On June 17, 2023, that is, last Saturday, I participated in an offline sharing with the theme of AI jointly held by Shenzhen University and CSDN on the Guangdong Hai Campus of Shenzhen University to explore AI in smart cities, smart video, and smart programming. Technology development and practical implementation in key areas such as
The meaning of offline activities
A friend asked me, if I don’t have a good rest on weekends, why do I participate in this kind of activity? What’s the point? Can I learn something? My answer is meaningful. Although there are many ways to learn now, and we can find many courses from very powerful teachers online, this cannot replace offline face-to-face communication. I recently read K·K's "The World in 5000 Days" and I also talked about this truth. Some things can't be really understood no matter how many books and papers you read, and more questions will arise. If you want to solve these questions, you need to have a face-to-face conversation with the author to get the answer.
Therefore, it makes sense to participate in offline events. Of course, we are not saying that all offline activities must be participated in. On the contrary, I advise everyone to choose carefully which activities to participate in. You can choose according to the teacher who lectures and the content of the lecture. If you can come to the event with questions, the rewards will definitely be great. Especially those activities that can trigger behavioral changes after listening to the course are more worthy of our attempt and participation. Participating in activities is not the purpose, but finding someone or something you are interested in and getting inspired is the purpose. At the same time, offline activities can generally bring you some unexpected gains. For example
1. Knowledge that is not used now but will be useful in the future. While it may seem like nothing is being reaped right now, perhaps the seeds planted today will bear fruit someday in the future.
2. Personal connections. But what I want to explain here is that many people have a problem with their understanding of connections. It doesn't mean that you have participated in many offline activities, met many people, and added WeChat. These people are your connections. Instead, you should think about what problems you can solve for them and what value you can bring, so that such social interaction is more meaningful.
How do I choose which activities to attend?
In addition, I found that some students like to use explicit value to measure whether they should participate in activities. For example, how much is the ticket, while ignoring the value of time. Your biggest cost should be time. There are also some students who choose not to do things that are optional. For example, is this offline event very far away? In the past, it took more than an hour. I checked the weather forecast and there was heavy rain. Forget it, I won’t go this time. Or, the company has arranged overtime work today, overtime work and overtime pay, so I will go next time. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this decision. But in my own words, I would be more inclined to make decisions based on the content of this time. Is there something I'm interested in. For example, the intelligent coding part of this event is what I am very interested in. I have used ChatGPT to write code myself, and I have always wanted to implement it in the company, but some colleagues in the company have always been skeptical about GPT writing code, and have not tried much. So the content of this intelligent coding is very important to me.
In the past few years, I have participated in various online activities, such as reading clubs, private board meetings, online sharing, etc. This type of activity is to force the output through specific questions. Take reading as an example. Many times, reading is just like reading, and sometimes you don’t remember anything. But if you output a reading note after reading it, you will think about what the book is about, or what you understand. However, that's not all. There are many books, and every time I reread it, I can get a different experience. The ancients said that listening to your words is better than reading ten years of books, I don't think it is an exaggeration. It is true that sometimes when listening to a lecture, there will be a feeling of enlightenment. In the future, Shenzhen urban communities will still hold many high-quality activities. I hope that everyone can actively participate according to their own needs.