Tech Square Takes on Trivia Night at The Clubhouse
The second Wednesday in April boasted the first of a new recurring series Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) will be hosting. Tech Square Trivia Night invites members and the local community to join in on an evening filled with complimentary refreshments, cool prizes, and of course, a chance to put your brain to the test!
While majority of those who gathered at The Clubhouse that night already had teams of five in place, several attendees arrived solo, but were quickly welcomed into an existing team. The groups enjoyed pizza and drinks while mingling, then took to Kahoot – a platform we learned about at our TEDx back in 2022 – to go head-to-head in trivia.
The competition was fierce and further fueled that evening by a team named “NotHere” who seemingly hacked into the game and played remotely. They stayed in first place the entire time, but we believe they may have been a bot:
Therefore, the real first-place winners were the team members of “Startup Exchange (SX)” (not to be confused with “Better SX” and “Best SX”) who took home the grand prize of Braves tickets to an upcoming home game!
“ChaoticPhotons,” a group of PhD researchers from the Ultrafast Optical Communications Lab (UFOCL) at the Tech Square Research Building (TSRB), placed second, earning them each a gift card to Momo Cafe, a local favorite made recently popular by TikTok.
More important than the prize though is their work with photonics in silicon chips. However, not all of their research is the same. One team member, Arjun Khurana, is working on chips that are actually able to emit light to communicate data. Meanwhile, others in the group work with fiberoptic cable to communicate information between computers, chips, and lasers.
Another team present that evening is also doing big things in the HealthTech space. The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC)’s Strados Labs, playing as “Stradosphere,” provided an innovative solution to help save lives by using leading-edge reparatory technology to remotely monitor lung health and relieve hospital congestion during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Clearly, prizes weren’t the only driving factor of engagement, as many of the groups asked to continue playing even after the event was over. Another interesting note is the type of trivia the players enjoyed – a curated mix of pop culture, space, science, food and beverage, geography, entrepreneurship, and even Georgia Tech themes! In fact, several participants shared that they preferred the less academic or challenging industry questions, as it was a nice reprieve from their day-to-day activities.
Despite not everyone taking home prizes that evening, we deemed all participants as winners since they took time out of their day to interact and connect with others in the Tech Square ecosystem and come together as a community for a shared interest – something that we believe is always rewarding.