数据科学和机器学习_我们如何在Microsoft建立机器学习和数据科学社区

数据科学和机器学习

In 2012, few people at Microsoft outside of research were working on or talking about machine learning and artificial intelligence, and “data scientist” was not an official job title. Fast-forward eight years, and we have hundreds of data scientists and thousands of engineers building ML and AI into products and services. To help support these employees, we have a thriving 7,000-person internal machine learning community where our employees learn, share, and connect with one another. Here’s how we got there.

在2012年，除了研究之外，微软公司中很少有人在研究或谈论机器学习和人工智能，而“数据科学家”并不是正式职位。 快进了八年，我们有数百名数据科学家和数千名工程师将ML和AI构建到产品和服务中。 为了帮助支持这些员工，我们拥有一个蓬勃发展的7,000人内部机器学习社区，我们的员工可以在其中学习，共享和相互联系。 这就是我们到达那里的方式。

什么是社区？ (What are communities?)

Some might approach the notion of community as a platform or a piece of technology. But I disagree. While a well functioning platform is important, a community is, at its heart, people. My favorite definition of community comes from an organization called The Community Roundtable, which says, “[a] community is a group of people with shared values, behaviors, and artifacts.” These shared values, behaviors, and artifacts help us recognize one another as people with similar passions and goals, and they make it easier for us to communicate and collaborate.

有些人可能将社区的概念视为平台或一项技术。 但我不同意。 虽然运作良好的平台是很重要的，一个社区，在它的心脏， 人 。 我最喜欢的社区定义来自一个名为“社区圆桌会议 ”的组织，该组织表示：“ [一个社区是一群拥有共同价值观，行为和人工制品的人。” 这些共享的价值观，行为和人工产物有助于我们彼此识别为具有相似激情和目标的人，并且它们使我们更易于沟通和协作。

At a large company like Microsoft, communities provide a networked way for employees to connect across organizational boundaries in ways that can “break” the hierarchy — for example, in our community, it is not uncommon for a principal-level engineer in one group to ask a question that is answered by a data scientist fresh out of graduate school who works in a different group but is closer to the cutting edge on a particular topic.

在像Microsoft这样的大公司中，社区为员工提供了一种网络化的方式，使他们可以“打破”层次结构的方式跨组织边界进行连接-例如，在我们的社区中，一组中的首席级工程师经常会遇到这种情况。提出一个问题，这个问题是由刚从研究生院毕业的数据科学家回答的，他是在不同的小组工作，但在特定主题上更接近前沿。

入门 (Getting started)

Internal communities at large companies like Microsoft often start at the grassroots level when employees doing day-to-day work recognize the value of new innovations. That’s how our ML community was started — one day in 2012, one of our researchers began an email distribution list called Machine-Learning. For about 18 months, employees discovered it by chance or recommendation, and the group grew to about 800 members. At first, members were mostly researchers, but engineers and people in other roles also started to join. During this time, the community focused on discussion and Q&A.

当从事日常工作的员工意识到新创新的价值时，像Microsoft这样的大公司的内部社区通常是从基层开始的。 这就是我们ML社区的开始方式-在2012年的一天，我们的一位研究人员开始了一个名为Machine-Learning的电子邮件分发列表。 在大约18个月的时间里，员工偶然发现或推荐了它，并且该小组发展到大约800名成员。 最初，成员主要是研究人员，但工程师和其他角色的人也开始加入。 在此期间，社区专注于讨论和问答。

The idea of tending a garden is a good analogy for community, because gardens can develop if you just throw seeds into fertile ground, but they can become unruly or suffer if not given the care and tending they need. Communities are the same — at a certain point, you want to nurture your promising communities. People often ask me how to build community, and I always tell them that I think it’s extremely difficult to build a community, since that implies you are creating something out of nothing. Instead, I think that an organization should look at which communities are naturally forming among their employees, and intentionally decide which of these communities it wants to support.

照料花园的想法是对社区的一个很好的类比，因为如果您只是将种子撒在肥沃的土地上，花园就可以发展，但是如果不给予照料和照料，它们会变得不守规矩或遭受痛苦。 社区是相同的-在某个时候，您想培养有前途的社区。 人们经常问我如何建立社区，我总是告诉他们，我认为建立社区非常困难，因为这意味着您要一无所有。 相反，我认为组织应该研究员工中自然形成的社区，并有意地决定要支持的社区。

For us, that shift from an organic community to a managed community started to happen in late 2013, when a new corporate vice president was hired to lead work on an ML-related product. As part of his mission, he saw that Microsoft employees needed to develop skills in ML, and in March 2014 he sponsored a cross-company machine learning conference. More than 1,000 seats filled in the first few hours after registration opened, and after the event, this CVP signed on as the executive sponsor of the new Machine Learning Community.

对于我们来说，从有机社区到托管社区的转变始于2013年底，当时雇用了新的公司副总裁来领导ML相关产品的工作。 作为任务的一部分，他看到Microsoft员工需要发展ML的技能，并且在2014年3月，他赞助了一次跨公司的机器学习会议。 注册开始后的几个小时内，就有1000多个席位，活动结束后，这位CVP签约成为新机器学习社区的执行赞助商。

At the time I was managing a program of technical communities, and the Machine Learning Community was a natural fit with this program. After the initial conference in early 2014, I focused on two efforts concurrently:

当时我正在管理一个技术社区计划，而机器学习社区很自然地适合该计划。 在2014年初举行首次会议后，我同时关注了两个方面：

1. Following the mantra of “Plan, Do. Plan, Do. Plan, Do,” I organized a regular cadence of ML-focused events that we held in person and online (even at that early point, we had community members from around the world, and so online events were a must). We hosted talks, webinars, tutorials, and even an ML-themed “Jeopardy” game in which our executive sponsor played the part of Alex Trebek. These activities attracted new members and established a heartbeat for the community, in addition to the daily discussions on the distribution list.
   遵循“计划，做。 计划，做。 计划，做。”我定期组织了一系列针对ML的活动，这些活动是我们亲自和在线进行的(即使在那时，我们也有来自世界各地的社区成员，因此必须进行在线活动)。 我们举办了讲座，网络研讨会，教程，甚至以ML为主题的“ Jeopardy”游戏，我们的执行赞助商在其中扮演了Alex Trebek的角色。 这些活动除了分发列表上的日常讨论之外，还吸引了新成员并为社区建立了心跳。
2. I created a community strategy to present to our executive sponsor’s leadership team. This strategy set the direction of the community. While a lot has changed in the past six years, I recently went back to that original strategy document, and it’s striking how faithful it is to the community’s course since then. The strategy contained sections on:
   我制定了一项社区策略，以介绍给执行赞助商的领导团队。 该策略确定了社区的方向。 尽管在过去六年中发生了许多变化，但我最近又回到了原始的战略文件，从那时起，它对社区发展的忠诚程度令人震惊。 该策略包含以下内容：

• Audience: The key roles and groups at Microsoft we hoped to reach.

  受众：我们希望达到的Microsoft关键角色和团队。

• Goals: The reasons that Microsoft should invest in this community.

  目标：微软应在此社区进行投资的原因。

• Scenarios and objectives: “I can” statements that identified what members would get out of the community, such as “I can easily find and connect with other practitioners at Microsoft” and “I can help make Microsoft ML products serve customer scenarios better.”

  方案和目标： “我可以”的陈述确定了哪些成员将从社区中脱颖而出，例如“我可以轻松找到并与Microsoft的其他从业人员联系”和“我可以帮助使Microsoft ML产品更好地服务于客户方案。”

• Principles: A common understanding of governing principles for our community, such as “We create opportunities for people to contribute” and “We don’t try to control the conversation.”

  原则：对我们社区的统治原则的共识，例如“我们为人们创造机会做出贡献”和“我们不试图控制对话”。

• Metrics: How we would measure ourselves around growth, activities, and outcomes.

  指标：我们如何根据增长，活动和成果来衡量自己。

• Leadership team: The members of the Community Leadership Team that we recruited to guide the community in those early days.

  领导团队：我们在初期征募来指导社区的社区领导团队的成员。

The strategy was approved, and we were off and running.

该策略已获批准，我们可以正常运行了。

发展社区 (Growing the community)

Two key elements that made this community “stick” over time were in place from the start: (1) dedicated program management, and (2) dedicated budget. As the program manager — or, community manager, as I prefer to call the role — I provided organization for the community and owned the budget, which was used for the conference and for venue, food, and recording costs for events and activities.

从一开始，就有两个使社区“坚持不懈”的关键要素：(1)专用的程序管理和(2)专用的预算。 作为项目经理(或者我更喜欢称为社区经理)，我为社区提供了组织，并拥有预算，该预算用于会议，场地，食物以及活动和活动的成本记录。

After we held the second Machine Learning Conference in October 2014, it was clear that we had interest and energy to sustain the community over time. Over the next few years, we took a series of actions to foster community:

在2014年10月举行了第二届机器学习会议之后，很明显，我们有兴趣和精力长期维持社区。 在接下来的几年中，我们采取了一系列行动来促进社区发展：

• We’ve sped up our cadence of activities and made sure to include a variety of types of events — not just Q&A, discussions, talks, webinars, and tutorials, but also hands-on labs, “Ask Me Anything” sessions with executives, challenges, hackathons, and other activities to allow people to learn, share, and connect. At present we host 50–60 different activities per year, because a diverse set of activities allows community members to participate and connect in different ways.
  我们加快了活动的节奏，并确保包括各种类型的事件-不仅是问答，讨论，演讲，网络研讨会和教程，还包括动手实验，与高管进行的“问我”会议，挑战，黑客马拉松和其他活动，使人们能够学习，共享和联系。 目前，我们每年举办50至60项不同的活动，因为各种活动允许社区成员以不同的方式参与和联系。
• We’ve conducted ongoing outreach to make sure that potential members know about the community. For example, every month I send a Welcome Mail that goes to all new data scientists hired into Microsoft, inviting them to join the community.
  我们进行了持续的宣传，以确保潜在的会员了解社区。 例如，每个月我都会发送一封欢迎邮件，发给所有聘请Microsoft的新数据科学家，邀请他们加入社区。
• We’ve created opportunities for engaged community members to contribute more. For example, one of our early community presenters later became a reviewer for the conference and then a conference program committee member, introducing several innovations that made the conference a better event. One piece of advice I received along the way was to “recruit for enthusiasm,” and I’ve found that to be wise guidance — sometimes all that someone needs to make a key contribution is the opportunity to do so. And now, we have several programs within the community that are run not by me, but by community members.
  我们为参与社区的成员创造了更多贡献的机会。 例如，我们早期的社区发言人中的一位后来成为会议的审阅者，然后成为会议程序委员会的成员，介绍了使会议变得更好的一些创新技术。 在此过程中，我收到的一条建议是“招募热情”，我发现这是明智的指导-有时某人需要做出关键贡献的一切就是这样做的机会。 现在，我们社区中有几个程序不是由我而是由社区成员运行的。
• We’ve deepened alignment and collaboration with other community efforts. Microsoft does not have centralized governance of all communities, which means that in a space like ML, there are always going to be grassroots activities such as reading groups, study groups, hackathons, publications, specialized communities, and so on. Early on, I realized that it would not work for me to try to control all these efforts. Instead I reach out to these efforts as I become aware of them, looking for ways we can work together. In my mind, I have an image of interlocking gears, where our broad ML Community is constantly moving at its own cadence, while periodically integrating with other efforts.
  我们已经加深了与其他社区活动的协调和协作。 Microsoft并没有对所有社区进行集中管理，这意味着在ML这样的空间中，总会有基层活动，例如阅读小组，研究小组，黑客马拉松，出版物，专门社区等。 早期，我意识到尝试控制所有这些工作对我来说是行不通的。 相反，当我意识到这些努力时，我就会伸出援手，寻找我们可以一起工作的方式。 在我的脑海中，我有一个连锁的形象，在这里，我们广泛的ML社区不断以自己的节奏前进，同时定期与其他工作融为一体。

One important note here is that because I manage the ML Community as part of my full-time job, I can provide continuity across time, whereas many of the grassroots efforts may go inactive when the people who initiate them leave the company or move on to other interests.

这里的一个重要说明是，因为我将ML社区作为全职工作的一部分进行管理，所以我可以提供跨时间的连续性，而当发起这些活动的人离开公司或继续工作时，许多基层的努力可能会变得不活跃。其他爱好。

Finally, a key decision I made was to fold our independent ML Community into a much broader internal community program at Microsoft called the Worldwide Communities. This reduced my autonomy a little, but it gave me support because I could draw on the resources and expertise that the program offered. And in 2016, when a new (and closely related) AI Community was formed in the Worldwide Community program, I was able to work with the leads of that community to make sure that together we serve our members in a coordinated way.

最后，我做出的一个关键决定是将我们独立的ML社区纳入Microsoft范围更广的内部社区计划，称为“全球社区”。 这稍微减少了我的自主权，但是它给了我支持，因为我可以利用该程序提供的资源和专业知识。 在2016年，在全球社区计划中组建了一个新的(且密切相关的)AI社区时，我能够与该社区的领导者一起工作，以确保我们一起以协调的方式为我们的会员提供服务。

微软从社区中得到什么？ (What does Microsoft get out of the community?)

The Machine Learning Community and other Microsoft-internal communities enable employees to discuss customer challenges, share best practices, and enhance skills by tapping into the collective knowledge of our global teams. Community members resolve issues relevant to their work, discuss topics, and learn from peers.

机器学习社区和其他Microsoft内部社区使员工能够利用我们全球团队的集体知识来讨论客户挑战，分享最佳实践并增强技能。 社区成员解决与其工作有关的问题，讨论主题并向同龄人学习。

Why does Microsoft invest in supporting this community? I see several benefits:

Microsoft为什么要投资支持该社区？ 我看到一些好处：

1. Workforce enablement: This community helps our employees gain skills in critical strategic areas and become aware of emerging technologies. We draw on experts from around the company to talk and teach on important topics, and because we are an internal community, our members can hear about innovations far in advance of public discussion. For example, automated machine learning was discussed in our community more than a year before the company made any public statements about it. The community also helps us drive certain initiatives by providing a channel to reach employees. We started holding “Design for AI” sessions in our community long before efforts such as the guidelines for human-AI interaction were mature enough to be published publicly.

   支持员工队伍：该社区可帮助我们的员工在关键战略领域中掌握技能，并了解新兴技术。 我们聘请公司周围的专家就重要主题进行讨论和授课，并且由于我们是内部社区，因此我们的成员可以在公开讨论之前就了解创新。 例如，在公司发表任何公开声明之前，我们在社区中讨论了自动机器学习 。 社区还通过提供联系员工的渠道来帮助我们推动某些计划。 我们在社区开展“人工智能设计”会议很久以前，诸如人与人工智能交互的指导方针之类的工作就已经足够成熟，可以公开发表了。

2. Customer response: Our field uses the community to get quick answers from engineering during customer engagements. In fact, one of our key community metrics is median response time to questions, and we are constantly driving to push that number down.

   客户响应：在客户参与期间，我们的领域使用社区来快速获得工程方面的答案。 实际上，我们的关键社区指标之一是对问题的平均响应时间，并且我们一直在不断努力将这一数字降低。

3. Better inter-connection: Microsoft is a big company. The community is a place that accelerates discovery and connections — for example, because our twice-yearly ML conference relies on peer reviewing of proposals, it is common for someone interested in, say, NLP to review a proposal that describes work that the reviewer should have already been aware of, but wasn’t. In fast-paced domains such as ML and AI, where formal curricula cannot keep up with the pace of innovation, the community is a place our employees can go to find out what is on the leading edge. The conference is also a place where our executives share our strategy and direction around ML and AI, providing them a place where they can speak across business groups and geographies to a diverse set of employees. At our twice-yearly conference, we almost always have one or more vice presidents or technical fellows delivering keynotes.

   更好的互连： Microsoft是一家大公司。 社区是一个促进发现和联系的地方-例如，由于我们每年两次的ML会议依靠对提案进行同行评审，因此有兴趣的人(例如，NLP)评审描述了评审员应做的工作的提案是很常见的。已经知道了，但不是。 在诸如ML和AI之类的快节奏领域中，正式课程无法跟上创新的步伐，社区是我们的员工可以去发现领先优势的地方。 大会也是我们的高管分享有关ML和AI的战略和方向的地方，为他们提供了一个可以在各个业务部门和地区与多元化的员工交流的场所。 在我们每年两次的会议上，我们几乎总是有一位或多位副总裁或技术研究员发表主题演讲。

4. Retention: The community creates career-building opportunities that may help keep people at the company by helping them build their capabilities. For example, a few years ago, one of our community members working on an innovative grassroots project presented to an audience for the very first time at one of our events, and received very positive feedback. This helped build her confidence and helped bring more attention to her work, and eventually she started representing Microsoft at public, high-profile events.

   保留：社区创造了职业发展机会，可以通过帮助人们建立能力来帮助他们留在公司。 例如，几年前，我们的一个社区成员在一项创新性的基层项目中工作，在我们的一项活动中首次向观众展示了他们的想法，并获得了非常积极的反馈。 这帮助她建立了信心，并引起了她对工作的更多关注，最终她开始代表微软参加公开的，备受关注的活动。

成功秘诀 (Keys to success)

Based on my experience over these years, I believe there are a few keys to success that any community manager should consider:

根据我多年的经验，我相信任何社区经理都应考虑一些成功的关键：

• Clear goals: You must know where you are going in order to get there. These goals should include why the community will be valuable to members, and why it will be valuable to the organization that sponsors it.

  明确目标：您必须知道要去哪里才能到达那里。 这些目标应包括社区为什么对成员有价值，以及为什么社区对赞助者有价值。

• Executive sponsorship and participation: Our original executive sponsor occasionally dropped in to take part in technical discussions, which signaled to everyone that he valued the community as a place to spend some of his time.

  高管赞助和参与：我们最初的高管赞助者偶尔会参加技术讨论，这向每个人发出信号，表示他重视社区是消磨时间的地方。

• Dedicated budget: Our budget has always been modest, but enough to make our events happen, and to provide some funding to community members who want to run an event, activity, or project but may not have the budget on their team to support it.

  专用预算：我们的预算始终不算多，但足以使我们的活动得以进行，并为想要举办活动，活动或项目但可能没有团队预算的社区成员提供一些资金。

• Content programming: For a community of practice like ours, consistently providing the members with useful, interesting, and varied content is a core part of the work.

  内容编程：对于像我们这样的实践社区，始终如一地为成员提供有用，有趣和多样化的内容是工作的核心部分。

• Dedicated community manager: A community manager role can be full-time or part-time. It can be a shared role or filled by one person. But without a community manager, almost all community efforts will eventually run out of steam, because you need someone to continually think of and execute on program activities, recruit new members, vet ideas, and do all the behind-the-scenes work to keep the community going.

  专门的社区经理：社区经理的角色可以是全职或兼职。 它可以是共享角色，也可以由一个人担任。 但是，如果没有社区经理，几乎所有社区工作最终都将耗费精力，因为您需要有人不断思考和执行计划活动，招募新成员，审核想法并进行所有幕后工作以保持社区不断发展。

• Community leadership team: I’m not a data scientist or ML engineer, but because I have a community leadership team to help guide the community, I have a set of trusted advisors I can consult any time I have a question.

  社区领导团队：我不是数据科学家或ML工程师，但是因为我有一个社区领导团队可以帮助指导社区，所以我有一组值得信赖的顾问，在有任何问题时可以随时咨询。

• Community platform: Although a community is made up of people, you need somewhere for them to gather and connect, and all community managers should be experts in the platform that their community uses.

  社区平台：尽管社区是由人组成的，但是您需要一个供他们聚集和联系的地方，并且所有社区经理都应该是其社区使用的平台的专家。

• Measurement: We measure outcomes in a variety of ways, including growth, retention, participation, collaboration, satisfaction, and likelihood to recommend. I am happy to talk more about this in the Responses section below if you are interested.

  评估：我们以多种方式评估结果，包括成长，保留，参与，协作，满意度和推荐可能性。 如果您有兴趣，我很乐意在下面的“回复”部分中详细介绍此内容。

资源资源 (Resources)

Finally, here are four key resources I always recommend for people interested in community:

最后，以下是我始终向对社区感兴趣的人们推荐的四个关键资源：

• The Community Roundtable. This is a community of community managers, active for more than 10 years. This is my primary place to go to stay current on the community management industry.

  社区圆桌会议 。 这是一个社区管理员社区，活跃了10多年。 这是我保持社区管理行业最新状态的主要途径。

• CMX Hub. Another community management organization, a little more focused on the startup world.

  CMX集线器 。 另一个社区管理组织，更多地关注初创企业。

• Cultivating Communities of Practice. A classic text in the community management literature.

  培养实践社区 。 社区管理文献中的经典文字。

• Liberating Structures. A set of practices for bringing people together and collaborating toward specific goals.

  解放结构 。 一组使人们团结在一起并朝着特定目标进行协作的实践。

Questions? Comments? Feedback? Let me know in the responses!

有什么问题吗 注释？ 反馈？ 在回复中让我知道！

Alex Blanton is on LinkedIn.

Alex Blanton在 LinkedIn上 。

翻译自: https://medium.com/data-science-at-microsoft/how-we-built-a-machine-learning-and-data-science-community-at-microsoft-4421d7eadd6d

数据科学和机器学习