Reaching Higher
Demo day at the White House
tl;dr: Went to a demo day for education apps @ the White House, and it was awesome
I had the pleasure to attend Reach Higher Career App Challenge Demo Day on July 7th sponsored by the Reach Higher Initiative at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, aka The EEOB, a stone’s throw from The White House, which being The White House, might as well be a million miles away, with the intervening space being filled with dragons, zombies and people that insist on coming to a full stop at roundabouts (Come on people it’s a yield sign!). All and all, a great honor.
A little about the Demo from the directly from Reach Higher Initiative:
The Reach Higher Career App Challenge launched last October, calling for new mobile technologies to help students navigate education and career pathways, including career and technical education. In May, the Challenge judges selected five finalists who were each awarded $25,000 and advanced to the Virtual Accelerator phase. During this phase they received expert mentorship and had access to industry leaders as they refined their solutions and built out their prototypes. Following the event, judges will select a winner to receive the remainder of the $225,000 cash prize pool and additional in-kind prizes from sponsors.
My company, Microsoft, was present because we were one of the aforementioned sponsors. Our Entrepreneur-in-residence, out of New York, Tereza was able to get a special offer for the Azure Cloud platform service for the winner. She’s also the person whose place I took, because she was busy doing actual work, getting to go to the White House squarely falls squarely ‘that’s cool’ bucket. (Thanks Tereza!)
The Finalist
Each of the finalist has ten minutes to present and had seven minutes for Q&A from the judges. The finalist were threaten with a clap off if they went over time. Thankfully, all the finalist were well prepared and executed, they all came in on time.
Future Plans®, Pinellas Education Foundation
A career discovery app that assesses student aptitudes and interests to map educational pathways with in-demand career choices. Future Plans® guides students through a decision matrix to evaluate career alternatives and offers career preparation tools such as resume building, job interview tips, and job-hunting videos.
Hats & Ladders, ThinkZone Games
A game-based app that supports middle and high school career exploration with swipe-to-choose self-assessments, connected activities, and mini-challenges. Hats & Ladders provides repeat exposure to a broad spectrum of careers and enables students to draw connections between their personal attributes and multiple pathways to career success.
INFORM® Journeys, Edmin.com, Inc
Interactive learning map app created to help students explore life’s possibilities as they navigate through K-12, CTE, college/university, military service, and/or vocational training. Journeys provides students the ability to create personalized roadmaps to explore career opportunities and access curated resources, in addition to offering career interest surveys, self-assessments, and progress reporting.
MARi, MARi LLC
School and career coach app that brings together assessments, capability mapping, and achievement validation, along with personalized career and education opportunities into a comprehensive map of the labor market. MARi is an intelligently connected network that continuously tracks student progress to create a visual gap analysis and alert students of local opportunities.
Overgrad, Overgrad, Inc.
A web platform that leverages community resources, technology, and data to support long-term student outcomes. Overgrad combines academic performance information with results from a career interest survey based on O*NET data to help students select pathways and track their progress toward aspired outcomes.
The venue
As I mentioned, the venue was the EEOB, and the actual event took place in the Indian Treaty Room. This room was a absolutely beautiful and replete with history.
My only criticism was actually finding the room. There are no signs. So for the future generations sake, who like me, feel weird wandering around that close to the president: take the elevator to the right when you first enter, go to the fourth floor, make a left out of the elevator, then two lefts. The room is right in front of the double grand staircase. Pro-tip, there is a men’s room immediately after the second left. Sorry ladies, I’m sure your restroom is near.
The speakers
Like any good event, there were several speakers. The Master of Ceremonies was on point, and kept things moving.
There were two speakers that really stood out, were Kim Ford from the US Department of Education. She was great. engaging, and funny, and she wasn’t even the main act. Next time I have a barbecue, I’m seriously going to send her an invite.
Next was Megan Smith, the CTO of the United States. She gave a wonderful perspective on what the whole event meant and why it was important. It was quite the thrill being in the same room with her. I’d just with they had a Q&A, I’d asked her, as, you know, CTO, what is the United States stack, and had they thought about off-loading some things to the cloud — I’m pretty sure her company would qualify for BizSpark Plus
I think programs that focus on education is important and essential. It’s great to see that apps like these are using the same rigorous processes that more trivial but very well funded apps are. I’ve not been at Microsoft long, but I’m convinced that if the only thing that separates a company making worthwhile apps is cloud services, then we should be, by all means, enabling that and I’m glad the Microsoft was able to be involved.
I thought the whole event was great. The venue was awesome. Thanks to US Department of Education, The Higher Reach Initiative, Sara Holoubek and Luminary Lab for throwing a fantastic event. Thanks again to Tereza for asking me to take her place. Finally, Good luck and thank you to all the finalist!
