The future is survival of the most informed (and other thoughts from AWS re:Invent)

Phew. Still reeling from our 5 days at AWS re:Invent last week. The breadth and depth of the ML announcements were impressive and we won’t attempt to recap (though there’s a great one here.)

Instead, we wanted to call out two high-level takeaways that got us most excited about how the AWS team is helping accelerate innovation in applied AI:

• Focus on helping ALL companies reinvent their businesses with data – not just tech giants. AWS announced the launch of six new capabilities for SageMaker that make ML even more accessible to less technical teams and cost-effective for companies of all sizes. At Tribe, we’re big believers in creating pathways for all companies to be more AI-enabled. Most companies don’t have the resources or need for an in-house ML team, so we love seeing new and better ways of working that allow more companies to access the talent they need. It’s why we built Tribe on a belief in specialization and project based work.
  
  
• Commitment to investing in the next generation of ML experts. There’s a limited supply of top tier ML talent and it’s currently concentrated among relatively few tech companies. Eventually, talent is going to be the choke point for innovation, unless we find a way around it. AWS made it clear they’re investing in education and breaking down barriers to entry to build the next generation of ML talent. At Tribe, we’re also focused on the talent gap by creating a new way of working for the world’s most talented ML engineers and data scientists to work with companies that centers freedom, compensation, and community.  

In his keynote, AWS VP of AI Swami Sivasubramanian talked about data as the underlying force that fuels the insights and predictions that help companies make better decisions and spur new innovations. At Tribe, we very much agree that the future for business is going to be survival of the most informed. Despite this, far too many companies are being held back by the struggle to get value from their data – and finding the right team of specialists to help them do so. It made it abundantly clear to us that the work we are doing is more important than ever.

But re:Invent wasn’t all work. Tribe may be a group of engineers, but we definitely know how to party. We threw the most EPIC party at re:Invent (maybe in Vegas?) last Wednesday night. Key takeaway: invite us to your next event and we’ll bring it! (Drumroll: Photo dump time)
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