as i was surfing through luma, eventsbrite and similar applications, i found this interesting hackathon.
it’s a marketing hackathon and i had soo much in my head.
one, it’s happening in san francisco.
and two, it’s marketing ‘hackathon’
so what’s rolling in my mind was the usage of AI in marketing and so the Hackathon.
it’s pretty straight forward. sounds interesting. i’m in.
i thought all the folks over there would bring out different techniques, tools, crazy ideas and all sorts of that. so i’m jacked up to interact with all these folks and learn what ever i could.
well, it was not exactly what i thought it would be. but it was fun and ofc i had a good time.
the whole vibe & experience pushed my thought of the AI bubble a little further.
i’ll talk about two things here.
one, the whole concept of this and these kinds of hackathons.
two, the push of the thought of AI bubble we are living in.
one.
the hackathon concept was simple.
bunch of non profit organizations with in coordination with american marketing association and golden gate university hosted an event called “marketing hackathon” in order for the non profits to get back on to their feet, get some traction online & offline. they basically want people to visit their places.
about 35-40 people showed up, we were divided into 6 groups, each got a non profit to work with and were told what they were facing with. we had about 3 hours to come up with an idea, a strategy, design anything that we could, make a presentation and present it.
our team worked with SS Jeremiah O'Brien, it was one of the ships from the times of world war II which is still operational (only for tourist purposes twice a year) other wise it sits on the pier 39 in san francisco for people to visit for a price of $45.
they are not getting as much of the traffic as of the last year. we came up with some cool ideas. like we noticed their socials were not operational, gave a strategy, i redesigned their website (used lovable) and helped here and there technically and gave a presentation.
went well. but it kept me thinking of this is actually a very smart way of getting a set of people to work on your unique case and get to a strategy to implement. pretty much like a mini consultancy for almost at no cost.
well yeah, they can ask chatgpt as well but the people who are working over there are in their 50’s and 60’s. it would be a back and forth process with chatgpt and ai usually overwhelms by dumping too much information and too many things to do. and almost all of us already visited the place already before, we know the surroundings and could try giving a decent strategy understanding their budget constrains.
two.
i strongly felt that the tech bros are living in the ai bubble. like if you are on x (twitter) or watching closely of the AI labs & some interesting AI startups doing, you’d see new models, new features, new techniques, new ways of doing things, and would feel like there is just not enough time or a capacity to know or learn about all these and would also feel like you’re lagging behind. fomo hunting you.
but, if you step aside, get into different fields (even in the silicon valley) the adaptation curve is slow. very slow. like not lotta folks out of tech hardly uses ai in their daily lives for study, work or in general. felt strange to see that in san francisco. but it’s normal.
the tech bros are in the bubble for sure. the transformation of the world being ai first will take time.
and btw, they also gave me a certificate. cute.
