Collaborate & Communicate: An exploration and practical skills workshop that builds on the experience of AIML experts who are both successful collaborators and great communicators.

For many in the sciences, collaboration is a given, or at least a given assumption. The field of AIML is no different, and collaboration across fields and disciplines has long been a source of data and funding. But for many, effective collaboration can be confounding, and for those who have never worked with someone from a different field, it can be confusing and daunting.

Good collaboration requires good communication, but more fundamentally, clear communication is a core skillset for anyone. It takes practice, and in highly specialized fields, it is often subject to an all-too-common malady: the curse of knowledge. The curse of knowledge happens when experts in a field, communicating within their field, begin to make assumptions about the knowledge and understanding of their audience and begin to overlook the fundamentals of clear communication. They do this because for an audience of their peers, they seem to become less necessary, while short cuts like jargon seem to make communication faster and more efficient. But today, clear communication around issues and techniques in machine intelligence work is crucial not only within the community, but also to foster collaboaration across disciplines, and between the community and the lay public.

In this workshop we will explore stories of success in both of these topics through a series of short talks by pairs of collaborators followed by a panel discussion. We will then apply some of the principles from these areas by exploring practical models and skills to aid in both.

We intend to work with partners to organize attendees at the beginning of the workshop to create real opportunities for good collaborations among them and to inspire them to consider how they might work together.

Attendees will leave with resources to help them more effectively collaborate and to help them organize and communicate about their own work.