Ai, Robotics, Amping Up Agriculture: The Future and Today
Topics: Agriculture, Farming, Sales, Marketing, Startups, Funding, Launching a Business, MVP, Organic Farming, UV Lights, Regental Farming
Wondering how Ai and robots are being applied to help farms each day? THIS EVENT WAS AWESOME AND SO UPLIFTING FOR THE FUTURE!!! The trend is catching on, funds are pouring into the Agriculture sector (finally!! and it’s just begun) and amazing innovations that help us all eat are happening, right now!! In this event, we hear from four leaders of this industry, helping to lessen the amount of chemicals we use in our foods, and provide new innovations so solve some of these basic farming issues of today. They’re making our food cleaner, more eco-friendly, more cost efficient, and exciting!!
Why Attend? This is a venue I’d never been to and a topic that, of course, sounds interesting to be at least a bit caught up on. Ai is all over the place, so now we can see how it’s helping sector-by-sector. Agriculture affects us all, so we can see what small problems it’s helping to solve and what the future of farming may look like here in the USA and globally!!! So interesting and fun!!
Event Ratings: Venue (4.5/5), Food (5/5), Speaker Content (4.75/5), Networking (4/5), Likeliness to Return (4/5)… (more details below)
Photo Collage and Comments:
Notes from the Event:
The Future of Agriculture Robotics
Traveling here + Arrival:
I was already downtown and so I took my time getting here. Took the bus and this is not the most bus friendly location . They let me in early and that was good. I got the only seat with a charger and it was next to the window too. It’s like a really dramatic airplane and I got the window seat + hahaha. 8 Seats.
Their pre-event was so hype. I was loving the music because it was a fun energy and kinda surprising cause the atmosphere was so easygoing. It was super party vibes, and I think they were kinda low-key super hyped because over 100 people signed up to attend this event and it basically sold out. So I feel like they were having excitement.
Lyrics: “Girl you wanna come to my home. The way you carry yourself girl I wanna get with you cause you’s a cutie… Checking out 6 in the morning.” (I found the song here… hahaha")
Another song: “I’m bout to have a good day no matter what they say”
hahah fun vibes!
It was nice that when I got here they let me settle in early (like 45 minutes early). I just worked on my laptop.
I wrote how I was surprised no one else was even 25 minutes early??? Lol, Seattle is so funny. Seems like this ‘super sold out event’, people would show up at least 25 minutes early, at least someone. But nope, just me so far 25 min before it’s supposed to start haha. Usually I’m late.
Speeches Begin!!
Anywhere robotic, big brands you know, some tiny brands that most people will know in the future, we work with them.
“We have almost 400 consultants” says the hosts of the event. 400 consultants working at their office to give advice to innovators in tech and industry.”
“This particular event is really important for our region.”
Across the country, everyone is doing what we’re trying to do. Have an alliance, retain and create an ecosystem to grow and scale here. Retain talent and be a powerhouse in robotics here in North America.
We see people who keep coming here and want to see success so thats how it will happen.
-Current State of Agriculture:
North of 10B mouths to feed in the next 5-10 years
Figure out more eco friendly sustainable way to grow enough food to feed everyone without damaging earth too much
Robotic solutions will be the backbone of how we get everything done
We’re seeing that a change in perception, sense, how we talk about farming, not yield per actor but nutrition pre acre.
- this lines up with a lot of the businesses here tonight
Robotics are bringing in the 4th wave of agriculture. Now we don’t likely need as many pesticides, chemicals, herbicides like before.
Robotics can start to take care of this.
This fourth revolution has the potential to restore land.
Companies tonight are addressing some of the oldest problems: weeding and rock picking, and plenty more.
There are four guys here who each work at agriculture robotics businesses
INTRODUCTIONS, NAME, COMPANY, BRAG A LITTLE:
Solar powered autonous robots that help farmers and crops
Laser weeder kills weeds with lasers
In business since 2018, got the critical science develpoed early on. Thanks to PNW venture capital community to help them grow.
Agtech, not everyone saw the light
Another one of his companies had a 2B IPO!! Wow
Startegy and operations, engineering leader for farming robotics.
- Picking up rocks is so boring, he invented a robot to do it. To clear rocks from farm fields.
Rock picking!
Free farmers from the worst jobs on the farm: why rock picking? It’s pretty ubiquitous problem in richfield crops, really disruptive during critical harvest times
Lol, I just was laughing a bit every time this guy talked throughout this 2hr event, just cause the phrase “rock picking” just is so funny sounding. He says it so casually, and it’s true! What a terrible job on your back/body/hands… it’s great for robots to take this job. But, just say it outloud in multiple sentences. “rock picking’” hahah. I love it.
Guy up from California, custom disease control using light instead of chemicals
Wanted to do something to make a big impact into the world
Garage built startup.
Especially focuses on strawberries since they take take so chemicals to grow without pests.
Founders Forums… getting your business off the ground, arriving at the idea, how do you start to scale?
ANSWER / GUY 1;
Why… arriving at the right idea, why? You all landed on the cultivation side of commercial agriculture… all of you have impressive careers. You’ve all got interesting stories. How do you take all of your amazing corporate background and land in this autonomous robotics company?
The lesson is to talk with others with different backgrounds
I was talking to a farmer who I knew could afford a business, and the farmer told me about his business.. generational farmers can have 300M dollars or something. They know a lot about their business, ROI.. they know what the problems are
VC is not lately going into agriculture, not like it should be… why is it that one of the most important parts of our economy, what we do for each other (grow food), we don’t have VC money going in to make it better/safer/ faster????
The venture money is all at the coast, the crops are all the places you haven’t heard of or further away by the mountains.
There’s a geographic divide, a political cultural divide… the theory was “this is important, the venture money is making the next dog walking app or whatever” - that was blowing my mind and upsetting me at the same time.
BTW - this event was SO fantastic cause I jsut felt like it was full of people who were passionate about real challenges of today, solving them, and trying to literally make the world better NOW. I loved it.
I’d been at the forefront of Ai when working at Uber and other work… I knew Ai can solve the problem.
Lasers is something we tried and it happened to work, so it was just time to go
It was crazy to me how many industry experts who know what thy’re talking about, they told me lasers is a dumb idea, this is so stupid. Stop wasting your time and money before it totally fails. But I had it working!! We’re onto something
That was kinda it.
What I’ve seen is that the way we grow food, the amount of chemicals we apply.. it is disgustingly
80% of us have “round up” in our system, cause everything you eat is sprayed.
Laser weeded = no herbasides.
If you compare the two size by side, you will see teh deformed food that you would not want to eat - but it gets chopped up and you eat it.
The job of pulling weeds sucks, we shouldn’t have humans doing that, that’s a ridiculous job.
It’s so we’re not spraying chemicals all over the place. It’s what the pitch became.
Amazing work. He is really saving the world and food. IMO hahaha.
ANSWER / GUY 1:
Backstory: a lot of entrepreneurial journey goes into findign the right problem to solve
Get lucky to solve problems I’m interested in, but problems everyone int he world could benefit from
Stopped tinkering and solving little things (like an electric skateboard) and I found something htat would die helpful for everyone.
In ag/academia… you realize things get stuck in the cycle
He sent white papers to so many people, 3 got back to him — one invited him to go to a conference with him.
When can we use this light?
They gave him the slot to give a presentation at the event… and he improvised a speech at the event… a Roomba for the event, with this guy he met.
They knew they could buy materials, assemble, put wheels on it, and try.
They were lucky with a farm down the street in Delaware.
Lucky the farm let them test the garage robot
A local farmer let him practice, that farmer told him to get out to California
Will you take a semester off and go to California with me?
Load up the robots, drove up
Found two farmers that let them run things in the field
His only skill was grant writing, his first money in other than his own.
He got a few to pay for his Airbnb and supplies to get going.
The farmers saw immediate success (and the farmer extremely wanted their help)
The farmers were so excited for his help and asked “how much can I pay you to do this for me? Use UV light on our mildew and mold”
Learn to ask the right questions o your customers. Then you will hear exactly what they need.
Strawberries cost 100x’s more than corn.
Corn is miserable to work with compared to strawberries.
“Woah woah woah!! I work in pest control, don’t mix me in with the ‘weeds’ guys.” - the strawberry guy says 😂
ANSWER / GUY 3;
Used to work in cyber security, then wanted to:
Go into a 100% brand new industry
Wanted it to be super hard, kick his ass super hard but know he can survive
Has to be really impactful to the world, wake up each day and say “this is really freaking cool and going to motivate me”
Look for a global challenge to really latch onto.
System Dynamics: Through the lens of climate change…
Here are the industries, move the lever, and if you nmove the lever we can fight climate change
Agriculture had a huge impact, and I knew nothing about it. Sounds hard.
I wondered how much funding is going into these industries?
Ag is least funded… then I realized that sounded really hard, I wanna get into that!!
He went to a local farming incubation school. It’s a nonprofit that teaches newbies access.
Lost its fundings under USAID, etc
Local companies are struggling
Planting, seeding, wedding, harvesting…
If I had round up, I’d spray that everywhere - it was SO tough!!!!
You build empathy and talk to the growers.. it’s’ not easy!!
Organic farming is only 1% of farming!!! The rest of the USA is 99%!!!!
Working in the regenerative agriculture focus
Data is nice, but don’t you want to take action? Robots!!
ANSWER / GUY 4;
Robots, been passionate forever, but mid 90’s, robotics weren’t scaling in many industries, pre Roomba.
Coming out of grad school, writing emails to people at huge companies asking for open positions or work.
The goal is to leave behind the planet better than you found it when you’re gone
Picking up rocks is a super cool problem, it’s going to be hard to solve, but if you’re wanting to try something, let’s go to a farm and understand this problem.
The next day I get flown to a farm, they show me how the rocks are just a huge problem they dont’ have the labor to solve. They were doing a partial job, eyeballing things… but It was a tangible real technical problem for farmers.
Everything in him that was an engineer had him wanting to go home and catch stuff.
What happens when you’ve picked up all the rocks? Weeds come back, pests… but do rocks come back or will we eventually pick them all up?
Most farms have very thin topsoil…
During tillage, when fertilizing or seeding, you tend to pull up rocks.. and bedrock produces new rocks.
Everything ground engaging produces more rocks.
We pick rocks as a service, the next year the same field will have 1/3 of the density.
Rocks do keep coming up
“Good to hear, I like you guys and want to make sure you have enough runway”
Founder Anecdote:
VC once asked: what happens after we kill all of the weeds?
Starting the company in your 40’s is basically dead at that point, and during covid
The Ai wasn’t trained well enough to fly into the weeds, so the training took a lot of work. It got stuck in mud, stuck in weeds… you forget there’s a positive end (and you think it may not even all work in time, may end at the end of the season)
It’s an interesting bonding experience
Agriculture is super fun and you end up doing a lot of stuff in the physical real world where it’s hot and dirty and tough… it’s the people who persevere and run through, they make it
“If you have a clean robot I don’t believe you. I don’t believe it can actually work.”
Dusty, dirty, get it out there! Build on the farm. We got on the farm right away… can we launch the first thing we built, break it a bunch, have a good relationship and get the farmer to help
Build the customer relationship right away. We didn’t even have an office, we just had a high tunnel, we just camped in there. The farmer would leave at ht end of the day and we were in the high tunnel living and breathing.
You have to treat the environment like it’s yours. Robots can do a lot of damage. So we have a lot of experience breaking 6-7 shovels fixing things we damaged.
We tried to fix it and work hard on the farm with them
The tips from the farmer separate from a tech project to something commercially viable and real
The insights understand the problems that are no easy… the operation and practical problems.
First time founder, when you’re getting started, just say yes to opportunities… go to every event, any uncomfortable situation you can put yourself in, but years later the most important people were from these things.
Farming is really, really hard work. There is such unsaid appreciation for growers and farmers and people trying to help them. There are certain things you can’t describe unless you just get your hands on it. People who have GRIT to their personality and know the no matter what they’re getting it done
“What am I doing with my life? Will any of this make any of a difference at all?”
This is Kelly now talking for a second… I met people at this event who were recently laid off. So, a lot of them said that at the the next job they do they want it to be good and impactful for the world
Empathy, appreciation, and knowledge of the difficulty of these tasks
Initially you go in with so much optimism… but you start to learn why the world is really extremely hard and complex to deal with. It needs a lot of confidence and creativity to keep going
You’ve gotta spend as much time as it takes out in the field.You’ve gotta live… gotta live in the environment. You develop empathy, even for the machine.
Hardware is 100x’s harder than any software. Software is mental hard.. but hardware is hard. You can’t just stay up overnight and fix stuff. You have so many constraints, you can’t just copy stuff around and modulize it overnight. Hardware is 100x’s harder
Customer Development + Product Development:
Systems, process, and cost engineering in exercise
Developing solutions with customers… what solutions did they have but were resistant to having?
Never once met a farmer who would prefer spraying over lights.
We got good at running through all the expenses a farmer may currently have, we got good at understanding that and then showing how our ROI beat that. Make our case, make our point, show up with things that make sense, use the words that they use, and then show the ROI. When that pans out they trust us and tell their neighbors. Telling their neighbors is where it comes from.
I saw it in my neighbor’s farm.
There are some tough farmers, one guy was trying to come up with every way except paying, but it didn’t happen. The next time I saw him, he asked, “Where are you from? Are you a liberal?” The third time, he wrote me a check for 3M.
This is about to bring so much value to farmers
Started with a very small robot, using a few hundred bucks. But if I wanted to cover as much as needed, I’d need to build 100 robots…
So focused on the science, not mass producing…
From the start he said he needs a business to work for him… build it to cover acreage
You need to build huge robots like a tractor… wide like a sprayer to make money. You can’t make money off half an acre or full acre
Built the robots for the farms of today instead of asking farmers to modify their solution.
Bet on the farmer and the farmer’s opinion.
Built off 3 wheels cause 4 was more expensive. Maybe not a good longterm solution, but it got it so we could show results.
Show how something can work for 10 acres
Took everything and put it all on a large huge tractor
We found a design that worked and something we could scale commercially, then talked to the farmer about how to add more value and make the company strong to solve many problems in the future.
Robot size matters… able to withstand winds?
Size consideration… Rugged and terrain availability? How did you consider the size to build? And how tough to make it?
Lots of complaints about size tbh. In all seriousness, th vision is to generate earth with robotics and Ai
Solar power = natural constraint of what you can and can not do based on the power budget from the solar panels.
We would love to shoot lasers and do lights, maybe next year… instead, intentionally create the most hyper efficient version possible
My cofounder is from Tesla and he says “the best hardware is no hardware”
Robots that can run without having to connect with the cloud is the goal!
Year one on the field, 2024 - built 50 robots and deployed it at scale. The first thing to do was to convince farmers that a robot fleet can withstand the weather, traverse through mud, and work from morning to night - the entire team. And we did it.
A singular unit may make you scoff, but an entire fleet operating in unison is a pretty cool sight to see
Data as a Topic & Artificial Intelligence:
Ai, LLM, etc… how do they go to play within their solutions?
Data doesn’t always help, sometimes it’s too much… you gotta figure out how to leverage the data that the customers provide and collect.
Unique perception with rocks:
Lots of data, drone mapping image capture and lots of high resolution data
But in farming and spacial resolution, you want to kill them young. You want to kill the weeds young, you need high resolution.
Time resolution, longitudinal, its lacking… there is value for farmers to continually map and have insight on what’s going on with their farms.
This is yet to come, constant data on the farm: What is this data? How discrete is it?
How can you get mapping and image acquisition out there all continuous?
The important thing for everyone… figuring out how to organize all your data so it can be useful.
Sometimes the farmer has a wifi network, sometimes they don’t.
Starlink has been a game changer. We have starlink in all of our robots and we upload the data continuously to the data center. The centers figure out the most important images and label them.
SHow: severence.. just tell them that their job is just to match images and pictures all the time.
They have 40 peopel in India identifying pictures for them.
How do we communicate with robots, get data, and reliably create that infrastructure?
Ensure the success of extracting data and communicating with the fleet well
You must have an efficient machine learning pipeline in the cloud. How the robot is actively learning behind the scenes to learn what is garbage and what is good.
When you ask the customer what would be useful, they often don’t know.
Sometimes they want stuff simple like “count of plants”
They could tell them how many plants they had… so they gave them all that data, but then they didn’t even know what to do with that data.
Does it really help or does it just make you feel good?
Be rigorous about what you’re going to do with it
WHY DO YOU WANT IT?
WHAT WOULD YOU PAY FOR IT?If there is value to something, you should be able to align some value to it.
You must focus when you’re a small team and you must make choices. You can only focus on what the farmer will pay for.
Data is useful from a commercial standpoint cause you can tag things that are less interesting than crop health or nunmber… you can say “your sprinkler knocked over and is flooding that section” it’s EXTREMLY helpful for them. It makes your product more sticky.
- those little extra insights that you’re not paying extra for… people love little things
For some of this w do need a lot of power, but we can’t even figure out where to charge stuff and we have no electric system
PRICING YOUR PRODUCTS
How do you price things? We still don’t know hahaha. But now we can let you try based on volume and tier… bucks per acre - then they can tell you ow many rocks, what size, and how much to clean it up.
Then after the rock pamper, understanding the intensity of the problem, they can quote a service for rocks to be picked up. Almost at half a million acres we’ve picked up so far of rocks.
We need a price point that makes sense for every farmer.
Customer discovery will help you figure this out.
Farming is a service.. so you have peak coincidence demand
The business model of a fleet is so interesting
But robots for service is a poor business model but everyone keeps doing it, but its a mistake
Don’t do it
The machines, as the company, you’re not going to make your COGS for multiple seasons/years… you hadnstrung your growth by hiw much moeny you can put into your machines as a service, once you deploy the capital you gotta way to get money to buy more machines.
Coincidence demand… everyone needs it Wednesday after the rain
Selling machines is so simple and it makes sense
-People selling things makes sense. Something you purchase. Very few things in your life do you do as a service that are physical, maybe none.
-”Robots as service doesn’t work and I’ve seen so many companies fail”
Farmers have a million economic incentives not to make robots a service.
It’s not good for the farmers because the optimization is getting small drips back to the other people.
Not under water, keep building
-Generally agree that agriculture land is spread across thousands of miles, so how can a service crew maintain a fleet
90% of the world’s 2nd largest strawberry market it all driving distance from his location. He has a huge oppporutniy with strawberries. Land and expand approach!!
Pest and disease is 1/10th of what thy can provide.
The next version is so much better
It’s nice having something you have a little control over.
Crops and regions are specific… potato farmers don’t know anything about carrots.
“But, you’re a farmer! you shoudl know about everything!!”
But even carrots in the midwest are grown different than California.
Don’t say this is how you’ll do it for the entire country, it doesn’t make sense.
AUDIENCE Q&A
Are you only marketing to ONLY farmers?
Yeah. Cause you know it best
Spent several months in DC tryign to help them get healthier food
All the care about is corn and soy.. that’s 100% the situation
It’s all they care about… not lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower… nothing else. It’s as bad as you could guess.
We talked to several groups in there, but no… we don’t talk to them. Just straight to the farmers.
It’s funny, I talked to the USDA yesterday, there’s so much uncertainty.
Even there, they don’t know what’s going on.
Everything we know of the institutions is shaking.
Looking for a way to introduce: reduction of chemicals, conservation tillage, precision agriculture.
Even within the administration, there is in-house conflict and debate: RFK’s MAHA has an opinion, the USDA has an opinion… no one knows
The politics of right now are appropriate to bring into the conversations. Feel free to keep brinign up some of those sensitive questions.
Can your robots work in the night with night-vision goggles?
- we have lighting on the robots and the night is good for perception of rocks surprisingly
Night perception is even better at night.
So, yeah, the autonomous machines can operate at night.
WHERE ARE YOU MANUFACTURING?
Used to be through Detroit. World vendors… but, as of 3 months ago, now Eastern Washington has the manufacturing in our own facility.
Quality is going up, time predictability is going up… seeing people building your machines, when they have equity and ownership, things just go better all the way through
90% of their energy is hybrid enery. Most is just from a couple miles away, so it’s nearby, relatively cheap, and green!!
Having engineers go see the farms, it’s invaluable!! It’s better than contract manufacturing.
We’d have to FaceTime them, I guess. There are benefits to being instate and domestic.
Manufacture is within driving distance of all of the farms with 30 years of experience making things like this
They also know tricks they learned along the way, so they know small tricks of the trade.
(I feel like this guy and all these guys are doing incredible work and like destiny put a lot in their hands)
Have a good partners to know how to make things affordable. As few as possible
Local allows the complexity to be in-house.
Manufacturing in Washington proudly and want to keep it in house, not overseas…
All of them aspire to source everything in the USA.
Even cranes are now considered to be cyber security threats
Does the MADE IN AMERICA stamp need to be on thigns for you?
How important is the Made in America model for you?
It helps a lot. The audience reaction gets farmers excited that it’s local and a sense of local pride
Shipping is more simple, cheaper, no weird tariffs… its all right here
The exception is that all of the electronics and PCP’s are coming from Taiwan. I’d love to see us get back to the point in the USA where we can produce our own electronics. Even chips aside, we’re not building fast as scale
Actually its maybe dangerous that we can’t build our own electronics
It’s a real problem, it’s related. We need to manufacture our own stuff, make our own electronics, and grow our own food.
The food systems are so globalized, so how do we sell worldwide at the level you’re looking to support?
At this point we’re doing it globally.
You don’t need to grow your own food, but you need the ability to do it, as a country.
But you’re always going to want your artichokes from Argentina or whatever.
“Three people crash on a desert island somewhere. The first goes, I”m going to to beach and own all the fish, the second goes, he’s got the fish I’m goin got get all the coconuts… he says: you idiots, I’m going to to take all the gold… now who is going to starve in this equation?”
- don’t lose the ability to take care of yourself in a situation.
Why do we grow local wheat but not sell it in our own state? There are fundamental system problems that are broken here.
Our global mission to regenerate earth, you’ve gotta think about our use of chemicals. It’s not an American problem, it’s everywhere.
A view to ban it, just take it away… no. It’s going to crash the economy of the world. It woudl happen if we banned everything available today… but inspiring an exciting is what we’re building to give people choice. More affordable amazing alternatives.
As an early stage cash burning company how do you focus your priorities?
- get to commercialization as soon as possible
“If you’re not embarrassed by your first product, you waited too long.”
What’s the fastest way to profitablilty with reasonable margins?
How can you scale?
You also need an extremely good product manager.. and they’ll tell you the MVP.
They will tell you what it needs, exactly the minimum amount of features the customer is tellign you they need. Then you share it.
You can’t come up with the MVP cause you think of more than it necessary.
Understand the customer and industry, but even that may not be enough.
Don’t do unnecessary things.
Don’t think you can drink milk limitlessly from the VC’s teets - unless you’re carbon energy
Vertical Farming: Tens of billions of dollars swiped away from vertical farming. Producing food near consumption point may reduce the need for travel, packaging, coolers.. but then you need to micromanage all the nutrients and plants with machines humans and computers.
We forget that taking food and throwing it on the ground makes more food. 😂
If the opportunity is there today, grab it!! Today is big opportunity to do these task… you dont need to reinvent the wheel bringing things indoors.
Many crops are grown indoors for a reason - tomato hot houses, etc… markets where you can use robots works… but on the flip side, if a crop is growing well outdoors and no one brought it indoors, there is probably a reason most of it is growing outdoor.
The sun is free!!! From carbon-free sources. IT’s a free lunch!!
Soil is very complex. A microsystem with micronutrents. Recreating it is not easy, so in orhter words, you gotta meet people where they are
Regenerative farming: less chemicals and less disrupting the ground.
We’re on the farm with the secret mission to do this and restore the earth.
Over time we get trust… no farmer wants to spray more and naturally we help them progress
The brand is the brand and the product changes over the seasons
Lately they need even more chemicals cause things are becoming stronger, so now these light / UV solutions are a benefit to the world.
LLM will be good when you want to talk with your farm and learn the status. Ask your farm how things are going- talk to the machine.
Conference “Overall Rating” Further Elaboration:
VENUE - 4.5/5
Allow me to Elaborate: Well, this place is really far from my place and not super public transit friendly… besides that, totally great. I had a good seat right by the window - even got to use a charger! And the room itself was perfect size for the turnout. It was the office building of an innovation consulting firm and it was cool that they were hosing events in their office lobby, kinda. It’s fun to see business put on community events.
FOOD - 5/5
Allow me to Elaborate: Okay, this was wild, but ‘Taco Time’ sponsored tacos!! And, like, a lot of food for free!! It turns out ‘Taco Time’ loves sourcing food intentionally and so they are literally hyped about this project. They have a reputation for caring, and donated food. Wild, right!? I’m like, okay Taco Time… ??? I’m all about businesses that have a heart and soul. It’s so rare these days (but I think the tides are changing :) )
SPEAKER CONTENT - 4.5/5
Room for Improvement: Wow! I am so uplifted from the exciting innovations coming our way from the agricultural world. I thought everyone on the panel was interesting and some had strong personality which were fun to listen to. Everyone had a cool story, too, and the moderator was great. The only problem was that the speeches lasted over 2 hours in total - or maybe just at 2 hours. I got there early, so I was there like over 4 hours in that chair… so I really was having an itch to mov around… so, when they were a bit rumbly at the end and asked “one last question” and then more questions at the end, I was getting a little impatient. But at the same time, gimme a break!! It was super useful and interesting info, so - I mean, I’m lucky for it. But.. still, could have been like 15 minutes shorter, but also, it was kinda perfect in some ways too. Cause then it made networking that much more fun and deserved, alongside the surprise free food.
NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES - 4/5
Room for Improvement: Actually, I feel a change in me and lately I’m the tiniest bit chattier. Hahaha. Well, intentionally too. But this event was no more “networkign heavy” than the others, but maybe the surprise free food at the end, teh great (and long) talk, the setup of the room, the fact it’s in the middle of nowhere… I think I chatted after for maybe an hour at most - which is extremely rare for me these days. But it was kinda a great event cause you realize everyone there had this theme of wanting to make the world a better place and leave it behind better than they found it - or at least all the speakers (and myself). So it was this really interesting common goal that I didn’t realize woudl be shared… so that attracted a nice (and semi-intelligent) crowd, also interested in Ai… so, yeah!! It was easy to find a person or two to get along with and chat for a bit.
LIKELINESS TO RETURN - 4/5
Room for Improvement: This place is really far from me. Public transit it’s like 2 hours each way… and lyft/uber its like $65. So I actually hitchiked half the way home, I got a ride with someone I hardly met there hahaha. Then got a ride to the train and then took the train home and then a lyft for $5 at the very last stretch. So.. yeah, it’s just super far. But, I’d say it’s worth it. But realistically, that’s why it’s a 4/5 hahaha. Cause it takes work to get there. 😁
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time.
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
