Spanning from Monday to Saturday, University students hosted Reflections| Projections: the largest student-run tech conference in the Midwest. Each day featured talks from different companies and people in the tech world, networking opportunities and a hackathon on Saturday to cap off the conference.
For 29 years, the conference has been able to host big names in tech ranging from this year’s Chris Earney, head of the United Nations Futures Lab, to Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak at the conference’s inception.
“I was very, very excited,” said Meghana Joglekar, director of Amazon Music Identity and Monetization, about the opportunity to speak at Reflections|Projections. “How many times do I get the opportunity to go and talk with students?”
Joglekar said that in her world, most of her talks are in front of Amazon or women in tech panels with existing professionals, not so much young people.
“(The students) are just full of possibilities and hope, and I loved seeing that in that engagement that I saw and reactions that I was getting in the sessions,” Joglekar said.
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The engagement that Joglekar highlighted is due to what Reflections|Projections Directors Saloni Vaishnav and Atharva Naik, both juniors in Engineering, describe as a more intimate setting.
Despite drawing in thousands in attendance over the course of the week, Reflections|Projections is able to maintain an approachable setting where attendees talk to speakers directly with questions.
“They introduced themselves,” Joglekar said. “They told me about their own stories.”
Joglekar’s own presentation incorporated story as she discussed success, perseverance and “the freedom to fail.” It isn’t a subject you might expect to find at a tech conference, but with college-aged kids of her own, Joglekar didn’t pass up the opportunity to discuss the lesson before the conference featured presentations on haptics and internships later in the day.
The intimate setting not only allows for more individualized discussion, but for individual opportunity. Last year, a friend of Vishnav’s was able to land an internship by talking to employers at the conference.
Though Reflections|Projections is more known for hosting innovators in the tech world, the student team behind the conference has spent this year innovating on their own. Naik excitedly described the conference’s new registration system, which tracks attendee counts though different events to better gauge the engagement of each day.
Naik said he’s excited to look at the data, and with it, the Reflections|Projections team will prepare for its 30th anniversary and continue to build upon an already successful legacy.
