Alex Blanton

About Alex Blanton

My passion is helping people connect with one another and with the information they need,…

Experience

1. Principal Community Program Manager, Office of the CTO Ai & Ml Community

   Microsoft

   Sep 2014 — Present

   I am co-lead for Microsoft\'s internal AI & ML Community. I create opportunities for a worldwide community of data scientists, machine learning engineers, architects, consultants, and other ML practitioners within the company to learn, connect, share information, and improve their practice of ML, AI, and data science. I work across the company in collaboration with members of product groups, marketing, sales, services, and staffing and recruiting to foster and build this community. Every 6 months we hold the Machine Learning, AI & Data Science Conference, which serves more than 3,500 attendees with dozens of talks, tutorials, self-paced labs, demos, meetups, and more. I am the primary organizer and manage a network of more than 100 volunteers and 150 presenters-as well as logistics vendor-to make the event happen. In between the conference, I run 50-60 individual events per year, including talks, workshops, webinars, hackathons, demo sessions, Ask Me Anythings, challenges, and other community activities that create shared experiences and a shared sense of mission among ML practitioners. I also manage a small group of subject-matter experts to provide timely on-demand advice within the community, a central knowledge base for ML information, and other efforts to help our community members build skills and stay current. Many of our stand-out community members end up representing Microsoft publicly in first-party and third-party events and taskforces.

Skills

• Blogging
• Mobile Devices
• Program Management
• Social Media Marketing
• Editorial
• Multimedia
• Content Strategy
• Sharepoint
• Mobile Applications
• Information Architecture
• Vendor Management
• Project Management
• Training Delivery
• Saas
• Agile Project Management
• Enterprise Software
• User Experience
• Usability Testing
• Software Development
• Analytics
• Management
• Software Project Management
• SEO
• Product Management
• Strategic Partnerships
• E-Learning
• Publishing
• Community Management
• Training
• Agile Methodologies
• Business Relationship Management
• Content Management
• Web Content Management
• Online Community Management
• Cloud Computing
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• Editing
• Technical Communication
• Technical Writing
• Training &Amp; Development