Pitching GeenieEats, Building an Automated 911 Chatbot, and Powering up the Grid ⚡️
Vinaya Sharma | February Newsletter 🌦🌈
Hey! If you’re new here, I’m Vinaya and welcome to Bits and Bytes! I’m a 17 y/o emerging technology enthusiast hoping to change the world! 🚀
In this monthly newsletter, I share bits and bytes of my learnings to help you grow from my key insights! 🌱 Stay tuned for bits of self-improvement techniques, and bytes of groundbreaking tech innovations.
February has been all about pushing myself to my limits physically, mentally, and emotionally. Check it out!👇
Pitching GeenieEats at DECA 🎤
For the past 3 months, my friends Sia, Sussane and I have been researching and creating the mobile application GeenieEats, a food marketplace filled with local businesses where restaurants post leftover meals in order to make profits on food that might go to waste, and customers can purchase affordable meals.
This month we finally got to present our work to an industry professional during a 15-minute pitch competition where we dug deeper into the marketing plan, financial analysis and the actual application itself.
I’ve been working on the GeenieEats mobile application for a long time now and so it was incredibly rewarding to see the judge’s face light up each time we went above and beyond expectations. We started off with an engaging demo/skit and brought our business knowledge to the table throughout the rest of the presentation. Although we didn’t win, there’s this great feeling knowing you put your best foot forward and that you beat your own expectations as well.
I originally built GeenieEats with React Native and Firebase when I began my web development journey almost two years ago now. I knew nothing about React yet I was excited by the idea of building an app and so I just dove into it. This was my first time really pushing myself to self-learn, use Youtube tutorials, and Stack Overflow to troubleshoot and remove bugs, so this project holds a very special place in my heart as it helped me realize you really can build/do anything you want no matter how hard it may seem.
This was more than a year ago when I built the V1, but my momentum didn’t end there, I created a V2 that was better designed and organized and included more features, this time made with React and MongoDB. These 2 versions of GeenieEats were the first full-stack applications I built out and I ended up winning a regional award in the 2021 Ingenius+ competition for it. By spending some time cleaning up the app for DECA, it has really inspired and motivated me to keep letting my curiosity loose and exploring anything of my interest. You really never know where you might end up.
Streamlining the 911 Dispatch process with NLP 🚨
In my last newsletter, you caught a glimpse of my Transformers deep dive, ever since ChatGPT generative AI has been in and I’ve got to admit even I’ve jumped in on to the hype. Apps, websites, startups and more built on top of the Open.AI APIs are taking off and I finally started my own project as well, Triage.AI an AI-based chatbot prototype and robust management system to answer, assist, triage and streamline call center processes until a real dispatcher becomes available.
Safety is a number one priority, and living in the GTA I’ve heard numerous situations where relief efforts were delayed by emergency services, the most crucial moment where every second matters. Due to staffing shortages, there have been instances where fewer than 10 operators are available to handle 911 calls for Toronto, a city with nearly three million residents, leading to wait times ranging from 2 to 10 minutes.
Knowing the Toronto dispatch center failed to meet their minimum standard for answering calls almost every day last year I knew I wanted to apply NLP to assist and optimize the workflows, so I did a ton of research before finally settling in on the project of an automated chatbot that would handle incoming phone calls.
I started off by identifying an improved dispatch process, then creating mockups, until finally coding and creating the build. Theres obviously a lot of moving components and a lot of skills I learnt to make this project a reality, so I put out tons of videos and articles to help you follow along with my journey. Feel free to check out the content if you are interested in learning more!
Check out my Triage.AI Medium article to learn about how I built an AI system to revolutionize 911 Calls. This articles takes you through the design process to understand how I broke down the problem and choose my key features of the app.
You can find a general overview of my project and a quick demo in this youtube video.
And you can find the github repo here. If you want to see an in depth walk through of the code check out this video to learn more!
And if you are interested in the AI behind my project, watch this video where I explain exactly what's happening behind these APIs.
Watts the Plan?: Modernizing the Electric Grid for The Future 👩🎨
For the more recent second half of February, I’ve been focused on solving climate change. Climate change is the biggest issue of the 21st century and so I went on a first principles approach deep dive to identify what’s the greatest contributor to climate change and how I can make the biggest impact. Right away it became obvious, Energy contributes to about 3/4 of all greenhouse gas emissions and so I've been diving deep into the world of the electric grid.
The more research I did, the more urgent the problem began to look. From an increased power demand to integrating more complex decentralized renewables to extreme weather events taking a toll, our century-old grid needs upgrades fast.
But when I looked into what upgrades are happening I realized it’s complicated. It's not just a matter of upgrading old equipment and adding more power sources. The grid needs to be balanced at all times, and any changes to its configuration can have far-reaching consequences. It's a bit like trying to untangle a massive knot without making it worse.
Another issue is that the process of planning and implementing grid upgrades is incredibly slow. It can take years of research, design, and regulatory approval before anything actually happens. And that's assuming there's enough political will and funding to make it happen at all.
But the fact remains that we need to take action to modernize our grid and make it more resilient to the challenges of the 21st century. And since no one else was up for the challenge I've been working on a solution to make grid upgrades easier and faster to implement, PowerPlanner.AI. My integrated design platform uses simulation software to test out different scenarios and strategies without actually messing with the real thing. It's like playing Jenga on your phone - same rush, no actual risk of toppling the tower.
I will be speaking on PowerPlanner.AI next week at South By South West thanks to TKS and I can’t wait for both the talk and a break from winter weather. ☀️ Definitely keep an eye out for loads of updates on the trip!
Closing Thoughts
This month has been jam-packed for me and there has barely been a moment’s rest. I would love to sit around and complain and if we’re close I probably did, so thanks for consolidating my rants. However, after talking with Skylor my TKS director I’ve recognized I choose to be busy, I choose to be interesting, and I choose to have these cool opportunities. Alongside DECA, building a 911 dispatch chatbot, planning PowerPlanner.AI and preparing a talk, I’ve also been working on a consulting challenge with Amazon Alexa (which you will get loads of updates on next month), doing calculus homework, working out and sometimes going to school.
I think we give up too soon a lot of the time and we don’t understand our full potential, and I’ve been a culprit of this too. Its important to not overdo it and take breaks of course, but when its tough I like to remember that people like Elon Musk were probably not complaining about how they spent long nights coding, building a PayPal prototype, brainstorming new features for SpaceX rockets, and pitching to investors when they were younger. And everyone is human like us, so we can do it too.
I know this month’s update is much shorter than usual - currently practicing a talk and packing my luggage, but I’ll continue posting many more updates throughout March and there’s loads of content linked above if you miss me. That’s it for now!
Best newsletter I read so far in February ! 🙌🏼