Talks & Engagements

Technical talk given by Anand (Technical Speaker): "Chatbot Development using RAG & Vector Database" at TOSSConf 2026 — Tamil Open Source Software Conference. Date: July 25, 2026. Location: St. Joseph's Institute of Technology, Semmancheri, Chennai. Delivered my first technical talk — an interactive session on building AI chatbots with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and vector databases. I walked through chunking and embedding documents, storing them in a vector store, retrieving the most relevant context with similarity search, and grounding an LLM's answers on it. Part of TOSSConf, the Tamil open-source community's annual conference, which I attended in 2025 before speaking in 2026. Topics: RAG, Vector Database, Chatbot, LLM, Open Source, TOSSConf, AI. Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1DqSjPTtLCG6zrf0eLbQMge2y9HC7avjV/edit?usp=sharing. LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anandsundaramoorthysa_tossconf2026-technicalspeaker-rag-ugcPost-7486688282500681728-ebiP/.

Event organized by Anand: ICAIDS 2026 (International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Data Science). Role: Student Organizer. Date: February 9–10, 2026. Location: Loyola College (Autonomous), Chennai. Hosted by Dept. of Data Science, Loyola College (Autonomous) · In association with Depts. of CSE, IT & AI&DS, Loyola-ICAM College of Engineering and Technology, Chennai.

Event organized by Anand: LOYONOVATE-2K25 (State Level Technical Symposium). Role: Debugging Event In-charge. Date: January 23, 2025. Location: Loyola College of Arts & Science, Mettala, Namakkal. Hosted by Dept. of Computer Science, Loyola College of Arts & Science, Mettala.

Event Anand attended: Build2Learn #37, August 29, 2026, Grootan Technologies, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Attended Build2Learn #37 at Grootan Technologies — a meetup of the Tamil tech-builder community. Reconnected with familiar faces (Selvakumar Duraipandian, Bhavani Ravi, and Rajesh) and many new people, and came away with a lot of practical insights. In true Build2Learn spirit, teamed up with Melvin Joshua to build "Prompt to Website — No AI" — a VS Code extension that turns a natural-language prompt into a complete website from pre-written, human-audited template blocks (no AI models, API keys, or network calls), producing editable HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap. Built for fun and open-sourced.

Event Anand attended: Build2Learn Chennai, August 30, 2025, Entrans Inc., Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Attended Build2Learn Chennai hosted at Entrans Inc., joining 50+ builders for a day of brainstorming, building, and showcasing micro-products. Collaborated with a team to build ChessToGIF — a tool to convert chess games into animated GIFs — and committed to releasing it as open-source.

Event Anand attended: Build2Learn Madurai, August 15, 2025, Dot Com Infoway, Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Attended the 30th edition of Build2Learn in Madurai, alongside participants from Chennai, Bangalore, Kovilpatti, and Sattur. Collaborated with a new connection to build a daily-life utility tool in under 5 hours.

Event Anand attended: TOSSConf 2025, July 18–19, 2025, St. Joseph's College of Engineering, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Attended TOSSConf 2025 (Tamil Open Source Software Conference), a two-day celebration of the Tamil open-source community. Explored sessions on Linux, self-hosting, AI, data engineering, and open-source ethics. Traveled 3 hours to attend and networked with open-source contributors and community volunteers.

Event Anand attended: Cloud Community Days — GDG Chennai, July 12–13, 2025, Ford Global Technology & Business Center, Sholinganallur, Chennai. Attended Cloud Community Days 2025 organized by GDG Cloud Chennai, a full-day conference packed with sessions on cloud computing, DevOps, AI/ML, and developer advocacy. Listened to industry leaders from Ford, Cloud Foundry Foundation, Wiz, and more.

Event Anand attended: IndiaFOSS 2024, September 7–8, 2024, NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bengaluru, Karnataka. Attended the 4th edition of IndiaFOSS, India's premier open-source conference, in Bengaluru. Engaged with passionate open-source contributors, explored innovative ideas, and participated in discussions on free and open-source technologies.