How to participate in real Data Science / Machine learning projects?

Question

Machine learning

I work as a business analyst. I also had experience in the frontend (as a hobby). I have been actively studying the Data Science specialization (Python, mathematics, statistics, etc.) for a year now. I took many courses on Coursera, Udacity, EDX. I would like to participate in real projects. I know about Kaggle, but I would like to be able to discuss emerging issues with someone specifically.
Maybe someone knows in which direction you can look to get such an experience of participation? I know English fluently.

Answer 1

https://ods.ai/ - chatting in slack and discussing.

Answer 2

Have you checked recently if their channel still exists? For some reason, #ml4sg is not searched in the list of channels.