THAT WAS · Pune · 25 July 2026
A voice assistant, built at the table
Not a talk. A Raspberry Pi, a USB microphone, a small speaker and two hours. By the second coffee it could hear its name; by the third it answered, badly, then better. The point was never the assistant. It was that seven product managers wired a microphone to a model and shipped something that talks back before lunch, and now none of them can say it is hard.
- Where
- The Commune Cafe
- When
- Saturday, 10:30 am
- Who
- 7 at the table
- Cost
- ₹0
Hover a chair. The company, never the name. 7 chairs filled. Companies below.
— AROUND THIS TABLE —
People from 7 companies
Who they are stays at the table. Where they came from is the whole afternoon.
- Curious PM
- Vital Edge Technologies
- OROLABS
- Tide
- Qapita Fintech
- Netcore Unbxd
- Prime Focus Technologies
WHAT WENT ROUND
Three questions.
Three rounds of coffee.
They went round the table, in order. Nobody presented. This is what came back.
What are you building?
“One thing, together: a voice assistant on a Raspberry Pi that answers a question about the café menu.”
What broke?
“Silence detection. It cut people off mid-sentence, then waited forever. Latency was the whole product.”
What's next?
“Each person took the parts list home. Two of them have since put one on their desk at work.”
THE BILL
Settled, as always.
Coffee, chai, whatever the café did well, and two hours of the table. The bill came to us, which is the whole arrangement.
- 018 chairs, 6 given out, 2 kept for the ones who turn up anyway.
- 027 people sat down.
- 03Nothing was recorded, posted or tagged.
CURIOUS PM
coffee meetup · receipt no. 337
hosted by Ankit Aggarwal
- 1 × Table for 8
- ₹0
- 1 × Saturday, 25 July 2026
- ₹0
- 1 × 10:30 am to about lunch
- ₹0
- 1 × The Commune Cafe,
- ₹0
- Coffee, chai, snacks
- ₹0
- Slides, pitches, name tags
- —
7 at the table · settled by Curious PM
SETTLED · COME TO THE NEXT ONE
Every other Saturday · a different café each time
SAME TABLE, OTHER DAYS
More coffee in Pune.
The next one is somewhere else, with the same eight chairs.