World Government Summit in Dubai

Just came back from an amazing trip to Dubai! Our team made it to the top 3 finalists for the WorldGov Hack hosted by the Government of UAE and got invited to the award ceremony at the annual World Government Summit in Dubai.

Our hack was to use AI to detect microbes in water. It currently uses a digital microscope and laptop running the algorithm But the idea is to eventually have it all run on a smartphone (with a specialized camera attachment). NGOs could use this in the field to cheaply (essentially free) and quickly check for water contaminated with E. coli or other pathogens.

We won overall first place! Here we are with the Deputy Prime Minister of UAE:

With the organizers

 

Of all the conferences I’ve been to, this one definitely tops them all. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rub shoulders with world leaders and discuss public policy ideas in a surprisingly open forum. Topics ranged from financial security, income divide, health, AI and job disruption, and blockchain. It seems the urgency with AI has reached to such a level that Dubai now has a Minister of AI! We were lucky to get invited to an exclusive dinner hosted by the Minister, where we got to meet with the co-founder of Skype and Jürgen Schmidhuber, the creator of LSTM.

Dinner with all folks AI. The Burj al Arab 7-star hotel in the back

 

The conference itself hosted a bunch of talks on various topics, almost all led by a variety of world policy leaders.

India’s Prime Minister Modi gave the keynote speech
With the head of World Health Organization
With the one and only, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson!
With K. Radhakrishnan, the Director of ISRO who launched India’s Mars Orbiter Mission!
With the Deputy Director of India’s Aadhaar program. India won the award for most effective govt digital application!
With CNN’s Richard Quest

 

The gorgeous Venue:

Where it all went down. The Madinat Jumeirah resort
Exploring the art installations

 

They treated us well 🙂

Fancy everything
An Emirati feast

 

We had some time in the evenings to visit the obligatory Dubai tourist spots.

The Burj Khalifa. Those are not fireworks but neon lights on the ground

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View from the highest man made structure
The Old Spice Souk (market). never seen so many spices. They are all imported from other countries for trade here.
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Gogohire goes to China

Gogohire was invited to participate in SVIEF Chengdu 2016 investor conference. Amazing trip included fun times with Pandas, soul searching with the Buddha, making friends, and learning some Chinese! Bonus stopover in Seoul.

The Venue in Chengdu
The Gogohire booth
Gogohire got interviewed for Chinese TV!
With fellow entrepreneur and exhibitor all the way from Delhi
Variety of tech on display, including giant drones
One of the biggest buildings in the world — at Intercontinental Chengdu Global Center. Its even got a fake beach inside
Leshan Giant Buddha is giant
Baby panda bred at Chengdu Research Base Of Giant Panda Breeding.
Stopover in Seoul on my way back. Changing of the guard — at Gyeongbokgung.

 

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Code for India 2015

Yesterday, as part of Code for India 2015, we got invited to see Indian PM Modi and Google CEO Sundar Pichai address the Digital India initiative. Our team built Krishi, an app that uses SMS to notify farmers in a timely manner of weather alerts and crop planting and harvesting information. One of the few times I’ve done an all nighter but it was worth it to get front stage seats to the ceremony. Best hackathon so far!

PM Modi and Google CEO Sundar Pichai
Tech Mahindra CEO talking about Indians and entrepreneurship.
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Good Email Club featured on TechCrunch front page!

My hack Good Email Club just got featured on the TechCrunch front page! We built an app to surface the most positive/happy emails in your inbox every morning so you can start your day feeling positive.

More project details at DevPost.

Right after my partner JeanCarl pitched on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon 2015, we were interviewed backstage by TechCrunch writer Anthony Ha about our hack and how we got into hackathons. Check out his post here.

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We even ended up winning the Yammer Prize (4 Xboxes) and 2nd place with Microsoft Outlook for $1,500.

Finally made it onto TechCrunch. Next up, getting Gogohire on TechCrunch…once we’re ready for a major push…which is coming soon 🙂

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NexCall wins Nexmo Hackathon 1st Place

I’ve always been annoyed after talking to my friends for an hour that they were on Verizon and I was on AT&T. That means I just used up 60 anytime minutes! As soon as I saw this API by Nexmo, I realized its potential to solve this problem. With NexCall, always be in the know in real-time and save your minutes!

Download NexCall from your Android phone and install it.

App is dead simple to use – just install the app and it runs in the background! Every time you get a call, it will let you know right away if the caller is on the same mobile network as you, helping you save your precious out-of-network mobile minutes and charges. It will also tell you which country the call is from so you can help avoid international call charges and learn something new!

Ended up winning first place and an Amazon Echo and Philips Hue connected light bulbs! Can’t wait to hack those! 🙂

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