Basecamp Bangalore

… was so much fun!

Over the years of being in tech, I have seen Bengaluru take the top spot in terms of being a tech magnet but I just thought that it had more techies than Mumbai. What I hadn’t counted on was the fact that this agglomeration has reached and passed critical mass and has turned into something else entirely. Bengaluru - your energy, your risk-attraction and your talent - it is just wonderful to see.

Over my week or so over there, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people. I met a young man who had designed a chip that would do 50K tokens per second. He said with this speed it becomes possible to tell a chip what chip it is and it will write its own code. Absolutely bonkers. I met another team jousting with the rare heights of philosophy as they try to formalise the legal system. Incredibly hard problems taken on with gusto and a sense of mission that is humbling.

I met my clients and many candidates and I realised that recruiting is not something an AI will ever do. I have often wondered what makes something ‘human’, and I think I have arrived at a satisfactory definition - you can see their soul. In short, human is what humans say is human. And recruiting is human. An AI can get you some of the way, but not all the way, not in any meaningful way.

I got invited to judge the Sarvam Hackathon and I met several world-beating builders, total sharks, forces of nature.

I got invited to an afterparty where I found the nerds who could play guitar and sing. I have been promised there will be more music at Basecamp 2.0. Can’t wait.

I put a call out at midnight for a sermon on emacs and a venue and 10 people just showed up like magic!

Basecamp gonna be huge. You could tell from v1 that this was going to be Bengaluru’s festival for years to come. It was such a revelation that I have decided that I must, must must spend more time in The ‘Uru. Expect to see a lot more of me there.