Women are the new tech role models at Tuenti
Learning by doing with Bachillerato students & product processes
February 11th was the International day of women and girls in science. A day to increase women’s visibility in jobs mostly dominated by men. A day to create new role models for girls, to prove to the world that gender doesn’t matter, and that we see diversity as an added value to create fully talented teams.
To celebrate this day in Spain, 11defebreroES coordinated and supported a lot of activities with schools. Most women were talking about joining them and organising an activity in which we could talk about our work and tasks. As the main goal was making the role of women in tech visible, we decided that all talks and workshops should be guided by us. We asked some of the guys for help with the event day, volunteering for tasks like logistics and collaborating in workshops.
So we wrote to some schools based in Madrid, explaining we wanted to organise some workshops for their students, but we had no responses :(
A couple of weeks after February 11th, we had a response from Colegio Cabrini, saying that they were very interested in our idea, and we agreed to make a workshop with their 1st bachillerato students. So, last March 19th we organised out first “Tuenti day: build your app” with all departments involved, to show how we work and what we do everyday. Everything went wonderfully, so they asked us to organise another workshop, this time with 2nd bachillerato students on May 8th.
Organizing and managing groups: PMOs
The first session had the objective of introducing the role of a PMO (Project Management Office). One of our colleagues explained to the students what the key phases of a project are. From ideation, to research and design, then to building, and finally to selling it, the role of a Project Manager is to assure that each of the phases are done in a proper and timely way.
After that, the group of 40 students was divided into smaller groups of 6/7, paired with a Project Manager that was randomly selected for each group. The role of those students was to organise the work of all of the team members, and to encourage them to participate.
One of my favourite details was the naming of the groups: relevant women in science and technologies (one of the goals of the activity was bring to light these important women and their achievements). The groups were named: Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Hypatia of Alejandría, Lise Meitner, Ada Lovelace and Dorothy Vaughan and we gave to each group a little biography to meet their women.
Finding and solving problems: Research & Product Design
The next step after creating the groups, was finding a problem to solve. Some days before, we sent them a survey to collect some ideas to inspire their projects.
The briefing was: to improve or create a feature in WhatsApp, concerning voice use, groups or picture storage. Each group chose one of these topics and interviewed a volunteer for 15 minutes to obtain more information about problems and pains from the users’ point of view. After that, they wrote each insight on a post-it and shared it with the rest of the group, to find a problem to solve all together.
Each group wrote the problem as a challenge (“How might we…?”) and we had a mini-break to share the learnings from the challenges and interviews between the groups, because one of the main skills that we must have in our job is to be able to share work with colleagues, and give or collect feedback.
After deciding the challenge, it was time to start finding solutions with “Crazy 2's”: each student drew two possible solutions for the problem, the team shared all and voted on them, and the the most voted idea was the chosen solution to make a Concept card explaining the benefits and a long description of the feature. Finally, each team made some wireframes with all the working details.
Building the solution: Engineering
Now, the students had to think about how those solutions are developed with code. For this, we planned a workshop centred around two principles of software engineering: big problems need to be broken into small steps, and most actions are carried out by a dialog between two pieces of code.
To illustrate these points, some of our colleagues acted as servers (the computers in the cloud) and the students acted as the application. They had to hand the “machines” small post-its with the data or action they needed them to do. For example: give me the list of friends for this user, save this photo in that folder, etc. If they asked for something in a vague way, the computer would refuse: they had to be precise and ask for it step by step! Little by little, they started building their “algorithm” (the list of small steps in which an application behaves) by collecting the post-its in the correct order. It’s just like following a recipe when cooking!
Learning how to sell our projects: Marketing
During the last workshop, our Marketing colleagues explained how app marketing is done. They did that through current examples, and explaining which criteria must used at all times.
After that, each group developed their own marketing campaign to sell the project and to get new users. The sky was the limit! They had unlimited money, so could build the campaign they wanted: from covering Gran Via walls with their app, to making videos with influencers. All was valid!
Finally, each group had 5 minutes to present the startup in the kitchen in front of all their mates. The name of the startups were the names of the women we had given them in the morning. They presented the product, technical solution, and marketing campaign. A jury composed by members of all modules decided the winner projects.
There were prizes and a lot of applause at the end of the day!
Thanks to all organisation team and volunteers who helped us all day. It would not be possible without all of you, and not only did the students enjoy the day, but we also had a great time!
I want to give a special mention to Fina (@josefina pere, who promoted the idea, coordinated all volunteers, and supported us with organising the workshops. A big applause for her! 👏🏼👏🏼
And finally, another big thank you to Iratxe, Nuria, Jorge, Miguel and Kini, who helped me in writing this article 💜
