project that i really cared about or a hackathon that i really wanted to go to i was able to better like somehow the time would just show up right i would somehow just make more time in my schedule for things that i truly truly cared about and so um quickly just people listening i also think it's really really important to work on projects and try and solve solutions that are really meaningful to you right would you would you two both agree with that yeah of course so if i feel motivated i am like eager to do something yeah it's also fun so if like yeah if you have a hobby then you just love to do it and it's like it's fun to do this project then it's great so you have like a new hobby and then you can work on it on your free time so it's not like work but it's it's just like a hobby then yeah i think that was the key by the way like uh seeing it as a hobby because like when you don't feel it like it's your work or something you need to do i don't know like it motivates you naturally you don't have to do something for that or you don't need any kind of push for that uh like it's not like this like i think the last time was like two years ago like when i started uh working for this job because like previously i was an organizer i was organizing so many community events like you like uh but unfortunately there wasn't any developer student clubs like in my region like two years ago so like afterwards like uh when i was trying to do something i saw that like it wasn't like my work like it's like my hobby what i was doing before so i think like making a project is like that also i used to call well and also like right now i'm doing it but like a hobby like i think it's the key for the success like we need to take it like this and yeah that that's great that's great uh and like um also like maybe uh like with the school work like as our motto is pretty busy and if you're studying like some kind of engineering departments or those kinds of things probably you feel like oh my god i'm stuck like so many uh projects that i need to do but also like there's a solution challenge which is super cool i need to work on this i need to also join this one so yeah that's cool and how did you like schedule and prioritize your work like how how did it go and especially when you're home and dealing with family and sometimes like the internet connection is lo uh is kinda maybe lost for you or not i'm not pretty sure about the connection in germany probably it looks pretty good for now but when you lost the connection because some parts of um the world uh hasn't got a like stable internet connection and also like um like other stuff with the code 19 like um how did you uh like schedule it and prioritize your work maria how was it for you so to be honest i usually always put the things in the first place that make fun so for my project i was putting it in the first place and when i had some school homeworks to do that are not like um so like i don't have a big priority and the deadline is like a week away and stuff like this i was doing it like later on i don't know so i just put everything that i like in the first place actually what do you think elmo is it the right strategy or the prize what do you think what's your point it's a good strategy to keep yourself motivated because like if you're not motivated anymore and then you don't like to work on this product anymore it's like a bad thing so i think for for this occasion it's like actually a really good strategy because then if you if you make your hobby because oftentimes when you make your hobby to your work then you don't like to work on it anymore but this should be fun and like this should be a great experience and this should be something that you really want to work on i think that's actually a good strategy yeah i think i have kind of the same strategies from my side and what do you think our month we had same strategy also for example i have the one lecture that i'm trying to like um do like for two years now and i couldn't like manage myself to learn for it or to study for it and do the exams because this like lecture is so boring and i don't like it at all and every time when i sit down and try to do it i end up procrastinating after like 10 minutes or something so i think that fun things such as projects are really important to firstly keep you motivated and not to procrastinate all the time and then like after i was working on those projects i can start uh like studying for this lecture finally with like more motivation than like before yeah yeah i think it's um it's it's like incredibly energizing to work on things that you care about and to kind of have fun right um and if that is the same as like building something that's awesome for the world right that's even better um and so so we've been talking a lot about what is like we're all smiling right now right so like we're talking about things that are really fun awesome i kind of want to like look at the other side of things and i want to ask you quickly what are the biggest challenges that you faced throughout the solution challenge throughout working on your project what was the what were the hardest things that you went through as a team and then how did you overcome them so we will get back to the fun part right but like quickly just like what is the most challenging thing that you faced and how did you overcome it so actually i think this is actually one of the most fun parts like the challenge is because for me personally it was uh so because we did like a lot of stuff with like ai machine learning and so on and we we couldn't do that before so like we haven't learned that in the university and but we had this ambitious goal to make like this cool stuff and it was it was actually quite challenging at the beginning because we had so many things that we wanted to do but we didn't know how and it was really fun to then find out like okay there's like this service that already exists that we can use to implement this feature there's like this stuff that you can do and then by doing that we we learned so much during uh the whole challenge and i think this was actually one of the one of the best things that the knowledge that we gained while actually uh overcoming our challenges that's yeah yeah so it's the same thing for me uh sorry but i also was never involved with with like machine learning and data science and then the project i uh mostly was working on machine learning models and like some analysis stuff of the gathered data and so on um and like i was said it was really challenging we had to read a lot of articles we had to tweak on models that already exist on the internet try to integrate and try to write our own like we also watch some coursera courses on the theory and also application of like tensorflow for example um and this was really fun and for me personally this motivated me to like move in the data science direction um yeah so previously i did not know what i really want to do and now i know that maybe something with data science so yeah wow so you guys didn't know anything about machine learning or data science but you knew that your solution needed machine learning and data science so you just decided okay we're just going to teach it to ourselves is that correct am i getting that right wow and so yeah i can imagine that's the biggest challenge wow wow like super impressive yeah very cool so actually it isn't it isn't really that hard anymore because like previously like back in the so like years ago like if you have you to implement your own that is like okay you have to know the math behind it and so on but like today there's like for example cameras you just have to define how does your model look like and that it like does many things on its own or for example um that's a maybe a good tip for um all of you out there like there's like for example google cloud platform if you want to do speech to text just like send your uh audio like to the cloud and automatically there comes like a text back you don't have to know how it works but it kind of works and that it kind of keeps you motivated to learn more about how it works because you know that it works and you can see like the first uh prototype that you already have yeah one thing that i really really enjoyed about your project specifically like i said i've worked in google cloud for a really long time so i i know those apis like the back of my hand right and i it always bothers me that students don't take more advantage of those apis because you can with a few lines of code develop such intricate and really really impressive projects because these apis are out there like the vision api video intelligence apis text-to-speech speech to text api right there there's so many of these um and i really enjoyed how you your team both of you and the rest of your team like you balanced using these apis out of the box and developing your own machine learning models right and you kind of you balanced both of those things together you didn't just go one direction to the other and i think that was a really efficient use of tools that are already out there and challenging yourself to learn more and um again i think for people listening this is the best approach right like the solution challenge is a time we always say this it's a time to kind of bridge theory and practical knowledge right and i like that i i'm an app developer mostly web but also mobile right that's like my that's my background and the way that i taught myself mobile and web app development was just building mobile and web apps not knowing anything about them and just saying hey i want to build that thing let me let me learn how to build it and so i think solution challenge is a great way to kind of go about that and you all did exactly that so it's super impressive that's really really cool yeah thank you that's the like best part of like developer stream clubs because there is a project uh like chance for you and uh you created your own opportunity like i was super impressed by like maria's fault about like for example she she didn't know that like she will go for the like data science previously and now like she discovered she discovered that like she has some kind of curiosity for data science and machine learning and afterwards like she found what she wants to do in the future so which is good like i think we need to try some styles to learn uh what we want in the future so i think this is the best part for that yeah thanks a lot for that and also like uh i'm a bit curious about like uh i know that like um you talk about like uh priorities and scheduling and those kinds of things and also like you mentioned about the mirror and these kinds of things and like how should we set goals and work together to reach them because i know that there is some there'll be so many uh for this year's solution challenge and especially like probably like most of them are gonna meet us hackathons or some networking events related with solution challenge so how they should set goals and work together uh to reach them like um is there anything specifically you want to mention for them especially if they have just maps for the solution challenge projects i think it's like this quick and dirty approach like know what is like the core thing of your solution so if you want to solve something then don't say at first okay i want to make this beautiful app i want it to look like this green button and then like this round corners or something just firstly focus how can we solve it and then like create the first like dirty prototype um so that you can have at least something and then step for a step you can like improve it add new features make it maybe prettier um go ask your users okay what do you think about it and then if they say okay maybe this isn't that great then you already know beforehand before you made like the whole thing you know okay maybe i have to change this thing at first and then if you know if you're confident that this is the right direction then you can actually like implement more around it yeah that's super cool yeah i agree about this and what do you think maria um yeah i also agree with imo and i also think that um what also can help people is to like really before starting doing any implementation stuff just to go out and ask people about like how they like your idea um we'll be using it in the future because of course any idea that can be created write down a solution challenge can probably end up as our startup in the future so it's really nice that to know what people actually think and how people like your idea and also speaking to experts is also really helpful like we did we spoke to like um some speaking coaches and really found out the needs like we we first imagined the idea the one way and after we spoke to some experts our idea shifted like in a completely uh different direction so like also like uh gathering feedback is important and speaking to experts if you have the opportunity of course yeah that's um super super important uh like talking to users um and also i think more specifically i think people talk so much about how you should talk to users speak to experts get advice get feedback right so we all know that we should do that but one thing that i find when i'm speaking to um student projects but also like even startups right even like bigger businesses i think that people will go through the motions of setting up a call right just creating a survey getting that feedback but then they're not nimble enough to switch right they're they're so married to their original idea that they don't want to switch their idea or edit their idea based on uh user feedback and so i think it's awesome that like you just said maria like you started with one with one direction right and then after speaking to experts you realize oh no this is a better idea that shift is actually incredibly difficult to do a lot of people don't get there they're so stuck with their original idea so um i think that's a huge learning and um we actually we got a question about exactly that from uh from the audience so let's let's like dive into some audience questions marvi i i copied them out into the document as well but so um first of all so like relating to getting feedback we got a question from let me pull up the name um okay i can't i can't see it but how were you able to test your solutions with real users right especially in this virtual world how are you able to test with real users and what tools did you use to do so um so for my part i recorded videos of me how i use it this is like not the real user experience to be honest but i still recorded some videos and sent them over to my friends when the situation with like corona was pretty severe here in germany but once it was like a bit better we were allowed to like meet with each other and i also invited like one friend at a time over because you're not allowed to meet like any more people but i i sometimes might one time one friend at a time and they can like so that so that they can check out our solution also oh yeah you can go on okay so uh one one thing that's really cool is like before you even have your solution um you can do like some click dummies for example with figma that's something that we also use and so we you can like create the ui really quickly and then send them over with a link and then they can like click through it say okay i don't get the idea maybe or then you have to make it more intuitive to the user or something like that so uh clickbait is a really cool tool that you can use and um actually our current version of our program is not offline an offline app anymore but a online app so we use like firebase to like send a link to our friends so that they can also try it out we actually got a question about that uh so i i will quickly uh kind of give you the opportunity um so so um is the app available on the play store or github where we can test it out so if you want to post a link uh to the app um you can go ahead and do that right in general so that people can kind of get get a taste of it but but if you want you can do that um yeah but but that's yeah that's awesome i think i think it's a really cool idea uh to like take even like i love the taking a video of you using it and sending that around to friends that's that's super creative definitely and also i love pigma too by the way like it makes you it makes it super easy like for the everything so yeah i think design is one of the most important parts because like people are just checking the design if they like it they want to use it otherwise like they're like i don't know should i use it or not and those kinds of things so it makes it easier yeah i agree about this harmony and uh also like uh definitely like this question comes to my mind i know that like maria i mentioned that a lot about the benefits of participating in in the solution challenge but also like uh what do you think like what are the other benefits like what do you think about it how did it go how was the journey for you and uh this is a question for you like uh for almo let's say yeah yeah i think one of the biggest benefits is really like the journey what you learn during it so like what maria already mentioned like she didn't know to do data science before and then she did it it was really fun it was a great experience and then like you kind of have like this practical experience of doing something and it's it's really cool and i think the fun also that you discover new uh directions that are really fun for you i think that's really cool and what i think is that so it's also like easy to learn new things because on my side i was always struggling like in university we have mostly only theoretical stuff about computer science and to my part i was struggling to come up with an idea and a topic on what should i do and how should i do it like how should i even learn to like uh program not only like competitive programming but like like real applications and websites and so on and i think that such social challenges are a really good opportunity to like um get your mind together on some ideas because like um like how to say it you have already topics that require some solutions and then you can like just choose one topic that you like and come up with an idea for that and that's like much easier because uh you don't have like a broad uh i don't know a broad line of topics um yeah and it's like much easier to learn and it can also like increase your self-esteem and confidence when you learn new things and like uh really see that you can actually do something yeah i agree about this yeah for the south facing yeah i saw it from like a couple of students they were like oh no i feel much more confident about like computer science coding and making projects like previously they haven't tried and they tried it with this fight yeah i agree about it yeah i think actually that's really important about like general hackathons like um if you participate in the hackathon for the first time you will really be surprised how quickly you can do actually things if you really sit together because like we participate in some hackathons where you only have like two days to do something and if you go to a company and say okay we can do this in two days i will say okay no way there's no way you can do such a thing in today but then you sit on it you actually code like the the whole day through and actually in the end you have like a working prototype and it's really astonishing how how far you can get yeah definitely and like some technologies are super fast about it for example last weekend we had a floater hackathon and like in two nights they've made them more than 50 apps with flutter so it was crazy like i was like wow how did you made it and there were like more than 500 students and like they were like wow yeah we did it i think we can do more spells with this technology so yeah we need to find the best technology for making super fast solutions yeah that's good yeah yeah that's super exciting i i love that um the comparison that you made of like uh how you could build a project in two days and then you go to a company and you and you you use that same timeline and the company's like no way right and that was a huge thing for me going from like hackathons and things like that to like google right or like any other big company you're like wow things are moving a little slower than when i was in my dorm room right um and so so i i did want to maria you brought up the idea of like coming up with ideas right for for things that you want to work on so i kind of want to dive in a bit deeper into that we actually got a question about it as well um from from the audience which is how did you come up with the idea like where did where did where was where did the idea for this where was it born so actually that's the question that we uh get the most um so we particip so so for a solution challenge there is such kickoff events where the dsc leads of the university present the solution challenge and in our town in munich we had to come up like with different ideas it doesn't matter which ideas just some ideas to write them down and to pitch them quickly in front of the audience and what we noticed there is that there are many talented people with like really great ideas but what um they were lacking is that they like couldn't like present their idea like properly they were mumbling under their breath speaking too slow or too fast and i actually noticed the same um the same problem with me i previously hit a completely another idea to present and i noticed that like i was really afraid to talk in front of people and they weren't like much people they were like 20 or 30 but i still was really afraid um and they i talked about this fear to almo and to jack they like they are studying with me in the same university and then we like just like that randomly came up with the idea to do something with presentations the way like that was a golden lesson in ideation like everyone just take a moment to think about so so what maria just said was we were in this situation right and i noticed people faced a problem and i wanted to solve the problem right it was not like oh like i i wanted to build this really cool thing that i thought was really cool no it was that maria saw other people who had really good ideas but weren't able to communicate them very well and then she herself and i'm like speaking about you as if you're not here but like you then said i also faced that problem right so something that you had felt you could empathize with very personally right that is the gold standard of ideation right like identify a problem and then go out and solve it right um i'm so excited about what you just said that is perfect yeah yeah i'm also so excited yeah that's cool and also like one more question from the audience like which is a bit more technical and what do you think about like do you need a do you need to know a programming language uh for example like python to use ai and ml tools uh in google cloud or is there a ui with switches and buttons this is the question from the audience um about python so i think if you don't know any programming language at all it's it will be pretty hard to start working on such a big project but if you like familiar with any other language it doesn't matter which you can easily learn the other one so again for for me i i never use python i only use like java and this was the first time i used like properly python and i just like learn it on ago and um for our ui we we didn't uh program it on ourselves indeed we used the tool that's called pycute5 it's like just a drag and drop tool so that you can quickly create like uh the user interface uh without like spending much time with it and that also really helped us a lot because again this is a hackathon it's limited so we we just use anything that can maybe speed up a process of developing so that we can like focus on the core parts of our project that's super cool what do you think almo like uh did i know uh python programming language for ai and mf for google cloud so i think maybe armin knows it better about like which apis exist for the google cloud um i think if you want to implement your own um ml models i think either if you want it like on your device you can lose like tensorflow.js like in javascript but i think for good prototyping is what's really easy is the best way i think for prototyping is like with python because there's a lot of tools already out there that are integrated in python and i think it's a good choice if you if you don't know yet what to what to learn as your first language if you want to go into that route i can really recommend uh yeah that's cool i remember what do you think about items do you like fighting programming yeah i'm a i'm a big python person i love like everything i do is in python i um yeah so i i always recommend python um but yeah i don't know that's it it's just so good like i i use python for literally everything so yeah i'm with you on that uh it's it's super easy it's it's basically like pseudo code right but i think specifically for ai and ml um like you said although there's there's just so many tools out of the box built for python right um so i mean if you can do python it's great but with respect to the apis um like you can use any of the popular languages for those things right um so if you if you're looking to just use aiml apis then um you don't need to convert over to python although i think you should anyway um but yeah um so i'm also noticing that we're getting some questions about like technical help and like needing help with uh flutter and other tools if that's the case you can go into parthian and ask questions from the google developer experts i can't help you with flutter right now um but i don't know flutter but the gdes will be able to help you in there um so we did get one question that i wanted to pass off to you as well uh maria and elmo which is about how you started to learn data science and ml right so like before you said that the most fun part of this for youtube was teaching yourself these things but for a lot of people that's incredibly daunting right and so how did you go about that how did you go about teaching yourself one of the most difficult topics in in cs um so i i again i didn't know how to like for example or in our project we use a lot of image recognition and i knew that that we maybe need to recognize the face emotions or the hand movements and so on and before i started like even googling like tensorflow cnn and so on i just went on the internet and googled image recognition and then i found out about the terms like convolutional neural networks like deep learning and stuff like this and i just clicked on every article that i found um to read about the theory and also to read about like simple tools uh like like keras because on the internet there were also many articles on for example how to build a cat dog classifier and they also read those articles and looked at the code and i also like again did a coursera course there's a really great coursera course from lawrence moroney if you do know them he also works at google and i watched it on how to use for example tensorflow and keras and i also watched a theoretical coursera course from andrew i don't really know how to pronounce this name so i'm sorry if it's wrong but yeah it's like really theoretical mathematica but that also helped need to deepen the understanding and then of course the most like uh important thing that helped me was like just copying the model from the internet to try to trade it on myself and also like to tweak on the parameters to see what changes it can bring and if i don't understand something then i can like just google for example go on the tensorflow um page yeah yeah it was pretty helpful by like what he was talking about was pretty helpful because like it was the key like key uh videos and key topics that you need to mention yeah definitely thanks a lot for that maria yeah yeah that's awesome i might go do that because i want to learn right so i might just go do it yeah she knows the best she knows the best she's the winner you know yeah right yeah that angel in course that you mentioned so andrew's actually the the founder of corsair or one of the co-founders of coursera and so that course um that's an awesome one i've started it but i need to go finish it yeah cool very cool yeah mervy you have a do you have a question yeah yeah also like uh audience have yeah there is one more question from the audience and what can make the team keep excited and not losing the passion for work i think it's a good question yeah i think one important key aspect is like the momentum that's that's something that's really overlooked oftentimes because like once the first step is like the hardest step once you overcome like the first step and you keep on working it actually isn't that hard to keep on working but once you lose like the momentum and like for example okay uh one guy has to like write an exam okay then he he can't work anymore then kind of snowball so it has like the snowball effect and it's really important just to keep the momentum going so like when when somebody says okay i can work on that and okay you just say on your own with your own initiative okay maybe i can try to do this for you and just to keep like the ball running so if if it stops rolling you just have to keep pushing so that it works smoothly so i think momentum is like really one of the key aspects um and i also think uh that if if if you don't understand something or can't do something then it's like really important to ask questions um so i had the problem that i was afraid to ask questions to other people because i was afraid that they would like see me as a dumb person or something like that and i didn't i'd never ask that i almost like lose did lose my motivation on like studying computer science because i didn't understand anything at all but when i learned to start asking questions um and like to to go out of my comfort zone i felt much more motivation to learn new things and i also think that in a team it's like really important to communicate with each other if you don't like something just say it don't be like afraid to say it um because if a teammate don't don't doesn't like something can't say about it then it's like um not so good for the team itself it can some uh sometimes like break apart so communication communication yeah i agree about this what do you think [Music] yeah no i think your point about asking questions is um again it's incredible i i remember my first internship at google i was in i was in the office and this is a true story i spent a week trying to debug one line of code a full week debugging one line of code and then eventually i think my face was showing how defeated i was by the end of the week and somebody on my team came over and said like hey like are you okay right like what are you doing you're like you seem super sad right like what's going on and i and i told him like yeah i'm running into this this issue and he was like oh it's this right and like immediately help me fix it he didn't think i was dumb he didn't he was like oh it's like this is the problem everyone faces that problem it's super common but like this is why it's the case and it literally took me one week to do something where if i had just asked a question i would have been done right i would have had four and a half more days of time to continue working on this uh project that i was working on and i think that that's such an incredible lesson from then on if i'm stuck for more than like 15 minutes i'll i'll find somebody to ask a question from like i'm so quick to ask questions from people um yeah so i think that's incredibly important so i actually can i follow up on that who do you ask questions from like when you need help who do you ask who do you turn to um so to be honest i was the most experienced programmer in our team so i always asked him if i didn't understand something um and i also uh like googled it on the internet like ask google that's a good one yeah google is all known okay so alba who do you who do you ask then yeah actually like google has so much knowledge it's incredible literally all of the knowledge that's right like google doesn't know it's just like it's actually it doesn't matter who you ask actually just getting like a different perspective on it already helps you so much like for example like rubber duck debugging that's like this technique where you just talk about your uh problem like oftentimes that's really interesting when maria asked me a question about something like she asked me a question like okay i have this problem here so then she goes on about the problem and like before i can even say something it's like oh now i get it thank you for your help literally didn't do anything and she already solved like a problem on her own just like uh uh like quest yeah that's so that's so common and i also so one tip that i always give people is like if you're stuck stop working right like just literally go on a walk go do anything else and then you come back and it's easy right you're like oh like that was the issue and it's it's just it comes to you because your mind is just was able to take that step back and i think rubber ducky right ask just like speaking to yourself is another form of that like you said getting another perspective is super is super important and to the point about google like all jokes aside i actually think that a skill that i always like in college building projects and kind of using google as my uh tutor right one of the most important skills that i learned was finding the right answer on the internet right using tools like stack overflow like uh in this case all of you have parthian right but like like finding the right answer is truly a skill that you can build just by doing it right just by practicing you go on stack overflow you see a little snippet of code you try it out it breaks everything then you go find a different snippet of code right and that kind of um iteration right like learning by doing really really is helpful um for just learning yeah i i really like the experience that you uh had in the when you were when you were in at the internship at google like it was crazy i understand because like when i was in the uh cs 101 courses like i had the same feeling with you and i wasn't asked because i said that oh yeah i can call it i'm going to be a hacker in the future so yeah everything i don't need to ask someone and of course like someone just came and just come up that's it am i always like that oh my god so yeah i understand i know you yeah actually it was super helpful like every piece of like what you said like was super helpful actually for me also but i don't know the other students what they're thinking about it but i think it was helpful to me and uh i hope like you can keep the momentum for your career also like you can develop like those kinds of inspirational projects again uh again congratulations on your success last year hope this year also we will see so many great projects and with the help of like un's spgs like it's incredible like the topics and so yeah i'm looking forward to see also like this year's project and also this year's winner so we can host them next year like you and we can learn more from them thanks a lot for uh joining us again and um yeah have a great day