Basic Needs

Author’s experience: One thing that really struck me about the data science and AI/ML community when I first joined was how communal it was. My prior career was in sales and account management, and I took how competitive it was for granted. I was struck by the benevolence of the community. There were so many open-source projects you could get involved in. You could put your projects up on Kaggle and win competitions. You could find an almost infinite supply of solutions to problems on Stack Overflow. I found a lot of success reaching out to people who shared their perspectives on their area of AI. Never was this more apparent than when I reached out to potential speakers to host a panel or a workshop to teach others. It makes this field all the more compelling because if you do want to focus on a particular AI solution, you can find lots of friends along the way to join your cause and support you.