Photo: The host with the guests at Google Tech/Entrepreneurship Meetup

On July 28^th, 2015, The Tech Society of Kathmandu organized Google Tech/Entrepreneurship Meetup. The program was organized at Nepal Tourism Board, Pradarshani Marg. It was one of the rarest events organized by the collaboration of the leading Tech companies of Nepal like Deerwalk Inc, Leapfrog Technology and Verisk Information Technologies. The main aim of the program was to have an open discussion about Product Design and Entrepreneurship and various

The event was scheduled to start at 5:00 P.M but due to some difficulties it started at 5:45 P.M. The event started with a keynote speech from one of the members of Google team. The team had arrived to Nepal a couple of weeks ago to assist Nepal recover from the effects of the great Earthquake by reducing the technological gap that was being created.

The Highlights of the program were the two presentations: Accelerated Product Design using Design Sprints and Growing a Company from Emerging Markets to Developed Countries presented by Sumier Phalake, Chris Lee and Scot Frank respectively. The first presentation mainly focused on the introduction of Design Sprints, the techniques to implement it and the challenges in its implementation. The presentation also included the topics like User Experience (UX) and its value in a product. Phalake said, “If you care enough for User Experience then everything will follow just right.” He added, “UX is not just the outer design of the product, it is the ease of use, usability and the level of satisfaction a user gets by using your product.” The presentation was aimed to convince the audience that numerous design prototypes should be built; the prototypes can be rough sketch made by hand. Lee said, “Everyone in the room should sketch. It doesn’t matter how bad you are at sketching. It will help you express your thoughts into something designable.”

The second presentation by Scot Frank was about Entrepreneurship and various challenges of developing a company to worldwide level. Scot shared his experience of vising China and doing something valuable to the society. He said, “If you think about your customer or user and develop a product around that, it’s only a matter of time before you meet the desired goals.” He talked about learning from the failure and referenced it with his failure while designing numerous prototypes of the solar cell which he built in China. At the end of his presentation he advised the audience to sell a product before building it; meaning confidence is the key to success.

After the presentation, a Q&A session was organized with 9 Google employees facing the audience. The main concerns of the Q&A session were the challenges and opportunities for a country like Nepal. The audience seemed to be enjoying quite well as it was a very interactive session. The 9 speakers were really open and were expressing their personal thoughts.

Finally the program ended at around 7:50 P.M with souvenirs for the guests followed by a light snack.

All Photos By: Navaraj Kharel