My 2 cents: The best way to improve your domain in this field is by doing. I don’t see any way around it.
And to start ‘doing’, I would like to recommend 2 options:
Option 1: Kaggle.com. Get into kaggle.com and engage with one of the competitions. Start with an easy one. You will learn a lot, not only from attempting to create a solution but also, and specially, from others.
Option 2: Omdena.com . Register and apply to one of the projects. Again, pick one that you fill is at this point within your reach. You may or may not be selected to one of the Omdena projects. It takes a few weeks before they tell you. But when you get in one of these projects, you’ll have again an opportunity to practice and develop your skills, and to learn from other while doing.
Kaggle is an immediate step. Omdena may take longer.
Once you get your hand more ‘dirty’, may be ideas will start to flow for your own projects.
Note: I wrote the above from my own experience. Right now I am enganged in on project in Kaggle and another project in Omdena, and it has made an incredible impact in my domain of the field.
What do you think?
Juan