Due to the global pandemic, I had lost my planned spring/summer internship as the company froze hiring. I applied for a research position at Drexel instead. This also fell through as it conflicted with my Teaching Assistant position. This whole time, my co-op advisor at Drexel had been sending me a variety of random positions and opportunities that were opening up. Almost all of them did not fit my major. The bulk was actually Social Media and Marketing positions that I do not want. One opportunity was the Philly Start Up Sprint. It's a two week long conference type experience that's meant to build the skills you would have received in a summer internship. I applied and got in. So for the next two weeks, I'll be watching talks and learning about different topics. I figure I might as well write about the experience here.
Today is day 1 of the Philly Startup Sprint. Today wasn't much a learning day, mostly informational for how this program is going to be run, what is expected of us, and making sure we all had the required documentation.
One of the large aspects of this program is participating in a group project. Today we got separated into our groups and had our first group exercise. My group got into a Zoom video conferencing room, did some quick introductions and did the few exercises. The exercises were centered around getting Slack, Zoom, and Google Drive set up. We then did a group Quizzo exercise and answered some random questions. We had fun and I think the group bonded well.
Later we had a Q&A session with a software engineer and the Co-Founder of NICKL Inc, Ted Economy. He talked about getting patents and applying an engineering thought process to building a business.
So far, this program seems more geared towards the business side of things. I don't have much experience in business, nor have I ever sought it out. Hopefully this program gets me experience in something I normally wouldn't do.
I will admit, after Day 1, I was really worried about this program. I was really worried that I would be bored listening to talks for the full four hours each day. Today was much more immersive, I was a little stressed sometimes, but I actually came out of it feeling good.
The first part of the session was about data management using Google Sheets and Excel. I've never properly used spreadsheets before, so this experience was really fun. I always knew spreadsheets were powerful, but I've always opted for CSV files and Bash and Python scripts for data processing. I went through the tutorial talk with the all the other attendees, then we broke into our groups for the group project.
The group project had three parts and we had an hour to do it. The first two
parts related to formatting data and getting information in a spreadsheet. The
third part was to create a two slide PowerPoint explaining the Excel function,
vLookup, to 3rd graders. Since I have the most teaching experience, I was
delegated part 3. I ended up making a cute slideshow about tables and
Minecraft touching upon the concepts of fetching data and computers
maintaining that process. I wanna go back and complete parts A and B on my own for
the experience.
We had a Q&A session with Emily Foote, she does a lot of work in education and accessibility. These two topics are incredibly important to me, but sadly I missed the Q&A session because I was medicating my sick puppy.
I've had the incredible idea of creating a GitHub repository to store all the projects I and my team do these next two weeks. I'd like a way to showcase the skills I learn. I'll probably get that repository set up tonight.
In other news, my group is off to a great start. They've made the group projects competitive and we're in first place based on participation and Quizzo. I'm really excited.
Another day, another sprint. Today's focus was data visualization and storytelling. Before I get into today's content, my team is still in first place! We did awesome on our Day 2 assignments. They used my Minecraft slides as an example on how well I explained the material, so I'm really happy about that.
So today's training and exercises were about data visualization, storytelling, and delivering a good presentation. After delivering many lectures, I've learned a lot of this information already. The typical, clear data images, don't overcrowd slides with text. There was also a great section about the best way to format graphs and diagrams to make them easy to read.
Today's tasks had three parts, once again to be completed in an hour.
In the first part, we were given a spreadsheet of revenue and costs for our company, Pretzler, a pretzel flavored seltzer. Our company wasn't doing great, but we needed to pitch it to investors with a three slide PowerPoint. I did mostly some thematic elements there.
In the second part, we were given five pretty, but ineffective graphics and had to give constructive criticism on all of them. Myself and another teammate worked on this one. We each wrote our own critiques separately, then combined our ideas for the submission.
The last part was writing about a visualization from r/DataIsBeautiful on Reddit. Two of my teammates worked on this part, so I didn't get a chance to work on it. I'll probably do this part on my own too.
In other news, I finally built a GitHub repository to act as a portfolio of the work we're doing here. I'm really proud of the things I've written and the presentations I've created so far. I hope we get more into tech things later, but I don't expect to.
Team Lombard Street sees our third day in a row on top! I'm really enjoying my team members and the competitiveness and the projects.
Today, we really didn't have a comprehensive theme. The projects had to do about writing emails and pitches. I was a lot more interested in the Q&A session today. The Q&A session was with Nick Bayer, the CEO of Saxby's, a coffee shop on campus. While I haven't cared too much for the speakers yet, as they've really only talked about business and starting businesses and being entrepreneurs, I will admit, I liked this guy. One of the things I noticed, he kept talking about diversity and how many female employees and BIPOC employees he had. Coming from a cisgender, heterosexual, white, male CEO, this immediately set off alarms in my head. In the chat I asked something along the lines of "You keep mentioning these numbers, but what are you actually doing for your LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and female employees?" I didn't expect my question to get chosen, but it was. He ended up answering the question really nicely. He talked about the different trainings he has and what he tries to do on the CEO level. One of the things he said really stood out to me. "How can we be opening the door for other people, when the people opening the doors have these implicit biases". We had a good talk and I was really impressed with the things he said about implicit biases, privilege, and the constant learning that comes with it all.
Even though this program is centered around business, I'm really starting to enjoy the work I'm doing and the things I'm learning.
Today's the last day of the week. I'm definitely feeling a sense of burnout. Like yesterday, today was another day centered less around training and more around Q&A sessions about businesses and entrepreneurship. We did some quick activities where we looked at an absurd amount of resumes and made changes. We then also answered a few interview questions. It was a fun reminder that I'm gonna have to look for a job at some point and we got some tips on hunting.
Next week looks like it has more trainings, so I'm excited for those. They've been more interesting than a business person talking about starting their own business. Maybe I'm just too technical for that stuff. Anyway, somehow my team is still winning. Everyday we sit down in our Zoom room and just joke around. It's been fun. Here's to week 2.