Rise Finalist Day, BuildSpace Game Shows, C2 Montreal, and the CWE Gala

Vinaya Sharma | May Newsletter 🚊🪅

Jun 03, 2023

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.

May has helped me better understand what “enjoying the process” can actually look like. May has been filled with soo many new relationships and new experiences that have unlocked soo many new opportunities. I could try coming up with some catchy headline but all I really want to say is thank you to everyone who bet on me this past little bit, May has been a blast - I’ve had loads of fun and yet I’ve also grown a ton. 👇

RISE Finalist Day ❤️

The month started off great getting to attend my RISE Finalist Day where I got to meet with and work with some incredible fellow Rise Finalists around the world!

I had a blast learning and hearing about everyone’s RISE projects, challenges, and crazy life experiences. I’m so glad I got to meet many of you and I can’t wait to work together in the future!

MoodSpace makes the BuildSpace Game Show 🥳

If you read my last newsletter you saw that I’ve been on a sprint for the past bit building MoodSpace - a Chrome extension to help you set and reach your goals.

This month I finished up any last features I wanted to add to the extension and then focused on cleaning up some bugs and UI/styling concerns. These are some of the key features I ended up with.

Although I never got around to doing too much marketing I ended up with more than 300 users and a lot of super sweet messages about people using MoodSpace to kickstart their personal development journies. Thank you to everyone that was an early adopter and gave me feedback and advice during the build!

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even made an amazing review of the extension!

I then learned that I was selected as 1 of 32 that remained to move on to finals from the 7,500 that started in the buildspace competition. The winner would take $100k.

I created my demo videos that would be played during the live voting including both the main features and the process of building MoodSpace. I only ended up making it to the top 16 but the insane community support I’ve gotten during this competition is a win for me!

If you want to check out MoodSpace or know someone that can benefit from it, it’s still live on the Chrome web store here!

Presenting my projects in Energy at C2 Montreal

C2 invited me and 3 other TKS students to speak about our innovations in climate tech and all I can say is the experience was surreal. I already mentioned all this on LinkedIn but here’s some much-needed appreciation for the people that made this experience amazing!

Thank you Mathieu Gratton Leclaire for your invaluable project advice, and Francois Tremblay for sharing your inspiring founder journey. David S. Bennahum your support means a ton, Lori Conley, and Jay Gilbert, thanks for betting on me, and Geneviève Rousseau our enlightening discussion on combating climate change was incredible.

Thanks, C2 and TKS for this opportunity, Navid, Skylor, Kirk, and Aatik for all of the preparation, and Shanzeh, Viola, Anh, Jacob, Theo, Markus, and Santiago for this amazing experience!

pre-stage fear -> enjoying it on stage -> finally relaxed while celebrating Viola's 14th!!

Of course, the best part of this entire experience was speaking on the same stage as world leaders like Yoshua Bengio while discussing my latest projects. I will be posting my talk recording soon so be on the lookout!

Keynoting at the CWE Gala 🪅

Ok, this was definitely the highlight of the month. I was invited to keynote at the Canadian Women Entrepreneur Industry Gala this past week joined by Canada's top executives, influential businesswomen, creators, and media in one place. We were all united by a common mission of bringing more equitable opportunities for Canadian women in business and I’m so honoured to have been a part of this event!

Huge shoutout to Anna, Jenelle, and Brandon for putting this together - you guys are insane!! I was lucky enough to chill with Anna backstage before she went on to sing and can I just say Anna’s kindness and willingness to support women is on another level - these people deserve the world!!

I’ll also be sharing this keynote on LinkedIn soon!

Closing thoughts and what’s next? 🛸

May was a bit chaotic in the best way possible. There was always something going on but I was able to manage my time and prioritize pretty well. June’s plan is to end the school year off strong with exams, building an exciting application I can’t disclose yet, presenting at the TKS end-of-the-year showcase, and attending the Villars Symposium in Switzerland. See you next month!!