The growing popularity of the networking app Whova, particularly with conference and other event organizers, is focusing new attention on the small startup founded by CSE Prof. Yuanyuan Zhou and a few of her postdoctoral researchers. They made the front page of the San Diego Business Journal (pictured l-r: Soyeon Park, Weiwei Xiong, YY Zhou, and Tianwei Sheng), which is a lot of publicity for a team of computer scientists who tend to be shy. Indeed, their app aims to help students and any conference-goer "to get out of their shells and mingle with strangers," as Zhou told the Journal's technology reporter, Brad Graves. He goes on to note that Zhou considers networking "a career skill that will be just as necessary as knowing the fine points of computer code. Zhou's third startup business, in fact, is kind of a technological work-around for introverted people who find themselves thrown together at conferences."
The Whova app briefs the user on fellow conference attendees, especially information that could be a conversation starter (e.g., if they went to the same school). There is even a one-touch utility to say "hi" to someone else using the app in the vicinity. Whova recently completed its first six months of offering the service commercially, and customers have included TEDx, MIT, and a number of conferences held at UC San Diego (including CSE's 25th anniversary celebration). In those first six months, the app was deployed at more than 1,000 conferences. The article notes that Zhou learned her lesson after launching her second company, Pattern Insight, in the Bay Area -- and then having to commute back and forth from San Diego since moving here from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. Much of Pattern Insights assets were eventually sold to VMware, but when she decided to launch Whova, she opted to locate it on Sorrento Mesa, an easy reach from campus, where she holds the Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Mobile Computing.
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