I’m speaking at Tech Expo Gujarat 2026, and I’d love to see you there. The expo runs from November 27 to 29, 2026, at the Gujarat University Convention and Exhibition Centre (GUCEC) in Ahmedabad. If you’re in Gujarat that weekend, come and say hello.
What the Expo Is About
Tech Expo Gujarat brings business owners, technology teams and decision makers into one place for three days. The theme this year is Beacon of Rising Innovation & AI. The organizers expect more than 15,000 visitors, 250 exhibitors and 25 keynote speakers.
That mix is what makes it interesting. Many of the visitors run small and medium companies. They don’t need another flashy demo. They need to know which technology will pay for itself, and which one will quietly eat the budget.
My Session
My session is Competence Debt: AI Lets Us Ship What We Cannot Fix, on Saturday, November 28. The idea is simple. Every time you ship something you couldn’t have built yourself, you borrow. You didn’t steal it or cheat. The work is real, the result is fine and the customer is happy. But behind it sits a skill you now depend on and don’t own.
The bill never arrives while things are going well. That’s not generosity. That’s how debt works.
There’s a live demo in the middle, and I’ll ask the room what happens next, so bring an opinion. We’ll also look at what working with AI does to a team over five years. Some borrowing is a home loan and some is a gold loan. We’ll talk about how to tell which one you’re carrying.
It’s part technical and part philosophy. There’s no PowerPoint deck, only the demo and the conversation. I ran this test on my own work, and I failed it twice.
Why I Said Yes
For twenty-five years, I’ve been the person called in when a database stops behaving and nobody knows why. Lately, more of those calls start with AI. The code shipped fast, it worked for months, and now nobody on the team can say why it broke.
A room full of business owners is the right place for that conversation. The people who sign the checks carry this debt too, and most don’t know it. I’d rather they hear about it at an expo than during an outage.
Come Say Hello
If you’re attending, find me after my session. Bring your slow query, your AI project that nobody can fix, or your question about where to start. I’m happy to talk shop. Details and registration are on the Tech Expo Gujarat website.
I first wrote about this idea in Competence Debt: The Line Item No One Tracks. It’s an essay about the skills a team stops building when AI does the work. The session takes that essay into a live room. It’s one of thirty essays in my book AI: Nobody’s in There. But we’re still in here. All of them are free to read online, and the paperback is on Amazon.
Competence debt is not a reason to stop using AI, it is a reason to know what you borrowed.
Published by Pinal Dave on SQLAuthority. More of my work at pinaldave.com.
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