Under that name more worthy of an Internet clickbait ad than anything else (The Unexpected Data Science; let’s have a laugh!), I gave a talk at Euskal Encounter 28 at the end of July; specifically, on 07/25/2020, at the Urretxu fronton. Here you can find my promotional space on the main website.

Doing a quick research in Wikipedia [ES], for those who do not know the Euskal Encounter, it is the most veteran LAN Party in Spain, which has been celebrated since 1994. In fact, this Euskal Encounter 28 (#EE28), “Revival – Beyond AI “, had as its main topic AI and its impact, in a world that has been affected by COVID-19.

And I have to say that writing these lines is somewhat surprising to me. I had never been to the Euskal Encounter, although it was an event that I always wanted to go to for various reasons. And the fact of being there as a speaker in my first (although different, due to the online format) attendance at the event was a motivation boost for me. And this is even funnier since I was having some good vermouth with a good friend just a week before my participation was announced, who already told me: “They will call you to give talks, I’m sure about that …”. It is curious to see how fate works.

But … why was I there?

The truth is that I wasn’t there by chance. The point is that for several months we have been organizing between Joxemari Gallastegi, Jesus Angel Bravo and myself the introduction of an AI community called AI Saturdays to Euskadi – to both Donostia and Bilbao. And due to the obvious relationship between AI Saturdays and the theme of this edition of the Euskal Encounter, they decided to contact me.

And … what was the talk about?

I wanted to make a somewhat different talk, which was aimed to be something more curious to see / hear. The objective was to understand non-productive applications of the Data Science process, which used techniques and algorithms typical of data analysis and AI. With this goal in mind, I analyzed 3 different examples:

  1. El Odiómetro: A measure of the level of hate on Twitter using sentiment analysis.
  2. Meme Generator: A meme generator using Convolutional Neural Networks.
  3. Jukebox: A musical style transferor using a combination of a VQ-VAE + Autoregressive Transformers model.

And finally I gave a few strokes of the benefits that AI Saturdays could bring to the participants of the program. Although I liked the content (which could be improved) I delivered on the live event, it could not be appreciated well due to the audiovisual quality (which could also be improved). So I decided to re-record myself at home and post it on Galde‘s YouTube channel.

I leave both videos so that you can appreciate the one you prefer (SPOILER: I much prefer the new recording; in the live there are a couple of concept errors).

VIDEO 1: EXTENDED RECORDING

 

VIDEO 2: LIVE RECORDING

 

Which was my impression?

It was a great experience that I would like to repeat again (although if possible, in face-to-face format, not online). This type of community that brings together computer fans, both professionally and amateurishly, is the type of community that is necessary and that makes a social good of hardly tangible value. I would have loved if the first recording had been the final one, but it is not something that could not be helped.

I would also like to thank.

A little over a year ago I thought that Galde could become true, but I was not very sure about that. I was working towards the final degree projects in Business Administration and Management and Computer Engineering at the University of Deusto, I found a space on the market for a tool like Galde FAQ, and I was even able to prepare a functional prototype.

Currently, I have found a reality that differs from my original plans. Companies that, although they understand and like the value of the idea, may not be willing to invest in it because they have to do a lot of previous work (and maintenance) so that the tool can be harnessed. Companies that are also doing their best to survive an unprecedented phase of Coronavirus, so they cannot afford to invest in a “experimental” tool such as Galde FAQ.

Despite this fact, this apparently negative feedback is giving me many learnings, the two most relevant being:

  1. The Galde FAQ tool sounds amazing, but it must be oriented to other types of companies and / or contexts.
  2. Galde’s activity cannot be focused solely on the Galde FAQ tool, because there are higher priority digital needs in society due to the crisis that we are going to live.

Mission: Galde as a digital solutions creator

Because of this, I decided to reframe Galde as a “digital solutions creator“, for an environment that, fortunately or unfortunately, is going to become increasingly digital.

Thanks to COVID-19, we have understood that many things that used to be “inconceivable” to be done through technology can be accomplished with it. In fact, the “new normal” situation is not going to be the one we have known until now – among other reasons, due to various aspects that I have been writing over the years in Bennytácora and whose combined effect is now beginning to be perceived in 2020 (autonomous driving & gig economy in the transport market, high-quality online courses, unsustainable pension system & universal basic income, AGI or AI development).

Given these trends (and more that will appear from the combination of them), I will do some promotion of Galde, explaining the 3 main lines of action Galde will cover:

  1. Galde FAQ. The original tool, despite being conceptually innovative, will remain (and be strengthened) in the portfolio of available solutions.
  2. Galde Web. Due to COVID-19, a lot of work and social activity will be done in a mixed format (e.g., combining remote and physical means) over a long period of time, and it is even possible that some of these “attitudes” we learn during this period will stay with us. This can be a good time to see if you need to take your physical store to the virtual world, if the congress / presentation / event you wanted to organize can be done through a webinar, showing the relevant information on a web page, etc. If any of these cases is familiar to you and you want Galde to support you on that path, have a look at the options offered here.
  3. Galde Apps. Like the previous point, you see that although the Play Store (Google) or App Store (Apple) marketplaces are full of apps, you would like to have an application that allows you to manage some recurring problems that you have in your daily activity, regardless of what you do. Here is an example of a project that Galde is working on.

Therefore, if you (or your business / institution / entity) feel identified that any of these three lines may be of interest, do not hesitate to write a message to Galde by filling out this form – any question you have will be answered as soon as possible.

That was our aim with the Gincanavirus: create a tool or game so that people could be distracted for a while during this surreal COVID-19 period we are living right now.

What am I talking about?

I’m referring to the Gincanavirus. The Gincanavirus was created as a product of a dumb idea that some entrepreneurs of various fields had, and our main goal was to create something that could entertain and educate people, using a specific lore that pointed out several problems which are the main culprits of the issues we are living right now during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a matter of fact, the project developed very quickly (even too hastily). 6 of us were involved in this project (Ibon Reinoso, Sofía Moreno, Albert Juera, Unai García, Eneko Suárez and myself), and we went from zero to having a minimum viable product in 10 days, which consisted on a digital gymkhana.

And what’s this about?

The Gincanavirus’ main objective is to pass various tests, where the relevant information is given via two sources: an Instagram account (with the @gincanavirus alias), and a specifically tailored webpage. [NOTE: Unfortunately, all the content is in Spanish, so you should understand Spanish to be able to play this game]. Even if following the gymkhana day by day could be more intriguing, the organizing team designed the tests so they could be played anytime (during the pandemic, or out of it). The only aspect you should consider is the date of the Instagram posts’ release – you might play the gymkhana in a different order, but you might miss some of the game experience.

GV19 Interfaces
Gincanavirus’ interfaces (gv19.org on the left side, @gincanavirus in Instagram on the right side).

Moreover, whoever that plays this gymkhana from now on will play an improved version of it. This will happen because in our team there was nobody that had created a similar thing before, which meant that we learnt a lot during the first days after the gymkhana’s release. In fact, there were a lot of people interested at the very beginning, since it was a different initiative, but the first tests were too hard for many players and the game’s mechanics were not very clear. Because of that, we had to modify some tests to make them reachable to the players.

As a part of those upgrades, you will be able to see a roadmap of the game soon in the Instagram account, in case you want to do a marathon and play the whole Gincanavirus at a time.

What have I earned from this?

First, I had the chance to meet amazing people with whom I could work in an ambiguous challenge with a very limited timeframe. I feel that this project would have been an absolute disaster if I didn’t have the opportunity to work with this multidisciplinary team.

Second, I learned to understand a situation from different perspectives, empathizing with the player. When we were discussing the tests to include in the Gincanavirus, some of them looked very easy for us, but ended up being really challenging for the players. Conversely, we thought on some more difficult tests, and the players impressed us, reaching to totally unexpected conclusions – in fact, one of the latest posts published by @gincanavirus is precisely a compilation of the Top 10 Unexpected Conclusions.

Lastly, some fun. Because of the organizing team, because of doing something that I never tried before, and because of the reactions of players with the tests. It was awesome to do this, and I would redo it again no matter what.

In a nutshell…

If you are still here and you can spare some of your precious time during this quarantine (or out of it, if you read me in the future), I encourage you to play the game and to extract your own conclusions about the Gincanavirus. If you are a person that enjoys brain teasers, you are detail-oriented, or you can find patterns when there are none of them, the Gincanavirus might suit you.

A year ago, I was in Santa Clara, California, USA, with 5 other colleagues from the University of Deusto (doing a little research on my Instagram / Facebook you can know who they are), in our international stay in Santa Clara University.

[In this post I will publish the complete content I sent to publish in the Innovandis blog, since they had to remove some images to give other people space in the blog post.]

The experience in Santa Clara felt like a breath of fresh air for me. It was not a purely academic experience (although the classes and instructors were excellent), but it was an experiential experience in the broadest sense:

  • On the one hand, I knew different patterns of behavior and ways of understanding life, thanks to university students from different branches of knowledge, as well as immigrants who established themselves in Silicon Valley for being the benchmark of innovation worldwide.
In Googleplex, Mountain View, Google’s HQ. October 2018. Source: My own image.
  • On the other hand, I was able to do a lot of networking thanks to suggestions from friends and events organized in the San Francisco Bay, among others, in the TechCrunch Disrupt, San Francisco 2018 and in the Networking Event for Latinxs in the LinkedIn HQ.
In TechCrunch Disrupt, San Francisco 2018. September 2018. Source: My own image.
  • In addition, I had the experience of being able to live with amazing people, even when we had to face difficult times while we lived together.
In Santa Clara University, Santa Clara. December 2018. Source: My own image.
  • On top of that, I was able to contrast business ideas that I had for my Capstone Project, as well as to find small details that would improve the idea that our team had been developing in the iNNoVaNDiS programme.
In TechCrunch Disrupt, San Francisco 2018, listening to Ben Horowitz who talked about the criteria he applied when investing in new projects. September 2018. Source: My own image.
  • Finally, I was able to travel across the United States, and not only visit California, but also New York, Boston and Chicago.
On Top of the Rock, New York. December 2018. Source: My own image.

Therefore, there are some things that I took from this trip:

  • Friends and contacts.
  • Academic knowledge.
  • Valuable contrasts of ideas and perspectives.
  • And a good dose of fun.

In a nutshell, I developed a better understanding of my personal and professional preferences, and I also grew as a person.

In Mount Tallac, Lake Tahoe, California. October 2018. Source: My own image.

 

[This post was originally written in Spanish for the Innovandis blog, and was posted here. I wanted to retrieve the post and share it in my own blog :-)].

Introduction

One of the moments when you realize that your university stage is coming to an end is when you have to develop your “capstone project”. A Capstone Project is not an easy task (at least, mine was not), because of several reasons:

  • The workload should be equivalent to one or several subjects (depending on the curriculum of your faculty / university) of your degree.
  • The project should try to bring together as many concepts as possible of your degree in a coherent way, or at least, of the specific field you are working on.
  • The work is self-paced. Even if you are guided by a tutor, you have to work hard on your own – or in a group – to produce a decent project.

Through this post I would like to share the troubles that I had to face during the execution of the project, which finally led me to obtain the Sebastián Iruretagoyena Award for “Best Capstone Project in Business Administration and Management ” of the 2018-2019 Course, created in honor of the late professor Sebastián Iruretagoyena.

This award, granted by a group of friends of the former professor of ESTE, Sebastián Iruretagoyena and his family, aims to highlight the figure of Professor Sebastián Iruretagoyena, who taught for many years at ESTE and was the first director of the Executive MBA. The award values ​​the academic excellence of the project, the proximity and value contributed to the business reality, and its economic, social and environmental impact.

Left to right: David Iruretagoyena (Sebastián’s son), Marina Mendicute and Ainara García (José Luis Escobar is missing), winners of the Sebastián Iruretagoyena Award for the «Best Economic & Financial Analysis», and me, winner of «Best Capstone Project in Business Administration and Management», together with Luis Bastida (who represented Sebastián’s course’s friends)

a. [OPTIONAL] Have an initial idea.

In my case, I had a clear idea that I wanted to use this Capstone Project to test an idea that had been around my mind for a bit longer than a year. This idea was aimed to create a company based on computer vision software. It was really helpful for me to share this idea before with my family, friends, mentors of the Degree of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (iNNoVaNDiS) of the University of Deusto and with my bosses in the company where I did my internship.

[Obviously, this only applies to those people who want to do a Business Creation Capstone Project based on their own idea].

b. Contact your tutor ASAP.

You will be doing the work with more or less people (I had the chance of doing it individually, which does not mean doing it in isolation, because I solidly based my previous idea when submitting the application for the project).

But excluding you and / or the members of your team, the person you should contact is your tutor. This person will be with and for you throughout the development of the Capstone Project. However, it will depend only on you to take advantage of its full potential, which in most cases is far superior to what you might imagine, based on what you could have seen during the degree’s subjects. As I said before, this is autonomous work, so taking advantage of the resources at your disposal is part of what is expected from students.

c. Watch out your planning.

Two things that helped me to pivot and give the correct results in the expected time working individually were:

  1. Start working a little earlier. If you have the opportunity to speak with the company / institution that have given you the project well in advance – and it doesn’t break any other personal plans you might have -, do so. I could use a couple of weeks before starting the semester to start shaping the business model and reflect.
  2. Be pessimistic in planning. Let’s face it, very few people meet every single milestone on time. Lots of unpredictable contingencies will appear which will certainly delay you. Try to set your deadlines a few weeks before the actual deadline.

d. Enjoy the challenge.

I understand that there may be certain projects that are assigned more or less arbitrarily, but if you have the option of working on something that you have defined yourself, motivates you, and has the potential to generate a real impact, take advantage of that opportunity.

e. Accept deviations (because there will be).

If you asked me what my Capstone Project was about, my answer before starting it and after finishing it would differ radically. My response before starting the Capstone Project was a somewhat ambiguous, even naive, approach to the real problem – something that as a business was absolutely unfeasible.

However, based on the questions proposed by my tutor (Ricardo Vea), by my friends, by my coworkers, etc. I knew that I was not on the right track: I was “inventing a problem to solve it”, and not “inventing a solution to solve an existing problem.”

From there, I had to pivot quite seriously, repeatedly, in order to develop a valid solution, and hence be able to build the final business model. Therefore, I ended up using almost completely the additional time I projected in my planning.

f. Use your available options.

I want to highlight this again. I interviewed various people, organizations; I sent surveys repeatedly to companies in the sector to obtain reliable information, etc. If the project motivates you, you will try to do whatever it takes to do it well, and do not forget to use the options presented to you (obviously, always considering both respect and confidentiality).

g. Prepare a good pitch.

Once you have done the hardest part of the work, do not forget to present it in a clean, pleasant way, clarifying and agreeing on the criteria and contents on which to emphasize with the tutor and coordinator of your Capstone Project, In this way, you will certainly get a quite high grade.

And, that’s it. It’s your time now!

Our selfie!

Scandals and situation

Uber, in addition to relating with ease, has been associated assiduously with scandals. There have been many episodes of them:

Etc. This leads to think that these ride-hailing businesses, with their disruptive business models, generate problems.

However, it should be noted that Uber, like other ride-hailing businesses, is renewing the mobility market to make it more accessible to the common user.

According to data on its official website, Uber employs 16,000 employees, and has a fleet of 3 million drivers around the world. Thus, Uber’s “fixed workforce” represents 0.53% of the entire bunch of people that form Uber.

We should remind that, although Uber is the most well-known example of private transport business, it is not alone in the market. There are also others such as Didi in China, Cabify, Lyft or Gett (which acquired the Juno company for $200 million), which makes the volume of drivers dedicated to this type of business larger.

And, therefore, it is not surprising that taxi drivers have angered. The reason is simple: competitors, which offer a service that is preferred by customers, are the first choice for people looking for a mobility solution. All without having to pay for a taxi driver’s license.

Despite the evolution of the companies in the sector, potential drivers look with greater suspicion to dedicate themselves to this activity. Why?

According to a thread from Quora, around 2014, Uber drivers received a greater amount of money for each journey made. However, as time passed and due to the pressure of competition, more expenses and commissions have been added, which has meant that, for many people, it is no longer profitable to consider being an Uber driver as a profession. And a similar analysis could be done with other competitors such as Lyft.

Possible future – “The trip as a service”

Even though the private transport sector has been revolutionary, one could think of ways to disrupt it. Considering the incipient trend of the generalisation of electric and autonomous cars, a serious competitor of these applications can be imagined: the vehicle manufacturers themselves.

Several companies are developing auto-pilot functions (such as Tesla or Waymo), and are teaming up with established manufacturers (e.g., Waymo and Fiat – Chrysler) to be able to offer this autonomous driving experience. In this case, what can be easily thought will be to offer “the trip as a service”.

It would not be unreasonable to think that a person has a car and that this car is circulating autonomously, generating passive income for its owner. It would not be unreasonable to imagine too that car manufacturers generate a new business branch, or even brand-new companies to offer services like Uber, Didi, Cabify, Lyft or Gett almost immediately. This would be possible given that these new companies already have cars and technology ready to use – only requiring passengers.

This situation would question the business model of current private transport applications. Since, like in Uber’s case, a large part of the vehicles is owned by drivers, not by Uber itself. This would lead to 2 serious conflicts for Uber:

  1. It would force Uber to make a large investment in fixed assets, to continue supplying the market it already covers.
  2. A lot of current Uber drivers would need to be fired, which would lead to conflicts with them.

Although, making a quick reflection, one might think that they are trying to mitigate the second conflict, offering lower incentives for Uber drivers, and thus making the driver position an unattractive job option, contrary to what it was in the past.

Finally, one last aspect of conflict related to the second conflict could be that of driver associationism. No association or union of drivers has yet been created, but given this trend, it could be probably labelled as a nonsensical action.

This is so due to the rapid progress of this technology, and by the time some drivers are associated, their role will probably not be as relevant in the sector.

In a nutshell

We are entering a phase in which it can be seen how a sector that feeds a lot of people has a high probability of being transformed in a few years, leaving many people involved unemployed. And this is not but another sign of the inherent volatility of our economy.

Volatility that seems to increase as time passes, and that possibly generates recurrent shocks in the labour market, unless new alternative economic models are designed that can understand (and prevent) this type of shocks.

Ride sharing companies market
Source: GBKSoft

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