On August 17th local Intel® Software Innovators and Intel® Student Ambassadors descended onto Cape Town, South Africa. This was the first Intel AIoT DevCamp, focused on brining AI and IoT engineers and students in Africa together to enjoy each other's thoughts, learn new things, and discuss the future of AI and IoT. The day was full of local speakers, hands-on workshops, and interacting with fellow developers.

After breakfast and time for networking, the day opened with a hands-on workshop on Intel AI DevCloud from the Intel® Software Innovator Thabo Koee. In this session we showcased the techniques developers can use to get best performance when training Deep Learning models on Intel® architecture. Furthermore, how Intel brings high performance, easy accessibility, and integrated workflow to Python* in numerical, scientific, and machine learning space. We demystified Intel-optimized NumPy, SciPy, and scikit-learn, and pyDAAL (Python APIs to Intel® Data Analytics Acceleration Library) with examples. How Tensorflow* takes advantage of key performance features in Intel® Processors. We also looked at the benefits of both training on your existing Intel-based infrastructure and training on the latest generation of Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors.

Throughout the day there were a variety of AI and IoT Developer Cloud discussions from both Intel® and Cape Town based Intelligent Systems Integration start-up Africa Business Integration (ABI). In the second session, Intel® Innovator Moloti Nakampe presented a hands-on workshop on Intel® IoT DevCloud. The session opened the door to innovation with an Intel® IoT Gateway and market-leading IoT cloud services. We explored using edge-based video analytics in the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit and Intel® hardware to improve unmanned transportation stations, work sites, factories, automobiles, healthcare, and home security. The combination of these Intel® technologies enables companies to develop scalable solutions that aggregate data from the edge to the cloud.

We concluded the AIoT DevCamp with a mini AIoT competition to test the skills developers learned during the workshop. Final year Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Cape Town Tumishang Selamulela won an Intel Movidius Neural Compute Stick.

Connect With Intel Software Innovators and Developers in Cape Town
Join us for one of our upcoming Intel OpenVINO Toolkit Meetup next time you are in the Cape of Good Hope.
Africa Machine Intelligence