WEEK # 3 – Startup Experience

WELCOMING ROBOT

At the beginning of the week we had our CEO Rob Nail talking to us about Robots, where we are with the technology and where we are going. We learned about the advances in Robot Prosthetics, robotic surgery, textile robots, drones, robotic helpers (telepresence). Wesley the NAO Robot welcomed us to the class as you can see in the short video below!

BUILDING ROCKETS

One of the activities we did this week was to build a rocket. We had to aim for the highest launch and also we had to put an egg inside the rocket. The idea was that the egg couldn’t break and each team was competing for the highest altitude as well. Our team was the Foxtrot Team, we had no idea how to build a rocket but we did it!… we achieved 78ft and we put a parachute to our egg so it didn’t break! Below are some photos of the process!

GIC PRESENTATIONS

Wednesday evening we had every Global Impact Competition winner from their respectives countries present their winning ideas. I had a chance to present my Sea Level Rise project to all my fellow participants and I got to see a lot of bright ideas from all the other winners. It was very inspiring. Here are some photos of us presenting to the class…

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LATE NIGHT DATA SCIENCE WORKSHOP

And of course, because our days are not long enough! we also have late night workshops… in this case we learned about Data Science, data mining and using big data analytics for any type of project. Below you see us, at 11pm in the library still eager to learn!

STARTUP EXPERIENCE

At the end of the week we had a Start-up Weekend experience. Where we were divided into teams to build a startup company and pitch our ideas by the end of two days. It was an intense 38 hours of brainstorming ideas, business models, market validation, fun prototyping at midnight.

Below are some photos of us prototyping in the kitchen.          Our awesome team from left to right in the photo below: Me, Anita from Norway, Federico from Argentina, Sidney from Brazil and Justin from Taiwan.

FUN FACT

Hangar One is our Eiffel Tower here at NASA. Its one of the world’s largest freestanding structures and its a historic landmark in Silicon Valley. One of the ZERO TOLERANCE rules at Singularity University is that we CANNOT climb it…. BUT! …. nobody said anything about picnic with cheese and wine after a long week! 🙂