about

the long version of the home page. now, before & everything else.

now

1. 01

   i run gezellig - an irl community for social music experiences in berlin. part music business, part community building, mostly curating the vibe.

   it started in my living room on my birthday in 2021. 100+ events later, it has brought 10,000+ people together.

2. 02

   most of my week goes into ideas for things people can do together, in real life - & the partnerships that make them happen.

   partners, clients & artists so far: casio, on, nu3. warner music & universal music. fora, mindspace & scaling spaces. fred again.. & alan gogoll.

3. 03

   gezellig runs on operations & operations run on people. so the real work is long-term partnerships. i like positive-sum games - "play long-term games with long-term people," as naval put it.

4. 04

   berlin is home. amsterdam is where i keep finding excuses to be - too many close friends in one city.

before

1. 01

   8 years of backend & data engineering.

   yelp - reporting systems for big multi-location brands. celeraone (acq. axel springer) - payments & paywall infrastructure. instana (acq. ibm) - led python tracing for application performance monitoring. plan a - led data engineering in climate tech: pipelines, hiring & whatever a growing startup needed that week.

2. 02

   early on, 2.5 years with martin grasser (designer of the blue twitter bird) at his studios and repeat & mococo muse. creative developer - art & tech experiments, generative art.

   that is where i got my eye for design. & a lot of mentorship.

3. 03

   at 20, i founded pydata delhi - india's largest data science community. from an idea to 10,000+ people between 2016 & 2018. a ton of meetups & two editions of the yearly conference, for 500+ people.

4. 04

   at university, two research groups. human-computer interaction with the stanford crowd research collective, led by prof. michael bernstein - one of our papers. before that, precog at iiit-delhi - privacy & security in online social networks.

misc

1. 01

   a tedx talk in amsterdam, 2025 - on how taking the leap fuels growth. low risk-aversion & a soft spot for serendipity got me most of what i have.

   everyone has a story worth telling. i keep asking people to tell theirs.

2. 02

   23 talks, workshops & posters in 13 countries - mostly at python conferences. i go to at least one every year. still the best way i know to see a new place, learn a new culture & watch developers push the edges. the list.

3. 03

   200+ clients on codementor, all five stars - freelance projects & 1:1 mentoring, now closed. the reviews live on the work page. between 2015 & 2022, countless more hours mentoring junior developers.

   if a chat could help you push in a new direction, write me a short email about who you are - hi[at]manojp[dot]com. this advice helps.

4. 04

   how i think about work, ai & taste is on the thesis page.