# Ali Mustufa Shaikh Senior Developer Advocate at Pieces. Developer relations, GenAI education and community building. - **Role:** Senior Developer Advocate, Pieces - **Home:** Mumbai, India - **Second home:** San Francisco, California (a second base — not home) - **Site:** - **Also known as:** ialimustufa Developer communities aren't a channel. They're a room full of people who trust you. Ten years in those rooms: 180 college halls with a projector and a train ticket, four years turning Postman's student program from an empty doc into 200,000 developers, and now GenAI workshops at Pieces across four continents. Around half a million developers have sat through something he made. ## At a glance | | | |---|---| | Developers reached | ~500,000 | | Workshops delivered | 400+ | | Cities | 40, across 4 continents | | Postman Student Programs | 0 → 200,000 developers | | Course views | 1M+ on academy.postman.com | | Speaking | TEDx, keynotes, DevFests, university auditoriums | ## Career ### 2015–2021 — Freelance trainer *The kid with a projector.* Before devrel was a job title, it was a train ticket and a laptop bag. 180 colleges. 38 cities across India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and the US. Engineers at Rakuten, Infosys, Deloitte, Intel and Booking.com learned Google Cloud from a freelancer. Scale: 180 colleges · 38 cities · Google Cloud. ### 2020–2024 — Postman *Zero to two hundred thousand.* Founding member of Student Programs, which is a polite way of saying there was nothing there yet. Built to 200,000 registered developers. Delivered 318 API sessions to enterprises and universities, then wrote the API 101 Kit so community leaders could run their own — 500+ events in two years, none of which needed him in the room. Courses on academy.postman.com passed a million views. Scale: 0 → 200K developers · 318 sessions · 1M course views. ### 2024–present — Pieces *Hands on keyboard, no magic tricks.* 80+ GenAI workshops so far, virtual and in person, on four continents. Wrote GenAI 101 and has taught it to more than 10,000 developers — the version where everyone opens an editor, not the version where the speaker demos something impressive and nobody can reproduce it. Also runs the Pieces AI Summit and the Pieces of Memory series. Scale: 80+ workshops · 10,000+ developers taught. ## Projects Built nights and weekends, out of need rather than strategy. Full detail in [projects.md](https://iali.in/md/projects.md). - **[Mirror](https://mirror.iali.in/try)** — AI facial rehabilitation. Tracks 400+ facial landmarks in real time and scores symmetry. Built in the days after Bell's palsy paralysed the right side of his face. Covered by eight outlets. Built with MediaPipe and Claude. - **[Fluent](https://fluent.iali.in)** — Stage practice for people who have to get up there and sound like they meant it. - **[Passport](https://passport.iali.in)** — Travel, visas and documents in one place, for a life lived between airports. ## Programs and communities Some paid, most not. Rooms, curricula and programs convened because they didn't exist yet — most still running without him. | Program | Years | Role | Detail | |---|---|---|---| | TensorFlow User Group Mumbai | 2018–present | Founding organiser | The first TFUG in India. 50+ events in seven years, with speakers including Laurence Moroney, Paige Bailey and Anirudh Koul. | | GDG Cloud Mumbai | 2018–2024 | Founding organiser | 30+ meetups plus the flagships — Google Cloud Community Days and DevFest. | | Google Crowdsource | 2017–2019 | Global influencer | ML data campaigns across 22 countries. 500K images in two months fed Open Images Extended, presented at NeurIPS, and became his TEDx talk. | | Postman Student Programs | 2020–2024 | Founding member | Built from an empty doc to 200,000 registered developers. | | API 101 Kit | 2021–2024 | Curriculum | A teach-it-yourself kit for community leaders. 500+ events run from it in two years. | | GenAI 101 & Pieces AI Summit | 2024–present | Curriculum | 10,000+ developers through GenAI 101, plus the AI Summit and the Pieces of Memory webinar series. | ## Recognition - IEEE MGA Larry K. Wilson Regional Student Volunteer Award - Code in Place Section Leader — taught Stanford's CS106A - Intel Software Innovator - Gemini Certified Educator - LinkedIn Top Voice - Research on [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fsWc6dsAAAAJ) ## Where the work has gone 40 cities, 4 continents, one carry-on. - **India** — Mumbai (home), plus 38 cities and 180+ colleges. - **United States** — San Francisco (second home), San Jose, Seattle, New York, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. - **Asia Pacific** — Singapore, Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo. - **Elsewhere** — Dubai, Istanbul, Barcelona, Morocco, Nigeria. ## Recommendations > A founding member of the Postman Student Programs team and a driving force behind the community taking root at scale. He knows how to hustle smartly to achieve seemingly impossible goals. > > — Claire Froelich, Student Programs Manager, Postman > An amazing community builder. His passion for inclusion in Machine Learning reflected in his talks about Google Crowdsource, from college auditoriums to the TEDx stage. > > — Anurag Batra, Group Product Manager, Google > Ali and his team believed in the brand and took up projects as their own babies. I appreciated their hard work building the community from ground zero. > > — Reshma Sanghvi, Community Manager, Google ## Work with him Workshops, keynotes, developer programs — or an argument about whether agents are overhyped. See [speaking.md](https://iali.in/md/speaking.md) for formats and how to make contact. ## Profiles - LinkedIn — - GitHub — - X — - Instagram — - Google Scholar — - ResearchGate — - TEDx —