I can’t believe the summer is nearing an end. What an amazing experience I have had at H2O.ai. As I reflect back, I am so fortunate to have learned so much, formed meaningful relationships, developed people skills and applied my creativity. The whole team has been so encouraging, supportive, and inviting throughout my internship, making me feel like an integral part of the team.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are buzzwords these days, but I never realized its prevalence and impact until my exposure to it as a marketing intern. Seeing the application of artificial intelligence in various industries has been an eye opener. Having little exposure to artificial intelligence in college, I was given the opportunity to take an online AI introduction course to familiarize myself with the ins and outs of machine learning and AI workflows and get in tune with the related technical jargon. Taking the course really provided me with the fundamentals to perform expected tasks.
As the summer progressed, I’ve had various interesting and challenging projects. One project was dissecting client videos on different use cases of H2O products. I had to understand the customer’s business model and how they implemented our products to help them. I took this information and turned it into case studies and blogs that were published on our website. I was amazed at how industries like healthcare and finance are leveraging AI and automatic machine learning to optimize decision making. Ingrid Burton, the CMO, taught me that the purpose of this content is to spread the goodness of AI. This is another aspect of H2O.ai that I love. The team has a vision to make a difference in the community and I felt like I was part of this movement with the tasks I did.
I was also able to gain exposure to event marketing by exploring and critiquing venues in NYC with Ian Gomez. I visited multiple venues to find the most appropriate one for the next big H2O.ai event. I learned what to look for at these venues, how to approach people, and the right questions to ask. While traveling around NYC was great, part of the fun was working out of the NY office. I will not lie – the standing desks, ping pong table, fully stocked pantry, and the city view made for excellent breaks.
Aside from event marketing and blogs, I took on a project for Rafael Coss where I reviewed and provided feedback on some of the technical tutorials made by him. One important project I contributed to was developing content for our own AI Fundamentals course. Can’t wait till this course goes online!
Being a global company, H2O.ai hosts events all over the world. While I was given the opportunity to go to Toronto, Mountain View, and NYC, I was only able to make it to a customer event in NYC. I learned so much from this event alone. Listening in on Kerry O’Shea, Patrick Hall and Eric Gudgion and watch their AI demos and conversations, I was able to mesh together all the concepts and apply it at this event. I talked to people who came to our booth and explained to them who we were and what Driverless AI did. I also had the chance to walk around to other booths and meet with other companies in tech and AI. This was an incredible opportunity for me to interact with data scientists and business professionals, absorb a ton of knowledge, and put myself out there. I was also fortunate to meet H2O.ai’s CEO Sri Ambati!
With the company headquartered in California, one skill I developed is working remotely from New Jersey. While this brought some challenges with the time difference, I adapted to the circumstance and was productive despite the distance. I didn’t feel like I fell short of developing relationships with my team. More importantly, I felt inclusive by participating in the weekly marketing meeting and being a part of multiple slack channels.
This has been no ordinary summer internship. I have been fortunate to work with such a passionate, talented team of H2O.ai. Special thanks to Ingrid Burton for making this internship so enriching for me!
