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Imagine an event like this with over 2000+ people. Everyone comes from different parts of the world, a range of age groups, and so many different interests. Meeting people with similar interests can be close to impossible.

In the age of ai, shouldn't we be networking smarter?

In a world where connections are everything, networking is vital for any professional. Yet most networking events are dull, awkward, and unproductive. We waste time and money attending events that don’t match our goals, interests, or values. We struggle to find and talk to the right people or end up talking to the same people we already know. We randomly connect with people on LinkedIn but forget to follow up, and we are always left wondering whether a better connection could have been made.

We have so much more potential to connect with people who can enrich our lives and careers. We have access to social media, online profiles, and smart devices to help us discover and reach out to like-minded individuals. Why don’t we use them to enhance our networking experiences? Why don’t we leverage the power of data, AI, and algorithms to find our ideal connections?

Imagine if we had a tool that could help us make the most of every networking opportunity. A tool that could analyze our education, work experience, and interests, and suggest the best events and people for us to meet. A tool that could guide us to a physical location within the event where we could easily find and chat with our recommended contacts. A tool that could help us follow up and stay in touch with the people we met.

We wanted to create a networking tool to revolutionize events, conferences, and the workplace. A tool that would act as a serendipity facilitator, leading us toward remarkable connections and extraordinary opportunities. So we created Session – an AI-facilitated networking tool that combines the data from our online profiles, the location of our smart devices, and the preferences from our feedback to help us network smarter and better.

What is Session

Session is a networking tool for in-person events acting as an AI curator, facilitator, and assistant.

Make yourself available Create your profile on Session through a quick, easy, and short questionnaire to collect the most data quickly. Our goal is to incorporate sign-in with LinkedIn, Twitter eventually, and other professional/networking apps that can collect publicly available data to learn about you. Session will use your profile data to find the best potential connections, after running it through a cluster-based algorithm.

Get to a Session Once you arrive at the event, check in on Session and go to a designated location within the event venue, where you can network with people with similar interests.

Meet algorithmically curated professional matches Session will use your location, your answers, and a recommendation engine that will output the top 3 people you should meet at the event. These people are the most likely to have similar interests as you.

Start an IRL conversation with an AI lifeline Session will help you break the ice and start a conversation with your matches with the help of a LLM. Session will also provide you with relevant topics, questions, and icebreakers to get started.

Follow up with smart dashboards Session will help you stay in touch with the people you met at the event. You can use Session’s dashboard to see your networking stats, review your contacts, and send follow-up messages, based on the conversations and interests you share with your connections. Then the AI will keep you updated on any upcoming events and opportunities that match your interests and goals, or if your previous connections are also attending the event.

Features

Dynamic recommendation engine always updating Session uses your online profile and location to suggest the most compatible people to meet.

Event Check-in and location-based networking Session helps you check in to the event and guides you to a designated location within the event venue where you can easily find your recommended connections.

Relevant Topics, Questions, and Icebreakers

Nervous about how to approach someone, what to talk about, or just new to networking, don't worry Session provides you with relevant topics, questions, and icebreakers to start a conversation. Remember this connection was recommended to you based on your interest, so you should be comfortable talking with them like their your friend.

Personalized Dashboard and Follow-Up The worst part about networking is staying in touch with your network after you meet them. Session helps you stay in touch with the people you met at the event. You can use Session’s dashboard to see your networking stats, review your contacts, and send follow-up messages.

Event Discovery and Opportunity Matching Session helps you find more events and opportunities that match your interests and goals. Session also notifies you of upcoming events and opportunities that you might like.

Privacy and Security Networking events deal with a wide range of personal and professional information. This data could harm your reputation, career, or identity in the wrong hands. We are well aware of this and aim to pay special efforts and considerations to ensure that our platform protects all of our users' privacy and sensitive information.

How we built it

We built a web app on Glideapps (no code app builder) as an MVP for today's hackathon. Then the database (google sheets) contains all user profiles, which get extracted to Pinecone for recommending these connections through the OpenAI embeddings API. In Pinecone, a Python script uses a clustering method and the topk package to get a priority list.

Challenges we ran into

The OpenAI API was giving us many problems with integration, and unfortunately, we ran out of credits during the testing process. Also, our MVP app builder was not the best integration for our data that goes back and forth to Pinecone. The goal was to run this app for the hackathon, but sign-in with LinkedIn was also an issue since it requires LinkedIn approval (4-5 days).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

WE MADE A CLUSTER ALGORITHM! We learned a lot and finally got down our vision. After talking with multiple mentors, they all came to similar conclusions with much interest in the idea and suggested a simpler direction for our app.