The RAND Corporation decided to take on the project and we are elated about this new partnership. The team dedicated the past week to preparing for our first meeting with the clients, a meeting which could we fondly referred to as our “second kickoff”.
For the first time, we worked in the same room as a team and it was great. We were able to brainstorm and bounce things off of each other while we worked. Through this week, we finalized scheduled interviews, engaged in interpretation sessions, and designed artifacts. We wanted to capture all that we had learned since the beginning of the year. On one of the artifact that we laid out, we wanted to highlight insights, breakdowns and areas that we where we had questions.
We identified areas of exploration that we needed to do a deep dive investigation on. These areas include; Mentorship, the efficiency of TAP, the importance of soft skills, value of planning before joining the army and after leaving the army. These were the areas that we presented to the clients during our meeting. The team hoped to learn what we had right and what we were off base on.
Our meeting on Friday was a success, the insights that we shared gave the clients some new information. The meeting was a discussion on our findings, the clients gave their insights and added knowledge and resources on the topics that we tabled.
Looking ahead, we plan to scope down the interviews that we have been doing with a major focus on the enlisted veterans. We are also working to diversify the participants that we are speaking to, this is in effort to ensure that the data we are getting covers all of the service members in the military. As we break for spring, part of the team is attending the SXSW Conference in Austin. The conference has several panel discussions and meetups that the team is planning to attend. We are excited about the progress of this project, our new confirmed clients and the ever supportive MHCI team that has seen us through the past ups and downs.
