When I was in high school, I didn’t have any industry role models. Most students didn’t go to a four-year college. School projects are valuable learning experiences and invaluable project-management and time-management exercises.Team work is a foundational building block for future success.
CCPA high school students experienced the journey of an entrepreneur building their minimum viable product (ideating, running surveys and customer interviews to validate assumptions, performing competitive analysis, building wireframes, managing features, and launching apps with native app builder Thunkable) as their Senior Capstone Projects.
As high school students, they likely do not know tech jargon. This is where industry mentors from companies across the San Francisco Bay Area come in to share their affirmative experiences and say hey, you’re not too far off from doing what the “professionals” and “techies” do at work.
Today’s presentations of students apps in Portable 2 focused on climate change (student education), shelter needs (items most in need at shelters), and healthcare (providing resources for free or low cost services when possible to low income and/or non-English speaking communities).
Volunteers attended student presentations and reinforced educator feedback by asking questions of the students presentations. Where did the data come from? Have you considered this additional use case? Why did this require building a native mobile app, versus just using Facebook to achieve your stated objectives?
After the presentations, Girl Geek X volunteers introduced themselves to the students. Marilyn works in user experience with a background in computer science, Katie is a Data Analyst at Playstation, James is a project manager, etc.
I talked about the thousands of early-stage startups that are great entry points (versus the big tech brands) for people new to tech. Together, we painted a picture of a diverse slate of roles in tech – filled by people of various education backgrounds.
We are excited to wrap up our first year with our “adopted” school CCPA in East Oakland with the Oakland Education Fund partnership, and excited for the next year!
Upon arriving at CCPA’s auditorium for a debriefing for Girl Geek X volunteers to learn about their roles in participating for Senior Capstone Presentation Day 1, we divided into groups for rounds of presentations, questions, and answers — as well as areas of growth and strength. CCPA instructors guided Girl Geek X volunteers to their classrooms for demos of senior projects.
For their capstone presentations, students were asked to identify a problem within their Oakland and local communities. Breaking out into small groups allowed students to experience teamwork, collaboration and participation. This is the culmination of three separate classes with educators.
Kicking off presentations in Portable 2, students present “Journie” — their response to identifying the mental health issue of having writing therapy and access to counselors. After enthusiastic questions and answers, student and programmer Armando Figueroa was asked what was the greatest lesson learned after a year-long process of group work. He responded enthusiastically: “Time waits for nobody.” Resoundingly, the group agreed their pain points were time management and communication.
Next, M n As Team presented their app “Sobriety Companion” impressively. After presenting statistics about populations suffering from substance abuse disorder, they noted that participants leaving a rehab treatment program have a 40-60% chance of relapse.
The relapse-prevention app comprehensively offered a daily pledge, progress tracker ((counting sobriety time), learn from others page, and a map consisting of the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous / Narcotics Anonymous / Methamphetamine Anonymous self-help 12-step meetings as well as links to rehab treatment centers. When asked about areas of growth, students admitted to being prone to procrastination and hastily finishing tasks last-minute.
P.A.R.T.E. demoed their app “Mental Evolution” containing features such as a mood journal, map, calendar and community space (for sharing content based on mental wellness challenges). This group used Google Forms to create a survey of their communities and decided to focus their target demographic of low-income communities.
Girl Geek X volunteers got to see wireframes of early mockups of the app and after Q&As, students were asked what was the highlight of working on their capstone project. The ladies enthusiastically noted their affinity for group work, team work and collaboration, and cited their strong communication skills as well as alignment of values.
MosaicML creates software and platform technology that makes ML training more efficient through algorithmic and system level innovations that improve the way neural networks are trained. Watch the MosiacML Girl Geek Dinner video of lightning talks!
New Relic delivers the only unified data platform that empowers engineers to get all telemetry — metrics, events, logs, and traces — paired with powerful full stack analysis tools to help engineers do their best work with data, not opinions. Watch the New Relic Girl Geek Lunch video of lightning talks!
Technical Account Manager (LATAM) – Los Angeles / San Francisco / Portland / Seattle / Phoenix / Atlanta / Austin / Dallas / Charlotte / Chicago / Miami / Minneapolis / Washington, DC
Atlassian is a leading provider of collaboration, development, and issue tracking software for teams. With over 100,000 global customers (including 85 of the Fortune 100), we’re advancing the power of collaboration with products including Jira, Jira Service Desk, Jira Ops, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello.
Check out open jobs at Atlassian!
Slack has transformed business communication. It’s the leading channel-based messaging platform, used by millions to align their teams, unify their systems, and drive their businesses forward. Slack is where work happens.
Strava is Swedish for “strive,” which epitomizes our attitude and ambition: We’re a passionate and committed team, unified by a mission to build the most engaged community of athletes in the world. With billions of activity uploads globally, we have a humbling and audacious vision: to be the record of the world’s athletic activities and the technology that makes every effort count.
Autodesk is changing how the world is designed and made. Our technology spans countless industries, empowering innovators everywhere to solve challenges big and small. From greener buildings to smarter products to more mesmerizing blockbusters, Autodesk software helps our customers to design and make a better world for all.
Front is your hub for all things customer communication. Behind every amazing business is, well, people: a team and customers. And no matter what industry you’re in or where you’re located, it’s those human-to-human interactions that make your experience with a business truly stand out.
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our customers’ greatest challenges.
Ironclad is the #1 contract lifecycle management platform for innovative companies. It’s the only platform flexible enough to handle every type of contract workflow, whether a sales agreement, an HR agreement or a complex NDA.
MosaicML is a deep learning startup with a mission to make machine learning training more efficient for everyone through fundamental innovations in algorithms, systems, and platforms. We believe that large scale training should be available beyond the well-resourced companies, and bridging the gap between research and industry is core to our success.
Opendoor’s mission is to empower everyone with the freedom to move. We believe the traditional real estate process is broken and our goal is simple: build a seamless, end-to-end customer experience that makes buying and selling a home stress-free and instant through technology.
At RelationalAI, we offer a cloud-based Relational Knowledge Graph Management System (RKGMS). We believe relational knowledge graphs are the ideal foundation for data-centric systems – systems that learn, reason, and predict over richly interconnected data.
Splunk Inc. turns data into doing with the Data-to-Everything Platform. Our powerful platform and unique approach to data have empowered companies to improve service levels, reduce operations costs, mitigate risk, enhance DevOps collaboration and create new product and service offerings.
The United States Digital Service is a startup at The White House, using design and technology to deliver better services to the American people. We partner leading technologists with dedicated public servants to improve the usability and reliability of our government’s most important digital services. When you work at the U.S. Digital Service, you change the lives of millions of Americans.
Fisher Investments is a different kind of investment firm. We don’t come from Wall Street, nor do we believe we fit in with most of the finance industry, and we’re proud of that. We work for a bigger purpose: bettering the investment universe. As of 12/31/21, Fisher Investments and its affiliates have offices in 8 countries and manage over $208 billion in assets for more than 100,000 clients.
Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality.
