A globally distributed community of learners, researchers, and practitioners of: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Analytics, Robotics, Science, Technology, Art, and Design
SOAI exists to stimulate the growth of locally-run communities focused on educating (for no fee) as many members of their community as are interested. Lectures and workshops will be given on the power and potential of technology to solve problems -- with emphasis on Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Statistics, Data Science, and Software Development.
Deliver free education, high-value mentoring, and community building efforts across the planet, to stimulate the development of tight-knit collectives of skilled technologists and critical thinkers. The hope being that will develop and oversee projects to improve life on Earth by eliminating poverty, fighting climate change, reducing crime and corruption and fighting disease.
In addition to following the UN Declaration of Human Rights we believe in these core values:
- Free education for everyone forever
- Government funded research should be freely available and open
- Respecting local customs (as long as they don't violate human rights)
In order to help run a massive global community built on trust and cooperation the following standards are encouraged for all local chapters:
- Holding ourselves and our neighbors to high ethical standards
- Give credit where credit is due
- Prefer opensource over closed source
- Prefer creative commons over restrictive licensing
- There are no stupid questions
- Respect copyright and understand licensing
As a technology focused community it's important we uphold minimal standards for work that we intend on sharing and publishing to the community.
- Write Unit Tests
- Comment code or refactor it so it's clear without comments
- Write clear and concise documentation
- Write code with the knowledge that someone will have to read it
- Don't re-invent the wheel if an excellent one already exists, is free, and is SOTA
- Respond to your users and fix issues as they arise
- Invite the community to imrpove your code via pull requests
- Pay attention to robot.txt files
- Local communities are wholly independent entities from the central organizing team -- as long as they adhere to the above standards they are free to run their local chapter as they wish.
- Deans can be replaced during any local meetup by a simple majority vote of those attending.
- As leaders Deans can only exercise the power given to them by the community.
- If a Dean fails to hold a live or online meetup lasting at least 60 min. during any 6 month period, they will be removed from the official list of deans and a vaccancy will be announced.
- Deans and community members are responsible for maintaing their community standards and ensuring a high-qualtiy experience
- Minor decisions require a majority of 10 randomly-selected active Deans
- Major decisions require 3/4 majority of 50 Active Deans (a live event held in the last 60 days) and 51% majority of the global community.
- All other decisions will be made based on regular surveys distributed among the community