This week and next, I'm out in SF! I'm meeting with a bunch of colleagues and going to plenty of tech meetups.
It's incredibly fascinating how important proximity to others is - when you're working on hard problems, it's necessary to be as close as you can to people who get it. It becomes a virtuous cycle of motivation, drive, and ultimately flywheels you to your goals just that much quicker.
One of the highest ROI things I did this week was literally downloading Luma and going to as many events as I could.
I went to hackathons, robotics events, startup pitches, founder roast sessions, informal coffee talks, you name it - and I was pleasantly surprised.
Normally, I didn't think of myself as an event butterfly, but then again, I've never been to SF events like this before either - it's my first time out here, and it really did prove to me that who you surround yourself with matters.
The protein binder pipeline I mentioned many articles back raised a huge amount of stunned eyebrows - its one thing to talk in circles about "efficiencies for enterprises with AI", and another thing entirely to attempt improving the baseline of human existence with hard science. People that are working on really hard problems, I've found, are very well-welcomed in SF.
I'll be back after next week in full recovered splendor. I have so much to share after all this.
(Here's some excerpts from an on-device local AI event earlier this week, late in the evening and recovering from jet lag. Photos by Peter Liu: http://www.peterliuphotos.com/)
Yours truly!
Be well,
Michael Kirsanov