Notes on Takuya Kitazawa

One of the most fundamental challenges in international development is context adaptation.

Data and statistical insights are key drivers for international development.

Knowledge and skills are the power.

Our world is beautifully complex, but it doesn't necessarily have to be as complicated as it is today.

By and large, digital systems consist of two different parts: data and information.

There are many educational practices out there.

Technology is contextual, and hence neither oversimplification nor overcomplication is helpful; it'd be advisable to understand realistic constraints in a very environment and take a tailored approach point by point.

People worldwide exhibit varying levels of excitement or concern about AI, from the rich to the poor, ordinary citizens to global leaders to politicians, regardless of their occupation and industry.

Short answer: There are two extremes in our world—hyper-connected world of rich countries, and a disconnected world of underserved communities like rural Africa.

Digital literacy and skills are essential anywhere across the globe, but especially in developing countries where socioeconomic opportunities are limited.

The more senior I am, the bigger my work is.

"How's Africa?"

Start your digital transformation from the field, by understanding people.

"China!"

Muli bwanji?

Over the last few articles, I kept introducing Malawi as one of the poorest countries in the world.

During the holiday season, I traveled to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Dubai in UAE, and Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan in Egypt.

In short, the year 2023 has brought deepness to my life.

Children are the hope, and they represent the future.

In September 2023, I was reading Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow for the month's book club I have been organizing with my friends back in Canada for the last 12 months.

Here in southeastern Africa, I see Malawi's digital transformation is still immature and yet to be caught up in many aspects.

It's International Literacy Day.

On July 28, 2023, I moved to Malawi, a beautiful landlocked country in southeastern Africa, for a Canadian international volunteering program at World University Service of Canada (WUSC).

Let's talk about running.

It's easy to build an analogy between information and food: both of them are substances we consume daily, and unbalanced, too much consumption will result in serious physical, mental, and societal problems.

Autonomy is important.

As an engineer working on machine learning and data science for several years, now is indeed an interesting moment to see the impact of large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's GPT.

*****: If you leave me free, I naturally flow Point A to Point B, but it is not always unidirectional; under a certain condition, I could go in the reverse direction or circulate in a surrounding environment.

When a particular product is presented in an extremely simplistic form, it has become harder for ordinary people to recognize the complexity behind it, making us unconscious about what's going on outside of our sight and triggering an over-simplified reac…

A single word describing my 2022 is connection.

After being independent, several people encouraged me to share my experiences with others as a mentor, since some of the backgrounds are unique yet relevant enough to those who are working inside/outside of the industry: Took multiple roles between engine…

That is, information in human society is localized, and there is always the existence of real humans throughout the data lifecycle from their generation to collection to aggregation.

"Let $\mathcal{U}$ be a set of users ..."

Information, technology, and inherently everyone's life are highly contextualized and localized.

With the specialization on Coursera, I've been on a not-too-fancy yet meaningful learning curve over the last few months in the context of machine learning on Google Cloud.

At a certain point in my university days in Japan, I was so into reading Complexity: A Guided Tour written by Dr.

I am concerned about climate change, and what's clear to me after studying several resources is that we cannot discuss the planet's future without thinking about how quickly and safely human society can adapt to using nuclear power at scale.

Assume you are a business owner already providing some solutions to the users.

RecSys 2022, the 2022 edition of a top academic conference in the field of recommender systems, happened last month in Seattle.

It's been a month since I officially became self-employed in Canada.

September 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (hashtag: #NDTR) in Canada, a day that we look back on the dark history of the residential school system European settlers had implemented, raise awareness of its impacts, and take an action to…

As I previously wrote in Why Your Job Title Matters, Quality Habit-Formation, and Ethical Product Developer, I've been intentionally calling myself as Product Developer rather than obvious titles such as Software Engineer, Data Scientist, or Machine Learn…

I have recently got a chance to review machine learning (ML) basics through Machine Learning on Google Cloud Specialization on Coursera.

My recent reading of the novel "Klara and the Sun" written by the Novel Prize-winning writer was lovely.

I quit my software engineering job at Amazon on August 31, 2022.

"Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs," a book written by an ex-Apple software engineer discussing how to make a successful product like iPhone, was fun to read.

At JuliaCon 2022 @ Online held during the last week of July, I gave a lightning talk about Recommendation.jl, a Julia package for building recommender systems.

It's National Indigenous History Month in Canada, and I just finished University of Alberta's 12-week course of Indigenous Canada.

It's been more than a year since I relocated to Canada in Feb 2021, and I have officially become a permanent resident of Canada this week.

Last week, I was traveling to the US to meet some of my friends, which was my first post-pandemic international trip1.