#ODCTalk with Daniel Getachew

good afternoon good afternoon and welcome to our fourth odyssey talk my name am the director is government digital center ethiopia and will be starting our fourth odc talk in a few minutes we're just getting uh giving a little bit of time to our online guests so that they can join us online so i believe that a lot of you are following us on facebook please feel free to write a little comment about where you are where are you following us from because we received many many registration and you are based in different parts of africa in the world we are excited to know where you are and where you are following us from again good afternoon welcome to all of you that are joining us today for our fourth odc talk orange digital center talk our monthly activity that allows us to welcome an inspiring tech professional from the ecosystem and to have a very inspiring conversation with him or her okay so i see that a lot of people are following us from addis where we are based of course where else are you following us from let us know you're interested to know about that yes and of course to share insights comments remarks questions also to our very interesting guests please feel free to write something in the comment section of the facebook page trying to check the location where people are bringing us from all right so again good afternoon and welcome to our fourth odc talk my name is hattu matamagasa and i am the director of digital center ethiopia in a few minutes we'll be starting our conversation with an inspiring tech professional here in ethiopia for those of you that are participating in this event for the very first time an odyssey talk digital center talk is a monthly meeting between orange digital center ethiopia and an inspiring tech professional in ethiopia and we have a very amazing guest today we cannot wait to introduce him to you again if you want to make the most of this discussion please make sure that your uh please make sure that you are able to connect with us because this is supposed to be a discussion right so please feel free to share your comments anything that you might want to ask also to our different guests or if you have different types of questions we'll be very happy to ask them on your behalf so that you can get an answer welcome welcome we'll be starting in i think two minutes as people are joining us online good afternoon my name is digital center talk a word monthly conversation with an inspiring tech professional in the country we are actually in his office he was kind enough to welcome us today and we will be starting the discussion with our very inspirational guest in a few minutes if you are interested in ar vr but also mr you will be very excited about this conversation and if you don't know what these uh words stand for well we'll be discussing this in a few minutes and i'm sure it will be very very exciting so as we are waiting for people to get online let me share a few words about digital center ethiopia digital center ethiopia is a resource center this is a place where young people entrepreneurs women even children can find different types of resources trainings access to our equipment different types of opportunities jobs internships access to makerspace access to an accelerator and potential funding so we are a small ecosystem that shelters different types of programs that provide opportunities for people that are interested in tech or the people that want to discover more about this field if you are interested about launch digital center ethiopia please feel free to connect with us on our different facebook instagram telegram and linkedin pages would be very happy to engage with you and i believe it is almost time now let me remind you again what we are going to be doing here before i call the first uh the people that are going to be having this conversation today so again welcome to our fourth odyssey talk our monthly conversation with an inspiring tech professional from the ethiopian ecosystem my name is hattu matamagastra i am the director of open digital center ethiopia and we will be having a very interesting conversation with an ar vr and mr specialist in just a few minutes so since a lot of you have joined us already let me call meron who is the manager of the coding school and again if you've been to aurorajit in central ethiopia thank you you know that the cleaning school provides different types of trainings on hard skills but also so skills because to us the training cannot be complete without these two dimensions dimensions i'm very happy to introduce her to you today and she will be leading the conversation today thank you very much thank you let's invite us sure thank you for coming thank you baby so welcome this is our course a large duty club center talk or odc talk as we call it and we might request so that they could share their experience their their lessons with our audience and please kindly start by introducing new stuff thank you already and i really admire the initiative of orange digital center and i hope it will help a lot of young professionals in this field and thank you for coming to our office so for those who knew i think pretty familiar and we are technology but just to introduce who i am my name is daniel and i'm a software engineer professionally but i engage in a lot of different activities so i graduated and [Music] computer science field was a bachelor's degree and software engineering and masters so this is like almost five six years ago and i was like working for different clients which are located here and also about and i used to work as an independent contractor in software projects then i think two years ago [Music] [Music] i think it could be through ms paint up yeah but most of us we really like to see what is possible in computers so i think that is the first thing which interests me to work and i remember i was a grade 8 student and it was the time when i would take a national examination and throughout the summer time i joined basics computers training so i have the interest to join the computer science world but nasa not outwards just gets finally but this is like an eye-opener for me to start different uh projects that i can do and there are like small software projects which i can show to my friends that is so exciting and gradually i got the interest to [Music] professionally masters the field itself that's why i joined computer science and i i was trying myself i'm testing myself with different activities competitions so i think that there is an acceptance publicly when you get accepted you will be okay i think it would work out for me so let me just create something and think let me just master a few things so that i can also contribute so i think yeah maybe when i was in grade 8 that was the time i came to this life well you know one of the activities that we currently have at the orange digital center is a super cool achievement it's supposed to inspire young kids to learn how to code or to learn how to make and hopefully maybe inspire kids like you when they grow up they become a big uh pioneer like you so let's move on to your technology login you mentioned you started this in this paint which is very interesting by the way uh but right now i know you're a very good skilled person can you tell us about [Music] subjects so like i said professionally i really love working on different software projects that was what i've been doing since i graduated from university but [Music] you know you might have special interest when you see what others are doing especially technology which are emerging in europe or us so everything that i've been trying to achieve was to know that emerging it will be possible maybe for or demographic so uh maybe i can say when i was a great web student i used to work as a motion graphics designer for uh ebc i think that's the new name but previously their name was so that's the national television broadcast company that used to be like anita so i had the experience working on different motion graphics and [Music] 2d designs so i think i grasped the some of the artistic skills and also the technical skills so combining this food maybe i can that's why i'm easily visualizing the vr world and i ended up like working in uh virtual reality extended reality projects that's what we do most but i still have interest in other areas like speaking with be having an iot prototypes and also some robotic designs so if i see it maybe achievable i try to learn and also try to understand how it works maybe just last few written excuses so i'm everywhere can you please tell us about your first successful project what was it my first successful project is probably when i got the chance to learn programming when i was a great team student because the trainer was is also a programmer that gave me this challenge which is creating a computer virus and at the same time i mean you have a way to understand how operating system works and also creating a bias it feels like something weird but in order to create a computer bias you have to understand a ton of things but within 40 hours of training coming up with this project and succeeding that before my teacher shows me how to do it with a very successful project which i still place it in a special land okay so that's uh that's the project [Music] it's not something that damages your machine it will simulate some weird behavior especially for desktop computers so you'll see will be the cd drawer will be opened by itself and closed so this whole process will repeat for the next one minutes i know so we create we are creating really annoying things that's the purpose of creating computer virus and i want to make this [Music] [Music] so i was the first one to show you that time so that [Music] it's been in my i mean dreams let me see like that for a while what's the inspiration yeah the inspiration is to become one of the best stuff we can technology startup or company so we don't live with ourselves like with some areas what we know is even our slogan it says better so we keep looking for innovative products and projects that we can implement and deploy in african especially it feeds for african people and that's the inspiration behind the company but two years ago we came up with let's start our startup which mainly focuses in uh virtual reality and prototype in different iot projects so based on our past experiences i think that was the time to start the company officially and yeah so last year i know you developed this obvious 19 fighting robots can you just tell us about that it's not publicly announced yet but it was informing you maybe an official we were like sharing to different selected people so that we can take more comments about the project and how we can enhance its feature yeah so by the time the pandemics entered ethiopia we came up with i mean we closed the office and it was really hard for us to continue the regular process of other projects that we've been doing so i think the reason why we created halita is we were on breakdown so we have to come up with an idea and something to achieve during the pandemics so within four months i guess we designed a brand new robot concept that could be used to fight the spirit of kobit in urban areas so this basically what it does is it will be it will pass all over the streets and will dissipate different urban places and also it will monitor temperature of individuals in real time so imagine like having this kind of robot and this that can keep an eye off everyone has the status temperature status and notifies in real time so we want to create a technology which is already available in most countries especially in africa we might start from tunisia our inspiration was picard robot so why not ethiopia we can also achieve similar projects that we can also employ here in the happiest we have it as a prototype prototype stage still it's in our office but we haven't yet released it for free i mean from the public we will announce it soon but what we want is to come up with a working robot having all the multi functionalities that we want to show and i hope that the name itself indicates how data so it will be the first of its kind that's what we want i mean the robot is not limited to the hazard space so we can also use it for agriculture for uh is also for security purposes so there are different events all over the city like public events public gathering so instead of having human based security services you might even maybe in a few years you will see how data all over the place taking care of every security aspect analyzing traits and most of the technological advancement that we see from regular countries so that's the aim behind the robot but we started as a simple robot the payload could be you i mean it could be replaced with any any other materials maybe if you came from a movie industry like a film industry you might use that data to recreate awesome shots that you can't do it in a car so you will just put different cameras on top of it and figure it so we have plenty of options in the future they start from having the road itself and i think next year in the ethiopian next year so we will see somewhere in the streets well that's good that's very you know better than actually i'm glad you mentioned agriculture in purpose what do you think would be the value of robots when it comes to agriculture considering the fact uh yeah i mean the reason why we uh luckily we also presented with a concept on world bank uh digital disruption and agriculture of the 2020 sport so it was like the the the presentation shows uh as you know locust the desert because the speed of desert focus on the northern parts of ethiopia was really bad last year so we wanted to fight that issue so the only thing that we noticed was and different farmers they use uh metallic plates just to make some noise so that the laser focus will be not on the farm so okay that means when we study about locust itself they are afraid of high-pitched sounds so how about if we create this kind of high-risk sound through automotive system so the aggregate version of agitate it has four different handridge amplifiers some amplifiers so it will disturb the locust itself and it will also dispense different chemicals on the farm it would analyze the farm it's it feels like it's pretty advanced uh and a lot of people were saying okay this could not be implemented but just think of having this kind of products or a company that research so that we can enhance the one that we have with this kind of technology places gradually that's the yeah i hope this inspires the young generation to come up with innovative ideas to support the agriculture technology yes yeah let me take you back to your skills and i want you to explain what ar pr or xr is uh for those of you who does not know what a rbr xr is ar means augmented reality vr is a virtual reality and xr is an objective and now that i am explaining a lot more about bots yeah so let me just maybe define them a little bit so basically most of us use via but when it's defined and when we say vr we only think of the via a6 itself so like like we know playing games mobile games it could be a mobile game it could be something that we play on our computers or laptops so everything that we see through those kind of devices is a virtual world so it's digitally created but it's limited to that size so the only addition to the vi is having the vr86 so it makes you or it will transport you completely from the actual world into the digital one so the vr is it's a virtual world without having any real stuff involved in your so that's vr so most of us knew about playing games so it's easy to understand but coming to the others like ar mr or xr will be confusing so it's like some differences in different terms but just to make them and to understand simply i hope most of the viewers know about uh google glass technology so google glass is an augmented reality with us but it does it you can augment the digital data on top of a physical object so it's like a regular glass but it will extend the digital data so we will be using air to add extreme formation of physical objects so having all this in mind it's easy to understand mix of reality so we said reality is mixing the two worlds together so i think you have seen our studio the green studio so we use it to uh mix those two different worlds together so when you visit a vr actually you are like the subject itself will see the experience but nobody from the outside will understand how that person is interacting or not so if there is a mixed reality system you can easily grasp items in a virtual reality and an outside system could also be correct that and [Music] keep it as messages so that's mr the last one is xr which is a complex version of all which means extended reality so you are about to extend some new features to this technologies in general so i think you also see the bike so the bike is an addition to the system so we made a virtual experience uh and what you do is you will be physically riding the bike and playing some kind of a vr scene virtual scene inside your headset but the whole system that hardware will be additional virtual reality environment so some people may use it like interchangeably so if it is like if you say we're an excel developers that means we also do a r vr and r so it will be replaced like that but technically speaking xr means there are different gadgets copy provided under exa [Music] so it's a haptic feedback suit which simulates some movements vibrations so you can feel any digital interactivity so if you come up with a new idea new concept to a virtual reality system having a new competition a new device that would be associated with that's great actually a while ago this seemed a bit too futuristic it's good to see it happening in our aging generation actually so it means usually it does it does it does really feature stupid steam it's good to see it happening thank you for inviting us to your studio and showing us the experience for those of you who are interested um [Music] to see what we have been doing you can check it out on google technology's youtube page so let's say people are interested to try this and are there specific technologies that you would like to mention or that you would recommend i mean to start just having the projects yeah yeah i mean the first thing is your interests so i used to be a trainer so that's the first thing i say always if you have an interest you don't have any obstacles informed so when we start all these things it's not easy for us to give funding or the supportive institution or even individuals so if you have an interest to vr or any of these kind of technologies that's the first thing the first requirement to fulfill the race of the things will be what tools are used and what kind of devices that i require so i think the current technology will allow you uh to work on vr without having to hit it so you can start from where vr experiences like uh used to work on your frame js and switches those are like a really open source platforms you can just add technology to your existing website and launch the project easily so there are page softwares but i recommend the open source one because they have open and also communities supportive communities that's an addition but officially um all the vr projects that we made is through andrea so we use that really engineering for most of our projects almost all of them so that is a gaming engine so most people think like google technologies is a gaming company we are not a gaming company we gamify historically sites so we use gaming engines to create a virtual reality scene so basically it's like a game but uh we also add some gamification so we will be more interactive to the viewer or to the customers that we have so this is these are the softwares we use uh and there are really good resources they can leave for especially youtube and on real engine they've got their own learning platform most of them are free and you can have all of their resources available and you can use them to train yourself they can also help you out with different free live webinars so i hope yeah if if you have an interest you can start working on the vr like we do so what are the [Music] doesn't have any requirements honestly speaking you don't have to be a bachelor's pride reading software usually to start here so if you have an interest again so that's the requirement uh technically speaking if they know about software swearing because there are also some technical challenges that you see because if you are if you have an artistic mindset in creating vr it doesn't mean you have the technical skill set on creating the software and all the hr devices you are about to experiment so the first thing that i recommend is to work as a team because you cannot you can't achieve this kind of projects alone that's one thing that i learned because i was trying by my own and see if i can succeed but it doesn't i failed that's what i was doing but after we made as a team because uh the creative director is from an architect side and the rest of us came from software background uh someone might know how to model a few things that we can use in vr world and we also got mechanical engineers that knew about how to work with different hardware and electrical engineers as well so you have to have all those kind of combinations to finish maybe a single project so working as a team is mandatory and so that each and every team will specialize their own fields and come up with a common [Music] working meetings and at orange digital center one of the things that we do is we develop projects in our internship programs and in those internship programs we we teach interns for our participants to work in teams and how to function as a team and how to function in an agility so it's a very important skill to develop and not like the audience the remainder of that let me ask you are there any harmful effects of vr using vr or food yeah i mean it's like a reality word uh i mean there are some people's that feels i mean we are itself when you use it for a really long time it will you will be affected with motion sequence so this is like one challenge but through upgrading the hardware so also considering all these factors i hope it will be resolved and it's like a matter of time so this kind of negative effects on uh different individuals with bitcoin but i don't see the negative side of using vr because we when we started uh working on vr for tourism yeah some people say okay these guys are trying to put everything in digital and reunion everything that we have all that you know in a physical place it doesn't mean like that so we are giving a new way uh to that kind of sector if you remember kobet yeah the pandemic makes the tourism sector almost absolutely to the ground i mean nobody was working a lot of job moses were recruited that is like it never happened before so a lot of voters were closed that's the negative impact so if we were having this kind of digital technologies that we can use to introduce the country or promote the country or those different historical places we might not be affected that much so coming to the developed countries the thailand pool and vr were increased by 400 so that was how they are requiring uh through the spirit but come to africa or in general to the underdeveloped countries most of them they don't have this kind of means to showcase or digitally lost their game so instead of taking the negative aspects of vr we don't even have all the chances i mean to use or to implement in vr so still we are on the negative side we don't have any tablets we don't have enough investors in this field so if we got the chance uh the positive aspect will be much more visible and a lot of talent also yeah maybe talking about positive aspects maybe you could tell us why the statement judges are very important i mean if you have any in spanish studies here in italy or even in africa in general yeah i mean africa is blessed with a lot of history community sites cultures you can see a lot of differences even we specifically did here but there are like foundations this will give you [Music] a chance or an opportunity to implement the technology well because i've seen different art and culture related vr projects all over the place uh i think the famous projects are maybe placing a 3d version of statue and making you like visit that place there are different architectural cities i mean especially if you come to europe all the cities are that they only stay behind so they have implemented in each and every scenario they are run out of it new ideas but come to ethiopia there are a bunch of parties and ethiopia is not a new country or it doesn't have some kind of a few things that you can told but there are uh different things if you come to the cultural aspect like the tourism aspect all over the place in ethiopia there are places to be visited and even the citizens itself doesn't know about all those historical sites or stories behind it so we've got a bunch of things to do and those are the positive aspects this is in two reasons india but how about trainings like in education sector and also other sectors that we are also could be applied so hence is one thing you can't do a surgery on really human beings i mean all the time so at some point you have to shift into a digital training system so vr could also be used for this and instead of i mean buying a full scale computer for schools maybe for schools just to have one icd center you might need let's say 30 50 different computers or laptops imagine the payments but we negate every aspect of the ict through that lab that's questionable so having a vr hexa you can integrate different applications it could be used for kids it could be used for like high school students or university students to see very different labs that's that's yeah for now it's tourism area um i don't know when we will turn to some other sector because we are also about to integrate the aviation part yeah so maybe education and tourism is the most vulnerable things that we observe so i hope we will be yeah we will stay for a while uh we feel that still there needs to be a lot of contents to be created in the tourism area so we have we still on the early stage so we have to move we have to do it for a while and then we see what is possible okay thank you for sharing a lot of results and now i'm gonna ask you a little bit more about your other skill which is iot so um what are the expertise that are needed to develop this kid in iot right now so i mean in general if you are an engineer in any field you have different tools to solve different issues or problems so as a computer scientist or a software engineer your tool will be apps creating different mobile applications websites or any digital stuff that could be your weapon to fight so that's how you can solve different issues but when you come to the electrical aspect you might be using or creating different items like physical gadgets or some electric devices to your community so it's like changing your tools to solve problems so when when joining iot as students on the early stage uh we don't have that much projects implemented in ethiopia so think of iot and we culture for example i mean that is like a huge space most countries they already done with making their farm smart making their analytics and also very collecting data easily from this kind of huge spaces through the advancement of iot so iot is not as new technology but it's not that much adopted here okay so uh recently graduated engineers should look for this kind of opportunities instead of always seeing regular things or maybe following their seniors it's good to see okay what's new what's also possible to start i've seen a lot of innovators they are most of them are like self-taught innovators some of them they don't even have official computers or any other university degrees so they got this talent they got the interest which is like the basic requirement that's the starting point but uh focusing on what they can solve uh stuff is iot is also one choice so you might be uh in an environment which you can't get most of the items locally because in order to be an iot engineer or just to prototype a certain device you will need some materials like arduino boards it will be sensors so those kind of things you can't keep them like easily located so i know there are some shops like number for example three but uh you can't get them like as you want so there are plenty of options uh so the government should also focus on this kind of area where you have to open or make this thing more visibly more accessible to innovators so that they can be more innovative to create new items new devices so i think yeah having an interest by itself that will make you an iot engineer or a computer engineer or a vr level for any of these things because if you can't access all the items locally it's like a challenge and this is where the government should come and support this area this field so that a lot of engineers should also come to this new technologies new emerging books of course i feel like there's a huge leap i'm considering from the previous years regarding iot i knew a very small amount by iot we made internet of things a while ago there were not a lot of iot developers or people that focused on iot projects but i remember you and one of those people and having improved it was one of the projects yeah can you i always share my ideas with the team the training department the ceo so they are so supportive by that time and we managed to purchase different iot equipments and to start training so that was where we made things official we also organized hackathon events and it's i think one of the biggest timeline events and they were like different engineers who came for merceria and ethiopia so having all these engineers you can see how it's different professionals are maybe wanting to join this kind of fields so [Music] yeah we tried our ways we created academic and trained uh gave them a training about iot so a lot of people thought okay iot is like working on arduino stuff like that it's like understanding the architecture knowing different words and there are a lot of things you have to master especially how we are communicating and what hardware should we use on which place so just giving them the basics itself gave them a chance to understand how i would be used in africa and most of them i think they are also starting start working by their own on some projects in africa so yeah we are also planning to start similar trainings it could be online we don't decide on that part but hopefully we will continue giving this kind of trainings to the community especially that is great that is one of the things again that's one of the things that we do at the orlando center we have one of our sections is called fablab where makers make and create and innovate digital products also i hope you will join of course you're always welcome and our audience of course uh you guys are welcome to visit on our open house and if you're interested you have to apply for our internships trainings we have multiple trainings for iot data routers and everything related to iot and digital fabrication of course yeah so what do you think is the future for iot india what do you think it's going to look like i don't see like specifically iot or vr in the future because most of these styles will be mixed that's how i see it so iot without ai is nothing so it also works when we say exa it's a combination of iot and vr or it could be air or it could be mr so all those technologies i think we are lack of the terms when we create the technologies because technology is advancing really fast so it's hard to categorize it and one specific technology creator so it's not only i have this not only a it's not only blockchain it's not only any of this so at some points they are converging to a secret and some common thing so maybe let's say uh even if you have seen the evolution of hexis itself it's really dramatic after a year you will get something out of the blue they come up with a new idea even iphone 11 pro and iphone 12 pro if you closely see the difference they added a lidar sensor this is only for ar so having all these kind of additions or updates or features we need we can't distinguish where we are going but it's something more interesting and as an african entity and as an affiliate startup we have to have some portion of this so if we get a chance we could also contribute something because we have in our talents we have i think all the base plans to start similar technologies but it's not it's not easy to create or come up with just advancing within shorter amounts of time but we are in the process and we we are not enough that's why we love to share how we start and also how we are proceeding to the future and some of us are from iot and some of them from there we should be working together yeah see why africa could also contribute how do you think we can prepare the use for this for the coming future yeah i mean all the primary sectors i can say they are trying their waste but without the government without supporting policies it doesn't mean anything i mean if you don't have an investor it will be an experience that you will have for two years and then you will use everything and start your own private lives so that's i think most of innovators like and experience employees so and we have to convince investors this is also a helpful thing if they are seeing the future they have to start investing right now because [Music] maybe eighty percent of uh investors i'm not saying like all of them but mostly the ones that i owe they try to invest or they only see the short profits of that company so they don't see okay this in widget they could be one day it's a solution or it could be a potential sector to the african market so they have to support for this kind of things i know they need numbers they also require a lot of achievements they want to see your progress first before they invest so yeah i think if they are convinced they may invest if they invest a lot of startups will emerge and also contribute really also yes we we are not the only company like i said so there are a lot of potential talented professionals who can also create different products different projects and developments and as you know the startup proclamation is announced this year or just there was no proclamation for having a startup so there is only you have to be a little company and there are a lot of process behind the legal process itself so it was not convenient for newcomers people or talents having only an idea so if the government opens the stores i think yeah a lot of companies will emerge yeah even as ethiopian by the way because as an african there are different countries who who support their startups like one [Music] we had some contacts and some discussions so i have seen something that we don't have and they are getting a benefit out of these opportunities so we also should look for these kind of similar options of course i believe we are working with time and we're trying to reach where the world is and of course the young generation is very responsible and as as responsible as the older one we have to work hard to show our talent to show our skills so that our country of course our continent stands [Music] so knowing you i know so do you have a piece of advice [Music] i mean you have to keep the hope towards an impulsive that's the ultimate goal i have i mean there are a lot of challenges even as of we speak so just focusing on the positive outputs of what you what you can do is the most important energy so what we achieved for the past two years is something great as a company and as a profession maybe more than 10 years since i dreamed i think today so there are a lot of negative things there are a bunch of positive things that i that i got so i only focus on the positive and how i can make them more yeah professional so [Music] that's all about how you think and how you accept negative things so if you keep focusing on the chartings if you keep focusing on the news come and see the yes options so when we start here everybody was saying oh you guys are thinking the luxurious thick in africa we don't even have that much i mean we don't get our necessities well and you are taking vr and ar all those emerging things some of them have a reason but if you keep focusing on those kind of challenges or some negative comments you can't see the achievements like when if you make that runs if we were like listening to this people we don't have the energy to move on forward and apply for different companies and working collaborating with a lot of u.s and europe companies so that was hard that would be hard we only focus on what we can achieve and no matter what uh we are up to it so the only thing we get is positive and i hope is the next few years all the challenges i can say maybe may the major challenges will be gone especially the policies the government and the the invasives so issues with this kind of things will be solved and so that we can work closer and we can do something big so young entrepreneurs i believe you heard that keep your minds on the success into the positive aspects of your projects so what are the next things for because okay that's uh it's like exposing our details so i mean the next thing we have [Music] a bunch of projects that we started so we need to finish those that's our major plan and we are also having new services so that easily different companies can use i think we are also showcasing a few of the projects with some clients and we have seen that it will work and that's also how we get enough [Music] and i think something new next year will be will be coming in the fields in this entertainment industry a new addition uh that's the power of virtual production because the software technology that we use allow us to come up with this kind of technologies it's common in us europe but it's not that much seen locally so i'm going for a studio i'm in a virtual production studio that's our next step we will be starting the entertainment sector that's our hope for new year the coming new year let's say the 2022 yeah should we expect something we will announce for this year's love and festival right yeah can you please tell us a little bit more about that's what it is an international event it's it has different conference exhibition and there are basically tons of things to do so we were physically presenting our services project this year actually this is our second time attending the event last year it was fully virtual so we were here from ethiopia and showcasing what we have and in a year we physically showcased the projects that we completed and what we are also experimenting with and i think it was one of the best thing happened to the company the past two years we got a chance to meet different startups in vr media there are i mean amazing companies all over europe that does exam products via projects especially in gaming and entertainment sector and one thing that i have noticed is the employees or those developers were from africa most of them like 80 of them that's interesting yeah but others even some of the owners are from africa but they are working in remote areas or like in europe and developed countries this is like okay the one thing that i've seen is we have seen this kind of opportunities are available for us to link up network with and showcase the projects but the other part is do they lag anything in africa so that they migrated to europe or u.s you will be questioned you will question yourself okay that will be our future would that be the next part for us because if things are social in africa most entrepreneurs will just take their company and establish that in europe or us so they could get enough clients and supports for the development by the way the organizers of the virtual is i i think the sponsors are the city administration sorry so the government is supporting this exhibition this kind of events and all those startups that came from everywhere like all over the world and showcase their projects that is one thing and we also get nominated under vra we were one foreign the top three nominees so that is also one thing to showcase as an european entity uh coming up with your own project one story and showing to the world is really inspiring for us so yeah that is the best thing yeah that's truly inspiring i'm sure the young audience here have a lot to learn from you and i'm sure they're curious how do you get to participate in this kind of events or [Music] how can take a point yeah i mean most of the time all those kind of informations we need about the grants about the events is using the social media [Music] okay that's the good part of using the social media properly because you can just get really nice information about this kind of events especially if you follow different event organizers in europe and knowing all these companies because when we say something about the virtual all of other individuals know about this place so that they could wait next year and apply they could give the chance to participate so that's how we were looking and when you get networked with other companies of ethiopia you will get a chance to get informed quickly so yeah that's one important thing so just use the social media and follow peace that relate to your work your future vision right so if you have seen i mean if you can see our things probably we follow two of these uh different organizers we don't want to miss all those opportunities yes some of them i follow for you actually so countries for them things are easy i mean they can gain 13 40 or 100 hexanes in a day so they have a chance to give that or they have the financials to give that but the only lack that i've seen is they don't have enough confidence and we got a lot of contents i mean just see the tourism aspect of those historical sites so if we just place them digitally imagine how much uh profit we should we can generate all of this kind of content so yeah they are looking for contents and we can provide them with the best coatings that's that's how i have to use the opportunity thank you for sharing this valuable information i hope the use here would use it purposefully um so i'm going to ask you three important skills that you believe are important or they use excuses that you recommend for them to develop as a student as a graduate [Music] the first one should be a professional skill so you have to have i mean profession being a professional and that's why we joined by the way we knew how to i mean we were computer science graduates but the ultimate goal of gabriel at that time was to make you professional that was the idea but i was keep asking am i not a professional person there are a lot of criteria to become a professional person first you have to know how to communicate how to explain your product there are different innovators engineers that can do amazing applications that doesn't know how to approach different investors different opportunities that's why we get a lot of requests by the way how do you guys approach the games how do you guys want the grant this is this kind of questions is like should be professional so you need to look for this kind of opportunities and also find different individuals who can help you uh you have other mentors that know the business i mean there could be less technicals than you but they will have be hard for them to um give some amount to get some advice about the sector in general in ethiopia we don't know the policies that much so we have to have a legal advisor that knows how we can establish a company so having all this in mind you will be deciding professionally on each and every step so just getting a bachelor's degree or a phd or in your funding master's degree doesn't make you a successful interpreter there should be a bunch of people around you who could make you more proficient so having a professional skill as well the second one probably you have to uh i mean i always have to apply in order to be a creative person i have this rule by the way just to use the basic mathematical uh what do we call the antimedical operations like the addition the attraction so think of the mobile phone and laptop can i mix these two technologies together and come up with a laptop that can also be used as a smartphone probably tablet were created like that so to be creative you have to see how the equipments or the devices around you how they are working and you could either use addition or you could use subtraction or multiplication for example you have ac for your room and you have a refrigerator in your room both of them they have a similar item inside which is i think the device that makes your uh room code so that ac technology could be used as a common device for water refrigerator and also the ac device so you can just eliminate these two hardwares from the two and place it somewhere outside so the refrigerator will also use the ac complete from the outside so there are a bunch of ways to come up with an idea so be a creative person because if you stick with an idea somebody created or come up with you might work with the creativity i hope you know there are a bunch of e-commerce projects all over the country or all over the world but maybe amazon or anyone succeeded and they are commonly most of people knew about all these platforms even locally there are amazing applications complex applications but if you are keep cloning the features that you know from previous projects it's less likely to be succeeded in that area so you have to be creative that's the second major importance you have to acquire especially to to be in your own world that's the most important thing there are a bunch of developers out there but what makes us unique is we put human historic competitors to the world and we can we also make gamification we also had our own excel hardwares so that makes us i think unique and that's how we complete different companies from us the third one is uh it's not a skill but it should be a minor console halfway after all what you do should be for the community so it's not a skill but it should be something that you have to have without this it's hard to uh see your company will be impactful to the society so the reason why we created new technologies is to impact the community itself so it will impact the young generation just to inspire them in music emergencies so that they could also contribute their ideas to the world that's one important thing the second one is the products that we've made think of the real projects for kids i mean all the whole thing the whole things that you can take through your kids probably they came from europe or the u.s that you can teach to your kids so most of them are like it can be unfair or a lot of things that happen so we want to show or we want to keep the the clean version of ethiopian history or african history in general to the next generation so that's one big impact you want to achieve and it should be like that so your company should be defined how it impacts positively to the community so the three things that you mentioned are professionalism yeah creativity and having an impact positive impact to the community so hopefully it is like worse than 3. of course it is all right so you mentioned this how did you develop them your professional skills your creativity because most of my friends or some people around me they see me as this guy is not a focus man i mean he's all over the place sometimes you will see me everywhere and somebody said please i might lose [Music] hopefully he knows so i i've always asked myself uh i don't want to rely on somebody else but i want to speak i want to know how things are working especially have you ever questioned yourself okay when i bought some hardwares for example it could be a smartphone or it could be any electronic device 80 of the time i will open that device and learn how it works or see how they incorporate each and every item so that's how i want to understand if i don't understand about how it works probably i won't open that device so yeah i'm eager to see and learn different subjects and different different areas so that i won't bother you pull up your professional in some other field so exp did you see that will be coming to your place and mayonna can you do this please and i will be waiting for the next three weeks however if i studied that well and i will never be a professional like you but maybe i will know a few things to do the things that i want to do so that's how i achieve i mean i started from the graphics and the program media i don't know i think the programming comes first because i started when it was a great thing and then the machine graphics so i think that's why i much more interested in the vr work because i see things from the both aspects from the artistic side i'm not saying i'm an artist by the way i'm very so there are different 3d artists professionals they know they are feeling well and i knew a lot of professionals in software development and ai so i know a few of those things how i can relate this to teams together and work so that's a professionalized skill that i acquired maybe for the past six seven years maybe yeah mean this is like a collective decisions finally we've made him that's interesting do you blame your curiosity for everything you thought you learned yeah yeah absolutely so i just i thought someone was gonna excuse someone you know curiosity waiting maybe we would reach 20 different skills no i'm tempted to ask you how many skips do you have that mean sometimes when i file a new skill maybe i will replace it with the previous one so i don't know how to use that with some some skins because i think i i'm becoming a business person so hopefully i will use the technicality i don't know i don't want that but if you don't have a business mindset it's hard to lead a country that's one thing that i understand because this is not a fascination or this is not something you will decide as you want because this is a company you have to follow a vision a big vision as a team so i'm always happy this thing is because i want things like fast and sometimes when i propose to my team my team will see it in a different way and yeah maybe that is the time when i will realize okay i'm thinking something of the scope so i should leave it myself so that makes you not to beat the company well that's why as a startup currently i'm managing the stuff but if the company is becoming bigger and also from startup when you transition into a corporate company i won't be the ceo hopefully that's what i mean is to inspire the youth either to have a job or create a job themselves so for this useful pieces of advice which if i know you've been giving a lot of them but what did you advise things yeah the current situation is really challenging for most population especially the young talents to i mean i can say from the some of the friends that i have they are mostly focusing on their life i mean to have some better life outside of ethiopia or africa so that's hard but if you don't have a vision like i said to impact your community the purpose that you are here is to solve something for your community so i always take them don't get distracted by the things that you have seen especially the politics or any of the things the economic factors the access to opportunities you don't get that much you don't have that much job opportunities like europe or the us in africa so those are like the challenge but just focus on the things that you can do with what you have and maybe you would achieve i mean through time you will achieve what you were hoping or envisioning when you were like a university student or something i remember i was working on a similar project like a virtual tour project back in congress i you know i wish for having a strategistic camera maybe for two years three years and i'm trying to contact different just to give you this device but that was not easy after one after we gave everything that we want because the steps were really challenging and sometimes you would lose hope i said as a youngster that is like also another challenge just to lose hope easily so everything comes with a lot of pain just take time and focus on the things that you have to accomplish and engage yourself in uh activities with uh they are really eye-opener entrepreneurs and also mentors that's why just to get out of the distraction use your time properly in your professional skills learn a lot from other startups other professionals and if you just invest the time properly in yourself and you will see the output gradually [Music] what we do now is uh proving the idea is i mean the idea after we succeed this we have plenty of options to decide like you see uh we are engaged in properties we got that department we also got the via the xr studio so having these two in mind and i have another six ideas or six departments or six different startups out of oso technology so we want to innovate technologies later like the us and that's the aim we don't want to be behind we're not going to be live very skilled years we have all the opportunities that we need to go and we are one of the meets yeah places like orange digital center are supporting they used the skills so that they become an indictment creator and of course also get a better job yeah i think this is the time where a lot of companies are interested to invest in africa so i hope the timing is good for perfect yeah good opportunity so i think the young graduates at this time they are lucky yes that's what i always say that's what i always say so thank you for answering my questions now it's time for us to move on to the questions from the audience i have been asking questions they want to know more about you about what you do and about some of your opinions actually and i'm gonna start with what's your inspiration although you have mentioned it earlier but the inspiration to start the company what's your inspiration in general i think is my inspiration even the word itself think perfectly yeah i mean most of the most of us so you have to first understand how the takeaway works you will see okay a few years how the world will progress having all this kind of advancements in different areas so yeah i think i could say i follow iron man he he exists in the real world but in that imagination iron man is the best person are you planning to build your own jarvis but maybe my own suit that's what i want that's interesting because one of the questions that i've got is um what do you think about the recent uh elongates robot the one that we introduced last week i mean this is the recent project yes i don't know how his brain works but he's a way too much advanced than my ability to speak about his robot he's so i mean a really technical person he's a visionary the way he thinks it's not like i mean it's obvious for most of us it feels like obvious but making that a reality makes you unique person especially i really admire him with uh it's not using the fixed car by the way with the spacex project yes because that is the one thing that i inspired now if you think of achieving some weird ideas probably you are weirder than anyone but you will be followed by a lot of individuals even different things professionals so his robot could be yeah i hope i'm not that much admiring automation is the ultimate solution for everything because what i know is not to replace humanity but to make them advance and this is also his code yeah they were like discussing this with i think in one conference and i guess elon musk wants to upgrade humanity so that's why he's investing in friendship technology and all those things so i also follow that dream not to replace humanity not to make humanity suffer with automation of different job opportunities so yeah the road let's wait until it's launched publicly yeah but all the other projects is really perfect the hyperloop projects it was like a concept i have seen similar ideas in black and white videos but this was an idea this guy he proves it like such ideas could also [Music] so one of the questions that i got from the audience do you know he started from people right [Music] okay let me get back to the question from the audience again this audience said i work on a project related to entertainment and media and digital technologies to bring different easy access solutions they have across a white gap have come across a white cup in the understanding and value people give in [Music] visual assets what do you think uh i mean if he is focusing on entertainment visuals uh i think yeah he he needs to like i said don't be specific on your skill set that is like the first thing that should come to his mind that is this is like his only skill so that he only visualizes it in terms of his technique knowledge and personal visions but he needs to work as a team or you have to get somebody else that can support and see progressing forward like probably they can start from a great engine because unreal engine makes things easier for uh production studio hopefully i can maybe say something about the king movie yeah yeah so the whole movie i mean the new one it's made completely in unreal engine software so imagine it's not made uh as an animated sequel or an animated movie everything is like a game so they created a verse 12 so everything was taken i can say from avatar so it took them like 10 years to just have it in a simple speed so three ten years ago i think that all those complicated equipment imagine how much money you have to invest just to have this kind of experience but in 10 years an individual or a startup could buy similar technology or something advanced technology then they can recreate movies so an african studio can also create something like our other with the same quality so if we got the skill set the technology is making us much more uh connected to this kind of things and also movies so that make us maybe we will have another from africa or blanking from african professions so he should focus on the latest technologies the reason why i mentioned epic games i mean engine is ap games is really helping and investing to scale the android engine features and is not only for uh games you could also use it for by virtual productions stage design almost everything that you know in the entertainment university uh last time i was also mentioning they are using unreal engines on the new harmony tv yeah you were telling me about that audience yeah so a lot of ui ux designers they probably use photoshop or any other motion graphics softwares like uh either way premium after it takes any other motion graphics software yes but this is like a refined engine and you can have [Music] a bunch of things that you can create easily in android so they used unreal engine to create the dashboard interface so you see now they are also metering the the auto multiple industry you see the gaming what you see on your dashboard is a game it's made it's game engine yeah this is like that happens in 2020 or in 2021 if we don't start it at this time probably we will be way ahead of them and not towards the advancement but even to understand it will be much more difficult for us so i think this is the right time to focus and start and that's why we we don't even uh get the full power of unreal engine [Music] as a startup i mean it's huge yes but what we are trying is to learn and achieve feelings that we know and share the community so there are a lot of professionals with journalists so i hope this guy he should be focusing on real time engines like i'm clearly injured is following this question right now and um another question from the audience was what was the biggest decision you've made in your life it doesn't necessarily have to be a persona but you could give us i mean staying on this field is the hardest decision that's what i can say yeah i mean there are a lot of scenarios where you feel like am i on the wrong side i mean probably i will be succeeding if i were [Music] you related fields is a bit harder for them like i mean being here in europe and having the limited resources that you're having yeah that is also one factor but in general even without having a company from this field because you always uh get this information like from abroad software engineers in europe they need to pay this much and we don't even get paid we don't even have a stable income right so that makes you okay should i go there and i mean switching to a different field i mean it's not bad actually but that was like the ultimate goal to achieve but imagine using all the computers and graduates to a different subject so is it is there any reason for this to happen that was the questions but staying on this field right makes uh i think that's the best decision but i i haven't regretted it yet i always following this question what's keeping you staying on this league uh yeah sometimes you will decide on a few things that you don't even know how to speak about it because i don't know how i state that this is the only way out sometimes you will fight with your own family or people with your own friends uh i mean finding the scenes like specializing on this kind of fields or focusing on something weird which is unacceptable by the community itself i mean it speaks like that but it's full time we are we are seeing the rivers i mean exactly it's the opposing one [Music] most of the time everybody you who's always doing something gr

2021-09-02 20:55

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