November 17 Quarterly BayICT Meeting

The BayICT Partnership quarterly meeting on November 17th focused on the region’s Artificial Intelligence – Data Analytics (AIDA) Project. We sought industry/employer insight into what we’re learning about entry level jobs in data analytics and AI and how to prepare the people to fill them.

The AIDA Project will establish (1) Laney College as a flagship college and industry-supported AI Center of Excellence with stackable certificates and an AS degree for other colleges to model; and (2) DA model curriculum to help colleges implement and update existing DA programs. Industry partners include Intel, IBM, Alteryx, Google AI, AWS Machine Learning University, and aiEDU.

For over a year, BayICT has promoted the idea that “blue collar AI” provided an entry point to AI careers for community college students in data analytics programs. While the AIDA project builds the AI components, existing data analytics programs can be promoted and enhanced to meet the demand for blue collar AI jobs – data farmers, miners, and welders – now.

Meeting participants, who represented industry, employers, workforce development, educators, and community organizations, received an update on labor market information and a new report on the knowledge, skills, and abilities for entry level roles in data analytics and predictive modeling developed by IT Skill Standards 2020 and Beyond, NSF ATE project grant DUE 1838535. Due to time limitations, the discussion centered on the high-level categories of KPIs: business problem framing; analytics problem solving; data, methodology selection; model building; deployment and model lifecycle management. To determine where the AIDA project should focus DA program support, we asked participants to rank the categories. The result of the poll ranked them as follows: 1) business problem framing; 2) analytics problem solving; 3) data; 4) model building; 5) methodology selection; 6) deployment; and 7) model lifecycle management. During the discussion two additional categories were suggested: 1) knowledge of data and privacy and 2) ethics. Next steps will be to compare the IT Skills Standards with Bay Area community college DA course and program outcomes to identify opportunities to promote those programs to employers and students.

It is a BACCC/BayICT imperative to include a DEI component in every project or initiative we support. The BayICT Partnership has been instrumental in achieving this goal because of its members and the vital role you play in outreach and inclusion. We are exploring new partnerships that may help us achieve this goal for the AIDA Project and introduced TEAM (Tech Exposure and Access through Mentorship), a program that introduces underrepresented youth to data analytics using their passion for sports.

For more information, here is a link to the meeting slides. To stay current on the AIDA project, bookmark the project web page. The next BayICT Quarterly meeting will be held early spring 2023.