2023 - My Year in Review

For several years in a row now, at the end of the year, I summarise what happened during the year in a blog post that you are just reading. This post is a bit of self-reflection, looking back at conferences and meetups that I organised or where I held sessions, projects I built, and more. This was an exciting year, I changed my full-time job as an Engineering Manager and kicked off my startup syntheticAIdata , I worked on some interesting projects, I had many personal achievements, and overall for me, it was a great year.

In January, I co-hosted the "Virtual Azure Community Day" together with Sherry List and Morten Christensen . This in-person meetup took place at Templafy with sessions "Azure DevOps - Our software development life cycle tool" by Thomas Jespersen and "How to lead an orchestra of Azure Functions" by Nikos Delis .

Later this month Sherry List and I attended the "NVIDIA AI Ecosystem Reception" event in Stockholm where we had an opportunity to meet Jensen Huang , Founder and CEO of NVIDIA.

In February, I spent most of my free time organising upcoming conferences, working on my droid project, and preparing sessions that I held later during the year.

The Global AI Bootcamp is a series of one-day events organised worldwide by local communities passionate about Artificial Intelligence on Microsoft Azure. In March, as one of the organisers of the Azure Sk?ne team, I helped to organise a local event at Foo Café Malm?. I co-hosted the event, and we had great sessions from Ana Margarida Valente , Andrea Martorana Tusa and Emilie Lundblad .

The "AI Burst " conference took place at the Microsoft Reactor Stockholm , and it featured several sessions with a focus on developing AI and ML applications and real-world solutions. I held the session "Gaze Estimation Possibilities in Retail" at the conference, showcasing possibilities of gaze estimation (a process of detecting where a person is looking).

I attended the Databricks Stockholm User Group kickoff meetup at Hyperight Data Club in Stockholm, and the GAIA (Gothenburg AI Alliance) conference in Gothenburg the same month. At work, I organised a meetup with Girls in IT - Zealand with sessions on Infrastructure as a code at the end of the month.

Techorama is a yearly international technology conference that takes place in Antwerp, and it usually has about 1700 attendees. This year Techorama was in May, it had a jungle theme, and Sherry List and I held two sessions at the conference. On day one, we held the session "Mind-Controlled Drones and Robots " showcasing for the first time on stage the Star Wars droid project I was working on in my free time.

Our session from day one was featured in an article by Codit , and it was great to read their takeaway from the session: "Exciting possibilities of thought-controlled robotics and how advanced machine learning algorithms can interpret brainwave data to enable precise commands for drones and robots".

We also held the session "Episode XXII: BD-1 Awakens " on day two of the Techorama conference in front of 500 attendees. The whole conference was a truly unforgettable experience.

Azure Triumphs podcasts are hosted by Nikos Delis and they feature stories about development and architecture. Sherry List and I joined the podcast episode where we explained how we made it possible to control drones and robots using brain activity.

In June, I had the pleasure to be part of the "Demystifying Artificial Intelligence" panel together with Lars Klint and Cuno Reijman ?? , with great hosts Rayta (she/her) van Rijswijk , Henk Boelman and ? Marc Duiker at the Azure Lowlands conference in Utrecht. Sherry List and I delivered our session "Episode XXII: BD-1 Awakens" in front of an amazing audience at the same conference.

I have been re-awarded Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional for AI category in July. The award is given by Microsoft to technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community, and I'm honoured to hold this award for the AI category.

In July, I finally finished my free time Star Wars droid project by upgrading it with an NVIDIA Jetson Orin device and I published the project on Hackster.io with all source code and how-tos: "NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano powered Pit Droid ". I was happy that the project immediately became featured by Hackster.

The Pit Droid project was noticed by NVIDIA and in August they published a story about it: "Meet the Maker: Developer Taps NVIDIA Jetson as Force Behind AI-Powered Pit Droid ". I was honoured to see NVIDIA calls me "edge AI Jedi" in the article.

At the end of August, Scott Hanselman joined us for a meetup at Azure Sk?ne and held a great session "Moving 20 years of legacy to the cloud ".

I started working full-time as Co-founder and CTO in my startup syntheticAIdata in September. I believe there's a huge need in the world for synthetic data and ethical AI solutions, so it is super exciting to work on developing a SaaS solution that generates synthetic data at a scale. You can learn more about the solution on our webpage and don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for updates about our journey.

My Co-founder Sherry List and I visited the TechBBQ conference in Copenhagen, connecting with fellow entrepreneurs and forward-thinking investors. As many years before, this conference is an awesome experience and a great networking opportunity.

Microsoft Build Denmark took place at the end of September in Kongens Lyngby. The event showcases the latest in solutions and developer tools in the region. I was happy to showcase the solution we work on in syntheticAIdata and the value our solution brings across industries on the stage.

In October, I presented syntheticAIdata at the Nordic AI Young Researcher Symposium (Nordic AI Meet) , a two-day conference that took place in the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. The primary purpose of the symposium is to provide a platform for AI researchers in early careers to exchange ideas, build collaborations, and form a Nordic approach to building AI solutions for the societal good.

NORDEEP Summit is the world's leading deep tech business summit that takes place in Espoo, Finland. It was a great experience to attend the summit and have a chat on synthetic data with attendees.

Nordic Women in Tech Awards (NWiTA) celebrates and recognizes female role models who have made outstanding contributions to the tech industry. By highlighting their individual and collective achievements, they promote their success and inspire others to follow in their footsteps. This year's event took place in Reykjavik, Iceland in November, and it was an honor to support the initiative as a judge .

Digital Tech Summit this year was entitled "AI Transforming Business" and it focused on AI as the dominant growth engine and driver of technological development. I visited the event in Copenhagen, and it was a great experience.

In December, I attended the DAIR Awards ceremony in Stockholm, and I was truly honoured to support the initiative as a judge.

Innovation Fund Denmark invests in translating promising ideas into new solutions that have the potential to create growth and employment in Denmark, and which also contribute to solving some of society's challenges. It was exciting to receive the Innofounder grant from Innovation Fund Denmark for syntheticAIdata , and this validation from Innovation Fund Denmark is an important milestone in our journey to democratize the vision AI market by providing affordable and accessible synthetic data, removing barriers, and accelerating our clients' AI journey.

I was honoured to see my Pit Droid project featured by NVIDIA again, this time on the "Cool Robots of 2023: Meet the Autonomous Movers and Shakers " post.

As you were able to read, 2023 was a super exciting year for me with a lot of nice personal achievements. A big thank you goes out to everyone who supported me or helped me out with making all these happen!

Enjoy the winter holidays and all the best in the New Year!