IEPML: Immersion Event on Practical Machine Learning, AI & Data Science on SQL Server 2017, Microsoft ML Server, R, and Azure ML

Chicago, IL, US: May 6-10, 2019

(Also available as Part 1: May 6-7 and Part 2: May 8-10 – see below for details)


Overview

This live classroom course debuted in 2018 and focuses on the newest technologies of Microsoft Machine Learning Server and SQL Server 2017. By popular demand, Part 2 of this course teaches programming in R, however most of the course is also applicable to Python programmers, as the key libraries are the same.

This course has two parts. You start with the 2-day Part 1: Introduction to Machine Learning, AI & Data Science with Azure ML and SQL Server followed by the 3-day Part 2: Intermediate Machine Learning in R on SQL Server and Microsoft ML Server. The first part introduces the most important concepts and tools, while the second part teaches you R and how to use it for machine learning on the Microsoft platform.

Target Audience

  • Part 1: Analysts, budding data scientists, database and BI developers, programmers, power users, DBAs, predictive modelers, forecasters, consultants.
  • Part 2: Data scientists and attendees of Part 1

If you’ve attended a prior course on Machine Learning, like Rafal’s week-long class Practical Data Science that was offered in 2015–2017, and if you’re versed in model validity, accuracy, and reliability, consider attending Part 2 only. Ask yourself these questions: can I explain the difference between cross-validation and hold-out testing, do I know which business metrics correspond to precision and which to recall, is model accuracy more important than reliability, and how does a boosted decision tree work. If in doubt, please attend both Parts 1 and 2.

Why Attend This Class?

Because of Rafal’s 10+ years of real-world machine learning experience.

You’ll learn all the concepts and tools that you need to know from a great teacher who has trained almost 500 data scientists world-wide, a highly-respected presenter, capable of holding your attention, but, above all, from a practitioner of machine learning. Rafal has been delivering ML, data mining, and data science projects for customers in retail, banking, entertainment, healthcare, manufacturing, education, and government sectors for over ten years. Because of that, you’ll learn:

  • How to avoid common pitfalls
  • How to get ahead of your competition by working faster
  • What is really useful and practical
  • What is more theoretical but still important
  • What hype you should be wary of

During class you’ll be able to ask any questions related to your industry and you’ll get relevant, pragmatic, no-nonsense answers, helping you get ahead with your own projects.

Learn from Rafal who has done it all, not from those who just teach it—this is why it is called Practical Machine Learning.

Format

50% lectures, 30% demos, 20% tutorials.

You are encouraged to follow the demos on your machine, and you will be challenged to find answers to 3 larger problems during the tutorials. While they’re a hands-on part of the course, if you prefer not to practice, you’re welcome to use that time for additional Q&A, or to analyse your own data. We’ll provide you with all the necessary data sets, and we’ll explain what free or evaluation edition software needs to be installed to follow the course on your own laptop. You’ll need an Azure account (even a free one) during the course. You can copy course experiments and data into your workspace for learning and for future reference after the course.

For a detailed agenda click HERE.

If you need help justifying training to your organization, we can help you:

Event details:

  • Class will run from 8:30am-5:45pm Monday through Thursday and 8:30am-5:00pm on Friday.
  • Detailed agenda:
    • 7:45am Breakfast
    • 8:30am Class begins
      • 9:45am 15-minute break
      • 11:15am 15 minute break
    • 12:30pm Lunch break (lunch is provided as part of the class)
    • 1:30pm Class resumes
      • 2:45pm 15-minute break with dessert
      • 4:15pm 15-minute break
    • 5:45pm Class ends (5:00pm on Friday)
  • For those of you planning air travel and departure times after the class completion on Friday: we do end at 5:00pm on Friday and we use every minute of that schedule, and often we run a few minutes over. For most deliveries we end between 5:00pm and 5:15pm. This depends on questions and we often push out the 5:45pm endings earlier in the week if things are running behind but I can honestly say that we’ve never ended early. Our general recommendation is for you to purchase tickets with departures no earlier than 8:00pm. However, each city/location may be a little different. Consider contacting the hotel (or the hotel’s website) for more specific insight into travel times and specific travel options to the airport.
  • You will receive printed materials for all of the lecture content. Additionally, after the event ends, we will provide all possible classroom demo content and electronic whiteboard slides on our website as a zip file.
  • Also included in your registration fee are all-day coffee/tea/soda, full breakfast, snacks and buffet lunch. On the registration page, please let us know if you are vegetarian (other dietary requirements are your own responsibility).
  • Class size is limited to 16 students.

Location details:

  • The Immersion Event will be held in the Hilton Suites Chicago/Oak Brook. We’ve held more than fifty Immersion Events here since 2011.
  • This hotel is 20 minutes from O’Hare airport and is near a large mall with many amenities.
  • The hotel has a special rate for our event, for a two-room suite, of US$134/night.
    • Please use the reservation link HERE to access the special rate.
  • RESERVE YOUR HOTEL NIGHTS EARLY: SQLskills has a LIMITED number of rooms reserved under our group rate and these usually sell out. Even if you’re waiting to officially register for the class – you might want to get your hotel room setup early (ASAP) to ensure that you get the discounted/group rate and that you’re at the hotel where the event is being held. Most importantly, the earlier you get your hotel reservations confirmed, the easier it is for us to add rooms to our block. Thanks so much for helping us out with this!
  • The hotel rate includes:
    • Onsite parking.
    • Wireless internet access for the entire stay.
    • Full breakfast on departure morning.
  • Full American breakfast during the Immersion Event will be served as part of class from 7:45am until 8:30am.
  • Class begins at 8:30am every day.

Pricing Details for 5-Day Parts 1 and 2:

  • Full price for attending Part 1 and Part 2 is US$3,995.
  • Early-bird rate is US$3,495 for registrations received by end-of-day PST Friday, March 1st, 2019.
  • Past attendee price: If you’ve attended an Immersion Event in the past, you can register any time for US$3,195. Please contact us for instructions.
  • Any discount code entered (for instance, for past attendees) will be reflected in the price during registration.
  • For general discount information please see the F.A.Q.

Pricing Details for 2-Day Part 1 Only:

  • Full price for attending just Part 1 is US$1,695.
  • Early-bird rate is US$1,495 for registrations received by end-of-day PST Friday, March 1st, 2019.
  • Past attendee price: If you’ve attended an Immersion Event in the past, you can register any time for US$1,345. Please contact us for instructions.
  • Any discount code entered (for instance, for past attendees) will be reflected in the price during registration.
  • For general discount information please see the F.A.Q.

Pricing Details for 3-Day Part 2 Only:

  • Full price for attending just Part 2 is US$2,495.
  • Early-bird rate is US$2,195 for registrations received by end-of-day PST Friday, March 1st, 2019.
  • Past attendee price: If you’ve attended an Immersion Event in the past, you can register any time for US$1,995. Please contact us for instructions.
  • Any discount code entered (for instance, for past attendees) will be reflected in the price during registration.
  • For general discount information please see the F.A.Q.

Cancellation/Transfer policy:

  • Your class registration can only be canceled up to 6 calendar weeks before the day the class begins, and the cost will be refunded minus a US$250 administration fee (and 5% credit-card processing charges, where applicable).
  • Registrations can be transferred to a colleague to attend the class the registration is for, at any time and at no cost.
  • Registrations can be transferred to a future class at any time before the day the class starts, but for transfers within two weeks of class, there is a US$150-per-class-day fee to cover our prepaid event costs. Note: A registration cannot be canceled once it has been transferred to a future class.
  • A no-show registration (the attendee does not attend the class) is not eligible for a transfer or refund.

Registration details:

Click HERE to go to our events registration page, and please make sure to select the correct class (2-day Part 1, 3-day Part 2, or the full 5-day class) from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact us.