May Madness at Sportlogiq

To say we were busy in May would be an understatement. Members of the SPORTLOGiQ team traveled near and far to attend and speak at a number of conferences and events across the globe. Oh, and we also made a HUGE announcement last month.

Here’s Our May Madness Roundup

Fundica, the funding platform, kicked off their Roadshow on May 1st at the historic Rialto Theatre here in Montreal. Craig (CEO) was invited to be a speaker on the Raising a Big Round in AI panel. He, along with Pascal Pilon of LANDR, Alexis Smirnov of Dialogue and moderator Mike Lee of Fundica, discussed the challenges of raising capital as an AI company. They were candid about their fundraising successes and failures, imparting their wisdom onto new founders and entrepreneurs.

Our Kitchener-Waterloo team, Mehrsan (CTO), and Philippe (VP Engineering), attended the Conference on Computer Vision and Robot Vision on May 9th-11th in Toronto. CRV 2018 attendees got to meet and greet with some of the SPORTLOGiQ team at our exhibitor’s booth while our research team got to attend a number of different talks given by some of the best researchers in the field.

Additionally, SPORTLOGiQ sponsored the CRV 2018 Best Oral Presentation Award. It was awarded to Kiret Dhindsa, Lauren C. Smail, Melissa McGrath, Luis H. Braga, Suzanna Becker, and Ranil R. Sonnadara of McMaster University for their talk titled, Grading Prenatal Hydronephrosis From Ultrasound Imaging Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks. Congrats on a job well done!

Next, Mehrsan travelled to Lausanne, Switzerland to speak at ThinkSport’s The Spot conference on May 15th. ThinkSport is an organization that brings together private, public, and academic organizations in the sports industry. He joined other industry experts—Nicolas Deal of UEFA, Nicolas Chapart of FIBA, Johan Vounckx of EVS, and moderator Jay Stuart of iSportConnect—to discuss the impact that Machine Learning and AI are having on sports and media.

Mehrsan had this to say about AI as an enabler for fan engagement, “AI in sports and media is not just about automating broadcast or digital media production. More importantly, it is going to revolutionize the way we experience watching and interacting with sporting events as viewers and fans. The possibilities are beyond imagination”. Watch the full panel discussion here.

We ended the month at an event that’s near and dear to us, the AI For Social Good Lab. AI4Good’s mission is to work towards a more inclusive tech culture by empowering women in AI—something that is really important to all of us here at SPORTLOGiQ.

Mehrsan had the honour of giving an insightful talk on the intersection of AI and sports to a group of brilliant women and future entrepreneurs. The lab is an initiative of OSMO, the Reasoning and Learning Lab, MILA and co-organised with DeepMind. It brings female undergraduates together for a six-week collaborative program to learn technical concepts in machine learning.

Other Highlights

– Daniel was at the Netherlands Sports Analytics Conference on May 7th. He also may have taken a selfie at The Amsterdam Arena, home of the AFC Ajax football team, while he was there.

– Craig was in London, UK to attend (nope, not the royal wedding…) the Sports Performance Data & Fan Engagement Summit on May 22-23.

– Cassandra (Marketing Manager) was at C2 Montréal, arguably one of the biggest conferences held in our great city. One of her personal highlights was participating in the Chelsea Manning workshop, “Get with the program: Hard-coding diversity in tech” on May 24th.

Last But Not Least

Last month, we announced the official opening of our AI lab in Kitchener-Waterloo. The new location is home to a stellar team of computer vision and machine learning researchers who are focused on soccer/football research and we’re thrilled to welcome them to the team!

We’re excited to be working so closely with the vibrant AI community in Kitchener-Waterloo. In fact, SPORTLOGiQ already has partnerships with local universities in the region, such as the University of Waterloo, where we have research collaborations with David Clausi of VIP laband Pascal Poupart. With these organizations just steps away, it makes it easier for our team to work with our collaborators in the area to further advance AI for sports analytics as well as to recruit top AI talent.

We can’t wait to tell you about what we have in store for the summer! Check back with us soon to find out.