Utah Tech Week

Amazing recap video of our Utah Tech Week announcement with Rocky Mountain Power and Operation Gigawatt thanks to Spencer Cox, Dick Garlish and Joel Ferry! Torus will install 70 Megawatts of Demand Response over the next 12-18 months to help support and expand the resilience of the grid! Amazing week!

Last week was a whirlwind of Utah Tech Week + Seis HQ Week, with so many high impact moments. First, the Utah Tech Week highlights – big gratitude to Trent, Kyle, and everyone who worked so hard to create something very special for Utah. My personal top 3: --Running with tech friends– kicking off Monday with a wonderfully weird 5k around the whale, and closing things out on Friday with hard hitting interval training at TwentyOne Run. --Ben Capell receiving a standing ovation after sharing his story at Reference Group. --The annual Seis Taco Party – thank you to all the friends who came out!

🏆 Utah Tech Week AI Hackathon Winner – 1st Place out of 186 Team Members! 🏆 I’m thrilled to share that my team won 1st place at the 2025 Utah Tech Week AI Hackathon thanks to Wayne (Hanjun) Park's sacrifice and inspiration, competing against 186 teams! This marks my 7th hackathon championship, and I couldn’t be more grateful to Heavenly Father for this opportunity to make a world a better place. Our project? TED the Bear – an AI-powered therapy robot. 🧸💡 TED the Bear could hug users, recognize speech, analyze emotions, and provide personalized counseling responses in the voices of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or TED the Bear. Additionally, we developed a software avatar that lip-syncs in real-time to match the generated voice and language. 💻 Tech Stack & Implementation: 🔹 Frontend: React + Vite 🔹 Backend: FastAPI (CRUD functions) 🔹 Lip Sync: Gooey.AI 🔹 Face & Emotion Recognition: OpenCV + DeepFace 🔹 Speech-to-Text: Whisper AI 🔹 Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL) 🤖 Robotics Integration with AI: 🔹 Raspberry Pi 4B: Connected via Wi-Fi to Supabase for real-time data exchange 🔹 Microphone & Speaker: Captured user input and played AI-generated counseling responses 🔹 Raspberry Pi Camera: Analyzed user expressions and emotions for personalized responses 🔹 Arduino: Controlled motorized gestures with stepper motors & depth sensors (ultrasonic) to hug users within range for emotional support Over three intense days, our team built this full-stack AI therapy robot. ⭐ Meet the Incredible Team: 👨💻 Eddy Kim – Integrated Whisper AI for speech to text, fine-tuned decibel-based input detection, helped robot internal design building, and produced and edited an amazing 2-minute demo video. 👨💻 Jonghyuk Lee – Designed the entire backend, implemented Text-to-Speech & Speech-to-Text, built facial/emotional recognition, and integrated RAG-based AI responses from OpenAI. He also set up Supabase connections and React frontend. 👨💻 Taehoon Kim – Engineered prompt optimization to determine when to use RAG vs. direct responses, solved Audio-to-Text issues, integrated AI lip sync with moviepy and wav2Lip, frontend character toggle and picture it at the center, managed the data queueing system, and integrated with each API endpoint. 👩💻 Yirang Lim – Built the infrastructure of backend system, trained AI voices to match characters like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and TED the Bear, implemented text to speech, save those responses to DB, setup Supabase and design tables, and voice cloning using Play.ht, and built a RAG system. 🎯 My Role in the Project: I built the full-stack development of the AI therapy robot, integrating: ✅ Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Stepper Motors, Ultrasonic Sensors ✅ Custom hugging logic & body language ✅ Real-time speech recognition & AI response system ✅ Built CRUD functions with Supabase Our team members are actively seeking internships & full-time opportunities, and I highly recommend them to any top-tier AI or SWE teams!🚀🔥

My Fourth Utah Tech Week. This was probably one of the most impactful events I attended during Utah Tech Week—not necessarily because of the content, but because of what it revealed about the current challenges facing the immigrant community in the U.S. I had the privilege of participating in "Tech Week Juntos" this past Wednesday, and here are a few powerful takeaways: - Opportunities don’t come simply because we’re Latino—they come because we show initiative and strive for excellence. - Being part of a community matters. Lifting others up and building together makes all the difference. - Our parents taught us the value of hard work, but that’s not enough—you also have to advocate for yourself and make your work known. - We’ve always been strong and resilient—and we continue to be today. The most heartbreaking moment came at the end of the event. The organizers had provided empanadas, among other food, and someone mentioned that the person who delivered the empanadas didn’t stay because they were afraid. Afraid of simply being there. That broke my heart and reminded me that fear is real for so many in our immigrant community. It’s a stark reminder of the challenges people face every day, even when they’re just working hard and contributing to their communities. If you can, take a moment today to reflect on this and join the campaign of not buying anything today, as proposed by the Latino community in America, to show their impact on the economy. Thanks to all the organizers of this incredible event. Latinas In Tech Utah ALPFA Salt Lake City Utah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Angeles Investors Club Ability Silicon Slopes Latino s

What an incredible week at Utah Tech Week! It really does represent the best of Utah, and I’m grateful that Reference Group could host a couple of events during the week. It was great to have Jeff Call of Just Ingredients, Inc. share his and Karalynne Call’s story. There was a ton of learning for me and the audience. I am convinced that it is the hardest moments that prepare us for our greatest successes. Although I am sure they wouldn’t want to relive any hard moments, it is the lessons learned in those moments that created the learnings that would become this juggernaut that they are today in the healthy living space. I’m grateful for their resilience and desire to educate others. Wishing them all the success in the world as they continue their expansion! Big thanks to Trent Mano and team for the fun event at the Delta Center. Loved shooting on the court and props to Tori Hooper for winning the 3-point! Loved getting to see Sean Holladay Kyle A. Reyes, Ph.D. Seth Jenson Armand Patella John Mayfield Jennifer Scherbel Joe Atkin Cydni Rogers Tetro Tara Rosander Dan Caffee Nicole Berriman and so many great people! And props to Taylor Jones Caleb Hicks Loren Larsen Jowanza Joseph on the building in AI session! On Thursday night we hosted Ben Capell - I’m so impressed by him and his ability to see talent and nurture it. It was fun having his wife and teenage son in the audience. It was the first time his son saw dad in a business environment and could learn more about what dad does and to see the impact his dad has had on so many. I also learned that the coaching of Gary Williams had played such a role in Ben’s life. It’s fun to see the legacy those who lean in, can have. I aspire to have a legacy like Gary! What Ben and team have built at Peterson Ventures is impressive and the legacy of that team in building companies and people will without a doubt be central to the story of building Utah! 🙌 Big thanks to Wallaroo Media and Utah Innovation Fund for your partnership!

Not only was the PassiveLogic Utah Tech Week open house a lot of fun on its own — sharing technology, meeting candidates, seeing old friends, making new ones — but it was an awesome dress rehearsal for AHR Expo taking place in Orlando next week. #AutonomousBuildings are the future of the building controls industry. Can't wait to share, learn, and connect. I'd love to give you a personalized tour through our 8 product workflow demo stations! If you will be there, please be in touch. Would love to connect! 🚀

Last week, for #utahtechweek, Oracle Cloud, and Oracle NetSuite, teamed up to support a NetSuite Accelerator founder Ben Lang and his company Native AI. Not only did we get to chat it up with Utah’s best and brightest in their innovation economy, but we also got a chance to support a Veteran owned business, @handosake Sushi, run by two Marines in SLC!

This past Friday, we at Domo had the privilege of hosting a Dashboard-in-a-Day event for Utah Tech Week, in conjunction with Alyson La from Tech-Moms. Over the course of the afternoon, we took a hands-on journey from ingesting data to building a complete data product (thanks to Domo's connectors, Magic ETL, App Studio, and AI capabilities). Shout out to my fellow teachers, Florencia Silveira and Jason Longhurst, who stepped outside of their day jobs to join me in my Tech-Moms enthusiasm. We learned some data fundamentals, transformed our data (the best part! not that I'm biased...), learned data viz theory, built our own visualizations, and used Domo AI to build dashboards and AI Chat to answer our questions. We even got a primer on generative AI from the fabulous Flo. I love the Tech-Moms mission - it is so incredibly important to me to help enable women's career mobility, whether it be back into the workforce after a time away, or into tech from another sector. Tech jobs ARE mom jobs, indeed. 🥰 Last but not least, shout out to Jeff Tulley (not pictured because he was behind the camera) who acted as our TA and spent the afternoon schlepping signs, solving facilities issues, and helping our attendees wrangle their data. The quiet behind-the-scenes helpers are sometimes the most important.

Last Thursday, I flew straight from Utah Tech Week to the NYC Fintech Women networking event at the (gorgeous, truly) Stripe office at Wolf Point. As a session leader for Workplace & Culture Insights, I skipped the usual "What do you love about your job?" and instead asked: 👉 What’s a personal or professional win you’re celebrating? 👉 Did it come from an earlier challenge? The answers didn't disappoint. - A sales rep who landed her company’s biggest North American deal last year. - Another Team Lead who built out a U.S. office in just over a year—and is already expanding. - A Product Designer who finally locked in official Design Guidelines for her company. So many wins. So much to share. So much to learn. Was I exhausted? Sure, but the energy, stories, and connections made it all worth it. Huge thanks to NYC Fintech Women for having me as a Session Lead! Already looking forward to the next one.

That’s a wrap on Utah Tech Week—and what a week it was! Saaya joined Mobly’s 📱 Zach Barney to break down how founders can raise from out-of-town VCs. She, along with fellow panelists Grahme, Kristin, and Idan, shared practical tips on getting that first meeting. A key takeaway? Warm intros > cold emails. Finding mutual connections for an introduction can make all the difference and ensures founders are maximizing their (limited) time to work to their advantage. Then, we capped things off with 100+ guests at our Out-of-Town VC Happy Hour with Companyon Ventures at Lake Effect. Great conversations, new connections, and a good time had by all. Till next time, Utah!