He took NYC Data Science Academy 12 week full time Data Science Bootcamp program between Sept 23 to Dec 18, 2015. The post was based on his fourth class project(due at 8th week of the program). Kaggle is the most famous organization dedicated to Data Science competitions, but there are others. One of these is Driven Data. Beyond the difference in visibility, a point of divergence between Kaggle and Driven Data is that the latter's competitions often have a social focus as opposed to the former's usual business leanings.

The study "Future of IT: Hype vs. Reality" revealed that while these emerging technologies have potential in the workplace, IT professionals are grappling with budget and security concerns as they evaluate the impact these technologies can offer today versus in the future. The results show that among emerging technologies covered in the survey, IT professionals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa expect IoT devices and AI technology to have the biggest impact in the workplace, and VR to have the least impact. In fact, 79 percent of IT professionals in the region said IoT devices will be useful to their business practices in three to five years and 55 percent said the same for AI. Although most IT professionals don't expect mass adoption to take off in the workplace for VR and 3D printers, some industries have significantly higher adoption rates than the industry average. "Despite recent innovations in VR and 3D printing, the majority of IT professionals across EMEA are struggling to find viable use cases for the technology in their organisations," said John Webb, general manager of Europe at Spiceworks. "As a result, many can't justify the investment as opposed to AI and IoT that offer tangible benefits for the workplace today.

Des Nnochiri has a Master's Degree (MEng) in Civil Engineering with Architecture, and spent several years at the Architectural Association, in London. He views technology with a designer's eye, and is very keen on software and solutions which put a new wrinkle on established ideas and practices. He now writes for markITwrite across the full spectrum of corporate tech and design. In previous lives, he has served as a Web designer, and an IT consultant to The Learning Paper, a UK-based charity extending educational resources to underprivileged youngsters in West Africa. His short thriller, "Trick" was filmed in 2011 by Shooting Incident Productions, who do location work on "Emmerdale".

A study conducted by Ericsson ConsumerLab in October 2016 and published last week, revealed increased demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality among consumers globally. According to the report, consumers expect artificial intelligence to move from assistants to managers, and that virtual reality will be indistinguishable from physical reality in only three years. The Ericsson ConsumerLab report, is the sixth edition of its annual trend report, focused on '10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2017 and beyond.' Analysing the report at a press briefing in Lagos at the weekend, the Country Manager, Ericsson Nigeria, Mr. Johan Jemdahl, said that the insights in the 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2017 report were based on Ericsson ConsumerLab's global research activities of over 20 years, as well as data points from an online survey of advanced internet users in 14 major cities across the world, performed in October 2016. Although the study only represents 27 million citizens, their early adopter profile makes them important to understand when exploring future trends.

IMAGE: This is a map of known and predicted bat hosts of filoviruses, showing hotspots in Southeast Asia. Findings highlight new potential hosts and geographic hotspots worthy of surveillance. So reports a new paper in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Filoviruses have devastating effects on people and primates, as evidenced by the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For nearly 40 years, preventing spillover events has been hampered by an inability to pinpoint which wildlife species harbor and spread the viruses.

Do you know what is common between San Bernardino's shooting spree and the terrorist attacks in Paris last month? Jillennials, Jihadis who are Millennials. We mine data worldwide, a lot of it, a ton of it, every day and every night, and we do this for a living at PredictifyMe. We have partnership with the United Nations to protect school-goers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan and Lebanon using our proprietary software SecureSim and Soothsayer . When the Paris attacks unfolded, we asked ourselves (and our database), how can we use data sciences to prevent something like this from ever happening again. Can we find out what factors influence an otherwise ordinary citizen to become radicalized?

In the sci-fi film Ex Machina, reclusive inventor Nathan Bateman foresees a bleak future, telling the movie's protagonist Caleb that, "One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa." When we don't understand something, we tend to fear it; which is one reason popular movies like Ex Machina and HBO's nail-biting new series Westworld like to imagine futures in which artificial intelligence plots to destroy humanity. Fortunately, AI is far more likely to recommend those titles to your Netflix queue than to result in a dystopian society out of a George Orwell novel. While technologies including Amazon's Alexa have been busy making people's lives outside of the workplace easier, bots were the big office story in 2016, helping companies handle routine tasks such as managing support tickets and streamlining workflows. In the coming years, machine learning will take on more of the non-routine work as well, ushering in the new era of artificial intelligence--one that looks to be far brighter than the future Hollywood typically envisions.

In fact, 80 percent of businesses reported already incorporating or planning on adding chatbots by the year 2020. That's according to a study pulled together by Oracle, surveying more than 800 decision makers at companies in France, the Netherlands, South Africa and the U.K. Most were in the C-suite -- chief strategy officers and marketing officers; others were senior sales and marketing executives. They were asked about emerging technologies and whether they've already employed them or are interested in moving in a certain direction. In general, the survey found that these leaders are turning to focus on automation-related technologies, specifically implementing chatbots to enhance or fix issues around sales, marketing and customer service. Speaking of customer service, more than 40 percent of those executives said they think automation will improve that experience over the short and long haul.

Last week, I wrote about the development of co-working innovation spaces in South Africa as a strategy to encourage entrepreneurship. Innovation is seen as a key driver of job creation at a time when most African countries are facing a youth unemployment crisis. Research in computing, however, is tilting towards artificial intelligence (AI) that may be counterproductive to employment creation. Computing is slowly moving away from using elaborate instructions (codes) to execute functions to leveraging data and learning through algorithms that improve with experience to perform more complex activities that mimic human intelligence. There is growing fear that AI will in future eliminate most of the jobs that exist today. Google's Africa Internet Academy, which invited us to South Africa, is in the midst of emerging innovations.

The Abraaj Group has deployed RAVN Connect Enterprise to bring about long-term transformation of its approaches to knowledge management and firm-wide collaboration across 20 offices. The new solution enables Abraaj's employees to easily search and access both proprietary and commissioned knowledge sources via a single interface working in a seamless manner on its proprietary'Opera' platform. Additionally, the Knowledge Graph feature allows Abraaj to visualise and navigate the interrelationships between experts, content, investments, and investors in a way that was previously impossible, making rapid access to the relevant resource in a secure manner a reality. Ovais Naqvi, Managing Director - Head of Market Engagement at Abraaj, said: "Our primary goal here is to leverage knowledge to accelerate business and deal decision-making and to harness the collaborative power of a multi-geography growth markets organisation." "RAVN Connect is an important component in a differentiation we bring to our investors around how we share knowledge and get to more dynamic decisions on deal flow. Additionally, it helps us harness macro-economic, sectoral and functional knowledge flows seamlessly and is ultimately a major competitive advantage for us," he said.