AIIA’s TransformationVersion 20211012003

AIIA Until Now

As a volunteer only organization we’ve:

1. Achieved brand name recognition throughout the industry

2. Grown the organization to 62 members with more members requesting to join every month

3. Fostered micro-alliances across the organization that delivered more than two dozen joint go-to-market strategies, product integrations, whitepapers, announcements and joint seminars

4. Defined a series of widely referenced blueprints that showcase a comprehensive tech stack for the AI/ML space

5. Had coverage of the AIIA in VentureBeat, the Next Stack, Hackernoon, AI Trends and other mass media tech publications

6. Grown our website and LinkedIn traffic by 500% and ensured strong engagement when we post new stories

But We Can Only Get So Far...As a volunteer only organization we can only do so much.

The AIIA represents AI software companies and solutions integrators filled with busy executives and engineers who don’t have a lot of spare time to give.

While many charities and smaller organizations manage to get by on free labor and extensive volunteer efforts, our members simply don’t have a lot of time to spare. For us to do significant work we need to hire teams to assist with different projects like putting on monthly events, writing research papers and more.

That’s Why We’re Making the Leap to Full Fledged Non-Profit

We have the broad based support to become one of the premier AI software foundation in the world.

That’s why we’ve transitioned the AIIA from an ad-hoc, free-to-join membership organization to a full fledged 501 C (6)* non-profit organization with a paid membership.

* A 501 C (6) organization is United States tax speak for an international business association such as a chamber of commerce or alliance. Although we're organized to promote business, we don't generate a profit and don't pay shares or dividends. That qualifies us as non-profit organizations, exempt from paying income tax so that we can focus on making sure every dollar counts.

Let’s Talk Revenue

Revenue Sources for the AIIA:

● Membership Dues● Event Fees

Later:

● Certifications● Courses● Grants● Research Sales

What Will Help Us Take Flight?

What Do We Want to Do With the Revenue?1. Education - Educate enterprises, engineers and the media on best practices in AI/ML and best-of-breed

solution stacks provided by AIIA members.2. Research and Reports - Provide top-tier research and reports that enterprises can trust to counter

pay-to-play research.3. Community - Build bridges to global communities wherever the conversation is happening (such as

MLOps.community, Data Science Salon, and the Sequence).4. Events - Create and host events that provide valuable content, feedback and networking to attendees,

while showcasing AIIA members and their platforms.5. Publicity - Drive publicity for AIIA and its members through public relations, media appearances,

journalism, articles, videos and public appearances. 6. Reference Architectures - Define and frame the key components of the AI/ML canonical stack.7. Technical Projects - Bring in technical projects that promote interoperability and reusability between

stack layers in AI/ML, much like the Linux Foundation with but a laser focus on AI software. 8. Trusted Journalism Advisor - Be a trusted advisor to journalists covering AI/ML.9. Micro-Alliances - Build interoperability and collaboration between smaller groups of partners in AIIA.10. AI Ethics - Define a practical AI ethics framework as a standard best practice.

Key Milestones

AIIA has the following key milestones for 2022:

● Education - three high quality reports● Events - monthly series and annual event● PR - two major campaigns● Blueprints - evolution and wider distribution● Website - redesign● Tech projects - at least three open source projects under the AIIA umbrella● Stretch Goal: Lab for testing AIIA tools and services

Release Three High Quality Reports1. AI/ML Solutions Guide - Survey of the top

companies per AI/ML category with easy to read charts and write ups, similar to the TWIML AI Solutions Guide with a strong focus on AIIA members.

2. AI Readiness and Maturity Guide - Craft a guide on how enterprises can think about the journey from zero ML to a full enterprise grade solution that’s highly automated and resilient, similar to the Google AI Readiness Guide.

3. AIIA Perspective Guide - A report that lays out the case for a best-of-breed approach to AI/ML versus rolling your own or choosing an all in one cloud provider.

AI Infrastructure Landscape Database

Over the last few years we’ve seen a blistering array of “Landscape of AI” reports that promise to give people clear and concise advice on the most important tools in AI/ML. But the truth is that none of these reports are complete and a number of them are highly untrustworthy, because they came from a single company with an obvious agenda.

We will turn the landscape of AI infrastructure research into a database that is regularly updated and delivers a thoroughly up-to-date information repository on the capabilities of all infrastructure companies inside and outside of the AIIA, with a special highlight of AIIA companies.

We’ll keep it updated through our independent research team, as well as through the surveys of our members.

Events

Events are essential to the success of the AIIA.

Events offer attendees quality content and networking opportunities and gives members a focused forum to reach their target audiences.

We will start with a Series of Monthly, Ongoing Events in partnership with MLOps.Community.

Each month is a new thematic question, such as:● Integrating with other platforms in the MLOps Space● How to track data versions and lineage● Building a robust monitoring system for production models● Data governance and compliance● Training

MLOps Planet - Annual EventLate 2022 we’ll build our annual mega-event where all AIIA members can showcase in-depth product demonstrations and talks.

The event takes place over several weeks and lets people show up to what they want and only what they want, rather than trying to budget an entire day like a pre-COVID event.

For example, a data scientist may watch the videos and sign up for Seldon + Tecton on a Monday with a 2-3 hour hands on workshop and then show up for a 3 hour training on ZenML on Thursday the next week.

Public Relations Push

Public relations is the key to making sure the AIIA is a household name and ensuring that media publications and enterprises turn to us for the most up to date information on the AI/Ml space first.

We’ll do two major PR pushes in 2022, to make sure we get:

● Strong uplift in new AIIA members. ● Drive awareness to our research, events and members

Blueprint EvolutionWe will create interactive versions of the blueprints that any AIIA member can easily customize with their own partners and drop into their website and marketing collateral.

AIIA Site Redesign

The current website was designed on the cheap and it needs updating by a pro team to:

● Highlight communities● Act as a first class content portal for people learning about or ready to make purchases in the AI/ML

space● Drive membership● Share IP and collateral● Highlight AIIA tech projects and events

We want a well designed website that’s rich in content and education and we want it to become a top tier destination for any enterprise that wants to do AI/ML in production.

Content Portal

We want to amplify our member’s content as much as possible so we will have clear guidelines for submitting that content and publish it on a regular, ongoing basis and promote it through our growing social media channels.

We will also commission an auto-resharing system for LinkedIn and Tweets that we can all use to amplify content that fits clear criteria.

One of the most important aspects of the website redesign is the content portal.

We want to become a top destination on the web of production AI/ML content such as videos, tutorials and blog posts.

AIIA Technical Projects

We want to bring in, nurture and promote AI infrastructure open source projects.

Unlike the Linux Foundation we don’t want just any project with AI or ML in the title. We want to support projects that sweep across all our tools and services like:

● Glue frameworks● Multi-cloud installers● APIs● Open model registries

The AIIA Board of Data Science will select and curate these projects.

Potential Projects

We have targeted a number of projects already, such as:

Combinator.ml ( https://combinator.ml/ ) uses Terraform to quickly spin up multiple solution stacks for testing, experiments and demos.

SAME ( https://github.com/SAME-Project/ ) comes to us from Dave Aronchick's team. It looks to provide a simpler interface to complex projects like KubeFlow, in the way Keras simplified Tensorflow work.

MLRun ( https://github.com/mlrun/mlrun ) is from the Iguazio team. This project looks to abstract the way all AI/ML platforms communicate with each other and it's one of the more

Lab for Testing AIIA Tools and Services

We are talking to several large partners/sponsors who may be able to offer the AIIA a lab for spinning up multiple AIIA solutions working in concert with each other.

If people have a place to spin up AIIA member software, that becomes an easy way for them to try before they buy and this will attract a wider range of prospects.

This is a stretch goal for 2022 but it’s been proposed to us by the a large potential hardware partner and it remains an excellent opportunity.

Membership

Membership Dues are based on number of employees

Member Type Employees Yearly Dues

General Member Community/Non-Profit/University/Gov FREEBetween 2 to 10 $5,000

Between 11 to 99 $15,000Between 100 to 499 $25,000Between 500 and 1,999 $35,000Between 2,000 and 4,999 $50,0005,000 and above $75,000

Platinum Sponsor Member (Board of Directors Seat) $100,000

Community/Non-Profit/University/Gov Free

What Do We Get for Our Money?General Members

● Appointment to the Board of Data Science● Potential to join the Board of Directors● Special access to communities through events, such as

the monthly hack-a-thons/meetups with MLOps● Marketing to a much wider audience than you can reach

by yourselves (through website, re-sharing of your events, promotional blog post/video in AIIA public channels, newsletter and more)

● Partnerships/micro-alliances with complementary members

● Ability to influence the industry development as a part of BoDS

● Eligibility for additional funding if you are community or technical project

PS Members

All the same as General Members, plus:

● A seat on the Board of Directors● An additional seat on the Board of

Data Science● More influence on the industry

development● Higher chance to influence the AIIA

development● Sponsors of a powerful

organization which directly shapes the industry

Founder’s Badge

Everyone who is already a member of the AIIA or is waiting for the AIIA incorporation and chooses to move forward into our next phase will get listed as an AIIA Founder with the founder’s badge on the site.

Nobody who joins in the future will be able to get this badge.

It’s reserved for everyone who started with us on this journey.

Keeping the Balance

Platinum sponsors get a seat on the Board of Directors.

However, we wanted to ensure that we can bring in the biggest and brightest organizations in the world but we also wanted to keep the harmonious balance between big and small organizations that makes the AIIA special.

That’s why for every platinum sponsor appointed to the board, the general (non-platinum) members of the AIIA board of directors will elect a general member to the board as well, keeping that delicate balance between small, agile companies and industry titans.

Example BoD Expansion Scenario

7 Board of Directors (BoD) members

25 General Members (4 with board seats)

New PS Member joins AIIA

BoD expands to 8 members

General Directors (4) vote one of remaining

21 members to BoD

BoD expands to 9 members

Balance is restored!

THANKS!AIIA and You - Better Together

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