IBM Watson Cloud Academy Workshop

On April 19, the USC Office of Economic Engagement will host an all-day IBM Watson Cloud Academy Workshop (taught by Prof. Anand Singh). The workshop will provide hands-on training on many of the IBM Watson, analytics and IoT cloud services that can be used in support of a wide-range of AI/cognitive-based research projects and curricula. It will also provide use cases of many typical biomedical, engineering and other problems that can be solved using these technologies. The workshop will end with a project planning clinic, whereby faculty can discuss proposed projects.

All faculty, students and staff are welcome to attend. The goal is to train a critical number of Watson experts on campus, whose projects and curricula IBM will then continue to support through additional targeted education, required cloud services/resources and various university relations programs. To prepare for the on-campus hands-on Watson workshop, it is recommended that you take the following steps, obtaining free IBM Cloud trial accounts (that provide our Watson services), and then review the educational modules/material outlined below:

1. Obtain a free IBM Cloud trial account (that will provide you with free access to a subset of Watson services) at http://www.onthehub.com/ibm/. Click on Watson and then select Cloud Access and then follow the directions to get your free account. Make sure you properly choose either Faculty/Staff or Students at the top left. (Faculty get a free 12-month trial subscription, while students get 6 months. Both are continuously renewable so long as one remains a professor or student.) If you are having problems, contact Andy Rindos et al. immediately for help (contact info below).

2. Go to the free Educator Guides page at https://developer.ibm.com/academic/educator-guides/ . Review the material for the “Updated Watson Education Guide” and complete the Lab and Exercises. You might also want to look at the “New Chatbots for Good facilitator guide”. Of course, feel free to peruse the Educator Guides for analytics, IoT, blockchain, etc.

3. Go to the Watson Academic Engagement page at http://academia.mybluemix.net/ and go through the “Application Starter Kit”, “API Documentation” and “Watson on Github” and other material there.

4. Go to the IBM Watson Academy page at https://ibm.com/training/watsonacademy/ and go through the material under “IBM Watson and Cloud Platform”, especially material on NLP, Dialog, Assistant, Discovery and Watson Knowledge Studios. Feel free to also peruse “Watson Health” and “Other Watson Resources”. (You should be able to immediately access a subset of these educational modules using your university IDs.)

For more information, contact:

Andy Rindos (rindos@us.ibm.com), Anand Singh (anand.singh@ibm.com), Andy Bernardin (andy.bernardin@sc.edu) or Neset Hikmet (nhikmet@csc.sc.edu)

We will be providing regular updates and additional preparatory material.
Tentative agenda is below. 

We are looking forward to seeing you all at the workshop!

Space is limited, so if you plan to attend please register via this url:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ibm-watson-cloud-academy-workshop-tickets-59608733326