 So, about Niharika, she is a machine learning engineer at TCS and she develops NLP-based solutions for Walmart, US, and she believes in leveraging artificial intelligence to help people lead better lives and her talk at PyCon at Canada in 2019 focused on one such research project, AutiGlove, for autistic people, autistic children. So, when not at work, Niharika actively contributes to the Python community as a tech speaker, mentor and organizer, and of course, she leads the Pyleides chapter in Chennai. So, thanks a lot, Niharika, for agreeing to deliver this session. So, she has been a speed mentor as well in PyCon 2019 regarding the same topic winning your way through tech grants and conferences. So, enjoy. So, Niharika, over to you. Thanks Manasani, thanks for that introduction. All right. I think we can get started. So, basically, yeah. So, I'm going to be talking about winning your way through tech conferences and grants. And just to disclaimer, so all of these tips are either pre-COVID days or post-COVID days. These are not winning your way through tech conferences in a virtual format. So, these are all my experiences which I have learned throughout my two years of conference journey and what happens when you have physical conferences. Right? So, just a brief introduction. I think Manasani has covered most of it. So, I currently work at TCS. I also organize the Pyleides Chennai meet-ups and having spoken at various conferences like PyCon India, PyCon 2019, Canada and, you know, Virtual Conference of PyHoyo. So, I'm no expert, but I have definitely, conferences have helped me, you know, kind of helped me in both my personal and professional life and it has actually helped me move from an attendee to a volunteer, to a mentor, to an organizer, to a speaker. And it's been a great journey and I would like to kind of share that to you along with tips and tricks of how you can make the most of tech conferences. When I started attending tech conferences, it was probably you for me and for people around me. So, a lot of things I learned, a lot of things I made mistakes, a lot of things I learned after the end of the conference, what I should do. So, I hope through this you will be able to just kind of analyze how your conference was the last two days and probably make the best use of it in the next conference. Right? So, I have a question for all of you who are there here and right now I'm not able to see your chat, but if you can just put it up there. So, I just want to see in brief, is this your first conference, Picon India 2020? So, it will kind of be a very ask for all of you if this is your first conference. So, just put it up on chat, yes, no, and if it is no, then, you know, probably is it your second conference, third conference or have you attended other conferences before? Right? So, I have two questions for you. So, this is the first one. And for those of you who have answered, yes, that this is your first conference, then what, I'm going to show you what exactly conferences look like. Right? So, this is a picture from Picon India 2019, which happened in Chennai last year. This is how exactly tech conferences look. You will have huge, I don't know, people and it's kind of an experience in itself. So, just, so this brings me to my next question as to why do you attend a conference? So, for all of you who are attending this conference, although it is virtual. So, what pushed you to attend this conference? Was it a colleague who introduced you to this? Was it your friends? Because everybody around you is attending. Are you attending because you like the talks, which are scheduled? You like the sessions and you want to learn more? So, this is my second question to all of you who are there in the session. That why do you attend a tech conference? What are your reasons? So, with this in mind and with my journey. So, there are a lot of pictures which I've kind of put in to kind of make this person. Since I was told it's going to be an experience sharing. So, in my, literally my experience is out there for you to see. So, the first thing which we need to do. So, there are three aspects to my whole talk today. One is how can you make the most of the conference you're currently attending? How can you write top proposals which, you know, which gets selected? How you can basically go and write a convincing top proposal. And let's say you're giving a talk outside India. So, most of the conferences in India you can pretty much travel to another state. But then I had to travel to Bicon Canada to Toronto to attend. It definitely is a burden, a financial burden, right? From visa to, you know, the expenditure, the financial, the flight, it's all of that. So, a lot of conferences with grants. So, we'll also be touching on how you can, how can you find out about grants, what can you do, how to get right to a successful grant. So, what do you want out of conference? So, I think yes. So, these are all the different reasons. Again, just go one by one. One is the primary thing of conferences. There are all technical talks, right? So, first is you need to actually figure out what kind of conference you want to go to. There are a lot of many conferences happening. You have technology-based conferences. You have company-sponsored conferences. You have seminars, meetups. So, you need to focus on, are you, so if I am, since I am working in Bicon, since I prefer to, I want to expand my knowledge in Bicon. So, Bicon was the best fit. So, to expand one's knowledge, to learn what's new out there, you can learn about a new, let's say you're working on a business problem or you're working on a project and you find a talk session which is very similar to that. And you want to know how they have solved the problem, right? So, that is one main reason why, what do you want to get out of, you know, a conference? So, these points are very important to the next thing which I'm going to talk about is how can you efficiently, efficiently manage time. So, what really happens is, if you are focused on expanding your knowledge, then the sessions which happen, the keynotes which happen are your, like, you know, go-to-place. You kind of have to put all your effort, all your focus, all your time to take notes, to attend these sessions, to plan out your schedule. But if you're going to attend conferences to make connections, just to network, to know more people, I think hanging out around the conferences, the booths, the company booths or the networking areas, the open spaces are your way to go. If you want to, let's say, find a job, if you want to look for an internship, if your course is that, then I think, you know, spending more time on visiting the company booths, the sponsor booths and talking to people, talking to mentors will be the way to best utilize your time in those two days, right? So, you need to figure out before the conference as to why am I attending it, what is it that I'm expecting out of a conference. And if you are attending it for conference wax, this is something which I think all college students probably might be on top of their bucket list that, oh, I'm going to get a lot of conference wax, no. I think swag shouldn't be the only reason why you are, or the main reason why you are attending a conference. So, just try to, since you're going to spend two days, try to understand why do you, what do you want out of these conferences, right? So, the next few slides are going to be my Python journey. So, when I started, it was in the year 2018, and you can just see a very serious need standing alongside my college major and all of us and learning about speaking, hearing, understanding what the community is about. So, I was new, I did not know anybody, I did not know anyone. I had traveled from Chennai to Hyderabad along with my four college friends just in order to attend the conference. So, everything was new, and this is what I was facing with. So, by current year 2018, I was a first-time attendee and when I entered, these were all the things which a conference, you know, kind of offered, technical talks, lightning talks, keynotes, job boards. So, they give you a whole big schedule, you have chapter booths, you have company booths, you have quizzes which are going on in between these sessions. So, one tells you come to a booth at two o'clock, the other one tells you come to a booth at four o'clock. There are, you know, open spaces, workshops. So, it's very easy to get kind of individuated and not knowing what to do, where to do. So, this is where what happens is the first thing that you need to do is kind of manage your time, you know. When you get your schedule and you go through it, that the schedules are put up way before in the website. So, what you should do is kind of plan your schedule, because all talks happen finally. So, most of the times, they kind of happen finally. So, even in Mike on India, which you saw. So, you need to kind of figure out what are your must-see talks. So, are they related to your current job project? Are they really interesting or something which I want to? I may not know a lot about it, but it's a good beginner level talk and I kind of want to know. So, there are two kind of talks, must-see talks and you can see those talks if you have time. Right? So, the reason why you're doing this is because when you have must-see talks, you kind of make sure you are right out there, attend the talk. And the can-see talks are where you can probably venture out, may not attend those talks because it's not in line of your interest and try and navigate through the other aspects of the conferences. So, the second one is the company booths. So, the picture which you saw, kind of, you know. So, there are a lot of company booths which are out there or let's say chapter booths. So, when there is a break, you have your entire 1000-2000 attendees of the conference coming in, I don't come out and interact with everybody. So, if you are the person whose reason of, you know, attending a conference is to, let's say, find a job or find an internship, you would need to kind of sacrifice a few talks and attend these booths or talk to the people in these booths when, you know, when the talks are going on because that is the time you can actually save. Once you can save a lot of time in talking and even the person who's there at the company booth can actually give you this time and listen to you and have more meaningful discussions. So, this is something which I think in my first time of attending I was like all over but probably the second and third time is where you understand how you can, you know, make the best use of the conference. So, this is just my own personal tip. Obviously, all of you are best at, you know, see what works for you but this is what I experienced during my pipeline journey. And, yes, so you can always meet people, join with discussions, you know, using breaks and give the best time to network. So, just explaining to you, this is again a screenshot of Picon India 2019 in Chennai. So, if you see, you know, there are so many booths and so many people out here so this must be probably one of the time when there are no talks going on. So, it's, you know, you kind of need to figure out where you need to be when and then make the best use of these conferences. So, the next one which comes is, so as a student, so when I attended my first thing, I was a student, right? So, I was like, how can, why would somebody listen to me or what do I want to talk to them? I just started working on data science machine learning projects. So, the best thing about this is about the conferences at least Picon India is basically all of you have badges. There are different identity badges. There are volunteer badges. There are mentor badges. So, this was something which I really liked that, you know, there are some people roam around with mentor, like in mentor, like, you know, or so it's really easy to, let's say, to reach out to them and I'll just discuss with anybody. You're talking to somebody and you're saying you're working on this project and this is where I'm stuck. So, this, personally, this happened to me. So, my, since I was in my final year of undergraduate, I was working on a major project idea and I was, me and my friend. We were kind of having various approaches of how to do it. So, we were discussing this with one person and then that person reached, you know, connected us with another mentor whose name is Saptar. And he, he has done something similar in building his undergraduate days and gave us a, you know, very good approach and kind of gave a lot of insights as to how we can go about it. So, when I said it is a, you know, Picon helps me nearly personal journey is because that topic, that major project went on to become my top proposal for Picon Canada. So, it, it helped me to, you know, take it from ideation to the entire finalizing and actually doing that project. So, the best thing how to network is, you know, you can reach out to a speaker after talk and obviously ask sensible queries. You should always prepare some conversation starters and the last part especially is, you know, exit at the right time. So, sometimes you're kind of stuck in an awkward situation when you have other things to do and, you know, and the discussions keep going on. So, you should try and manage your time effectively and try to reach out to people at the right time. Right? So, the next thing which I have seen, which was even new to me and which I kind of asked a lot of people is what to talk? Why did somebody listen to me? So, or, so especially for students, this is kind of, I'm just a fresher. So, what to talk is basically what to talk in a company group or a response group and why would they hire me? Why should they listen to what I'm doing? So, one thing which I realized is I think elevator pitch concept is something which really works. So, for those of you who don't know, you know, elevator pitch is basically a 30 second thing about who you are, what are you working on, where are you, you know, which college or which company are you working for? What is it something called unique about you? And what is it that you're expecting out of this 30 seconds after this 30 seconds? So, probably you can ask about our sensible queries, ask questions, all of those. So, it's very, since conferences are the place to, you know, network and to talk, you'll feel free to, you know, ask about let's say there are openings in your company or if you can connect. So, I think LinkedIn always, this is something which I have a tip for myself. After every conversation, which let's say exceeds more than five minutes, I make it a point to either connect or five minutes, I make it a point to connect with that person either on LinkedIn or Twitter or send a personalized request because we had meaningful conversations and obviously you can't spend hours and hours talking to that person in the conference, but you can obviously catch up after the conference, right? So, this is the next part. So, after the conference, so I think, so a lot of times what happens is, so you have to make a conference and then you just shut shop, right? So, that's not how it, that, so actually after conference is as important as what you do during the conference and before the conference. So, following up, reaching out to people on LinkedIn, but you know, collaborating on projects. So, the mentor of my told you, so we kind of, you know, collaborated with him, kind of took his opinion, took his advice throughout our entire final semester when we were working on our project. So, it helps you to, you know, make connections, it helps you to gain insights and so you can put it up on LinkedIn, you can put it up on social media and this is probably the community, this is, 2018 was the place where, you know, which you can basically see, you know, so what you see here is what I meant by reach out on LinkedIn and Twitter. So, in 2018, there was this really awesome concept of job board. So, where, you know, all people were attending, putting up their names or their email IDs and if they're actively hiring or not. So, this is just one such example. So, you can either collaborate on projects after conference, fill them up for jobs or internships, you can always reach out. So, this is just a student to me who went a verse sec and reached out to everybody application for internship because I found out them, you know, through them in job board and I was and to my surprise, I actually converted, you know, few of these applications into internships which is what is my personal outcome of, you know, attending a conference. So, when somebody asks me why do you have to go and why do you have to attend a conference, what is it, it's just we're just going to attend talks. So, this one conference was really eye-opener for me and so I pledged to give it back to the community by creating the Paileri Chennai community since we didn't have one in Chennai and this, you know, such conferences, basically like Manaswini said in a previous talk, it helps you increase your peer group, the right kind of peer group who talk about tech, who talk about the field you're interested in and who work on projects which you are interested in and so one thing leads to another Paileri Chennai led to meet us, it led to me getting introduced to the Python community and to all Chennai Paileri team and to a lot of other people who are already actively participating in this Python community and getting back to the community, right. So, after this, so the next, you know, this was kind of the major thing which really helped me to get into the whole thing and then there are Python India 2019 was, you know, it helped me organize PPLB on the other side of the conference, helped present my own poster so I still had, I'm still not very confident of submitting a talk so I ended up presenting a poster and then I ended up, you know, giving the same, the same thing which basically the software helped me, my major project ended up becoming my drug proposal for the Python Canada and so what you see is basically in one year it things really changed for me because of how conferences and how you can basically make best use of them. So, now I come back to the last two things of, you know, of the talk, basically how can you write a successful drug proposal and how do you apply for grants. So, the main thing about call to proposal is, so this was again something which I only got to know after the first conferences, there is something called call to proposals and it usually opens let's say months before the actual conference. So, a lot of us don't know about the timeline so it's very important so if you know that there is a conference that's happening six months later, this is the right time to submit a drug proposal. So, know your timeframe, stick to your deadlines and it's easier to, and it's better to submit early. So, a lot of times teams give feedback. So, wherever whichever conference you submit to they kind of give feedback if something is missing they reach out to you. So, always do that and the first thing of, you know, writing a proposal is basically you need to finalize the talk topic and not just any talk topic, you know, you need to be you know, thorough in it, you need to know it in an hour, you need to do your research and it is something that you have worked on because you want to talk about it so people think you are subject matter experts in that and you want to talk about it. Is it relevant? So, this is the last question, this is the question which you always have to attend. If this topic is basically there in the conference schedule and you are an attendee, will you attend it? So, if the answer is no, I think you need to revisit your proposal and go through it once again. So, then what you need to do is decide on whether you want to give a beginner level talk and intermediate advanced level. So, is this fit enough for an advanced level talk? Am I confident enough to talk about this topic or this algorithm or this new tool which I have built? And this is the next line is basically something which I have seen from my experience as a CFP reviewer last year is do not repeat talks if your audience is going to be the same. So, if you are, let's say talking at Paili B's Chennai Meetups and you are also talking at Chennai Paili Meetups and Pipe on India is also happening in Chennai and you are going to repeat the same talk everywhere. So, even for a person who is reviewing or let's say or any person, so if your audience is going to be the same and they already know and they already heard your talk previously so it is best practice to not repeat talks at different places. And the last one is my own personal tip that I personally have to have done talks which are application oriented. So, I have used Psychic Learn to do something but I have used this tool or this package to build something new. So, rather than explaining to me how it works or what it is. So, this is just my personal view that if they are application oriented where you used it to build something amazing then I would definitely be the first person to present your talk. So, the next one is when you actually submit a proposal, what all do they require? So, they require many things. So, whether they ask for it or not, whether generally CFPs have a structure. So, they kind of give you what they need. They need a talk title, they need description, they need outcomes. So, but even if they don't the right practice is to basically have a very inquisitive topic, a very interesting talk, let's say title. And the description kind of make it elaborate. So, a lot of times, a lot of proposals which I have seen which are there in the public forum is probably the description is just three four lines. So, for a person who is reviewing, he won't know what you're exactly, why would somebody why should he give 30 minutes of this conference, it would be on top. So, you need to make it elaborate as to why are you doing this. So, there are three questions. What does the talk about why somebody needs to hear your talk and what are you going to cover in the talk and how your talk is going to impact the audience is going to attend it. Right? And also split. So, if you're going to talk for 25 minutes, it's very nice if the organizers can see how you're going to structure your 25 minutes, how are you going to start, what are you going to focus on, what are your main points of focus. So, a time split of your talk will really help in making the organizers be more confident about your talk. And the key objectives and the audience takeaways are something which are really helpful because you're telling them what the audience is going to learn from your talk. So, and the next one is basically practice, practice, practice. So, I think this is something which is, you know, just before the talk, which you need to do. So, when I had to give my talk, I had, you know, done my major project reviews, I had three reviews in college, I went into the poster presentation, I spammed my family and friends, gave them my talk, and then eventually. So, this basically helps you improvise, get feedback. Somebody will have some opinion about what they understood, but they didn't understand, so that will help you to, you know, improvise on how you present and what is it that you want to present about. So, last year, so I have this example, how I hand coded between learning and strategy. So, this is a top proposal. I'm just going to share you this screenshot of a person called Arjun Paturya. So, I was going to all the proposals and of last year, and this was one of the proposals which really caught my eye. So, I will definitely, you know, kind of share the link. So, to all of you. So, it's there in the public forum. So, if you, the way he structured his top proposal, the way it was written. So, I think he did speak in last year's conference. But this is something where I always take inspiration from when I talk, when I write my own top proposals as to how we can write a convincing top proposal. So, if you see about the agenda, the, the what, the outcome, the outline. So, I think it's it's perfect, right. So, for all of you who want to just you know, get to know, you can always go into this. So, the last thing which we're going to cover today is basically how to write a convincing grand proposal, right. So, some conference tickets are something which you can always, you know, which you can sponsor yourself. But what happens if you are talking at a conference, which is not in your country, okay. Or let's say even if there are some conference tickets are let's say a lot more than your budget. So, different ways. One is, again, you have some conferences give you monitoring, some conferences give you grants, they give you ticket grants, they give you your ticket. So, the first thing is you need to just kind of find out whether the conference is giving certain financial aid. And if they are, then how do I go about it. And even if they're not, it's it's good practice to kind of mail them and ask them what they're doing. And if not, then there are although other organizations which help sponsor you, right. So, there are, for example Grace Hopper Conference. So, I think every company out there, the sponsors attendees of Grace Hopper. So, you have Google, Facebook, Microsoft attending. So, similar to CFP, you should know your time frame of when to apply for a grant and you don't review the guidelines, whether they require cover letter, they require recommendations, what it is. So, and then basically what you do or what you need to do in your grant is it's kind of, you know, it's very similar to how you write your statement of purpose. You need to condense the other person as to why they should fund you. So, what you can basically write, let's say Python conference, right. How do you use Python? What do you want to, you know, get out of the conference? Why, if you attend, let's say Python India, what is it that you're expecting out of it? And once you do attend, how is it that you're going to give back to the community and how is it that this financial aid, how you can make use of it. And it's very important to write in a way that it convinces that person that, okay, you are a person who is worthy of giving a financial aid for you and you need to kind of customize it for every conference, not that you have a generic template and you send it out to multiple conferences. So, the main part what you need to focus is what do you want to get out of the conference and how do you use Python and how you attending the conference is going to help you as well as the conference organizers, right. So, I think that is something which, so it's basically an essay or a cover letter and it's kind of like a purpose as to why you want to attend and why should they fund you. So, just to brief, so when I had written my grant proposal for Canada, so I had, you know, I had gone back and seen about the previous versions and since I was talking about the topic which was for autistic children, so I found a link where Python Canada had actually supported some autism speech where they had supported a group like that previously in the year 2015. So, I had pulled that out and kind of added it to this and sort of tried to make it more relevant, right. So, these are just a few tips as to what works for me and I hope it works for you and I hope you make the most of your next lectures. Thank you. Thanks a lot Niharika.