[Nomination] Stephen Watt - PyTorch ATX / Red Hat #165
Description
Select one:
- I am nominating myself for the PyTorch Ambassador Program.
- I am nominating someone else to become a PyTorch Ambassador.
Please confirm that the nominee meets the following requirements:
- The nominee is 18 years of age or older.
- The nominee agrees to abide by the PyTorch Code of Conduct.
- The nominee agrees to comply with the Linux Foundation Antitrust Policy.
- The nominee meets at least one of the qualifications listed in the PyTorch Ambassador Program Requirements.
Nominee Name
Stephen James Watt
Nominee Email
Nominee's GitHub or GitLab Handle
(Optional) Organization / Affiliation
No response
City, State/Province, Country
Austin, Texas, USA
Your Name
No response
Your Email (Optional)
No response
How has the nominee contributed to PyTorch?
- An active contributor to PyTorch repositories (e.g., commits, PRs, discussions).
- A speaker at PyTorch events or workshops.
- A PyTorch user group organizer or meetup host.
- A researcher or educator using PyTorch in academic work or training.
- An active leader in the PyTorch community with at least one year of experience in:
- Organizing events (virtual/in-person).
- Speaking at AI/ML conferences.
- Mentoring others in PyTorch.
- Creating technical content (e.g., blogs, videos, tutorials).
🏆 How Would the Nominee Contribute as an Ambassador?
I help run the PyTorch ATX meetup with Jason Meaux. Our meetup was just started in January but it has grown to the point where in April Jason and I just completed a sponsored 50 person event focused on GPU Kernel programming with recorded videos. I sourced the speakers, recorded the videos, did post-production of the videos and wrote the recap blog which is being profiled on the PyTorch foundation blog. We have another 200 person event planned in August around vLLM and PyTorch based inferencing, where we plan to run a similar playbook. As an ambassador, I'd like to:
- bring together the Austin community working in the PyTorch ecosystem through meetups, paper reviews and knowledge sharing and help inform them about where the technology stack is going. This is really lacking. There was no sense of community here around PyTorch and we're rapidly changing that.
- Continue to produce and share high quality blog posts and video content from these meetups and events
- be the formal liaison between PyTorch ATX and the PyTorch foundation
- Grow our " quarterly large events" into an actual one day PyTorch conference by December this year.Any additional details you'd like to share?
I have over two decades of experience in Open Source projects and communities. I was an early contributor in both the Apache Big Data / Hadoop Projects and Ecosystem and the Kubernetes / CNCF Projects and Ecosystem. I ran the Austin Hadoop and Big Data Meetup for 4 years.
Outside of the community, I am a Distinguished Engineer and lead the Office of the CTO at Red Hat. I have teams working on Research, Emerging Technologies and Community Strategy on PyTorch - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wattsteve/