20A – Growing Your Social Capital

1) Domain Expert in Industry: My mom has a friend in my age group (I forget his name, but he goes to UF too) who specializes in machine learning and AI systems. He could definitely be knowledgeable enough about ML to assist me. As a family friend, we could share some family favors to help him on that end. 2) Expert on Market: This person is easy to contact. Any one of my supervisors at work will do. As this is a professional environment I'm already partaking in, this isn't much of room for asking for favors and instead simply asking a supervisor to connect me with a higher-up in the chain of management in order to talk with them about the system. 3) Important Supplier: This is literally my dad's exact position of work. He creates a plan for both marketing and business models in order to implement a system that actually works, which is why companies are desperate to hire him. He's my dad, so all he'd ask is proof that this could actually work. I've in fact already pitched the idea to him if it would actually work especially since he's also knowledgeable about machine learning. This is all a thought experiment, but he's probably the only one I'd actually talk to about this idea. As far as networking goes, it's easier to target people within your workplace or people close to you you'd already know. It's easiest to go through my dad since he holds a very esteemed position in business/marketing fields, but in my real life my desired networking would be through researchers to get research positions. I'd much rather be developing the AI than selling it. I'm allergic to capitalism.