What presenting at a cybersecurity conference taught me about building Nyata
I spent a few days in Dundee last week for AICSE2026, presenting a paper on how Nyata (my hyper-local AI platform for Bristol residents) applies to inclusive cybersecurity education and digital resilience.
A few things stood out that feel worth sharing with other indie hackers:
Academic validation is a different kind of traction. As a solo founder, most of my "wins" are usage numbers, user feedback, and partnership signups. Having a paper accepted and presenting it to researchers and professionals in the field was a different signal entirely — it forced me to articulate why Nyata's approach matters, not just that it works. That framing exercise alone was worth the trip.
Conferences are underrated as a founder. Between my own talk, the schedule, and trying to see a bit of the city, I didn't get much downtime — but the conversations with people working on adjacent problems (digital inclusion, accessibility, community resilience) gave me more perspective in two days than weeks of building in isolation would have.
Small detail, big reminder: Dundee felt oddly familiar — a historic ship that reminded me of Bristol's SS Great Britain, a public square that gave me total "hometown" vibes. It was a good nudge that however niche your local product is, the problems (and the cities) rhyme more than you'd think. That's actually reassuring if you're building something hyper-local like Nyata — the patterns generalise.
If anyone else here has presented their product at an academic or industry conference (outside the usual startup circuit), I'd love to hear how it shaped your thinking — or your roadmap.
Conference audiences are a specific kind of useful because they can't be polite. In a demo call people wait until the end; on stage the room reacts in real time and you can see exactly which slide lost them.
What was the thing you had to stop saying? Usually there's one phrase that made complete sense internally and turned out to mean nothing to the room — and finding that is worth more than the leads.
I like the distinction between proving a product works and explaining why it matters.
Those are different kinds of credibility, and it's easy to spend so much time building that you never practice the second one until an opportunity like this comes along.