It was a drastic change to my professional live — Natalie Korotaeva
Natürlich haben wir Steinbock konzeptionell und thematisch an Vorarlberger Gegebenheiten angepasst. Trotzdem können und wollen wir nicht verheimlichen, dass wir uns auch stark von Lemmings inspirieren lassen haben. Wir haben mit der in Wien lebenden Russin Natalie Korotaeva über ihre Erfahrungen gesprochen. Sie war eine der ersten Absolventinnen.
Hi Natalie, you’ve participated in one of the first batches of Lemmings. Lemmings happens in Vienna and was the inspiration for the Steinbock Product Development Camp. Can you tell us a little bit what you did at Lemmings?
It’s really great to hear that this initiative is spreading!
Yes, I was part of the very first batch (August-October’16) and it was a fantastic experience! First of all, I got an opportunity to meet a very diverse group of people, some of which have become my friends. Secondly, I learnt a lot about prototyping, coding and idea validation. Skills, which come in pretty handy at my daily work.
Lemmings was quite new and also the founders were still adjusting parameters. What was the reason for you to have so much trust and participate it in such a program?
Thomas Schranz — he is one of the founders of this programme and a close friend of mine. I trust him completely and try to support all his ideas. If Tosh [his nickname] will say tomorrow “Natalie, you know I was thinking about starting a new space programme” I would say “Sure, I’m in. What do we need?”.
You are working now at craftworks, a highly technical startup, leading the Facebook Developer Circle and giving talks on topics like Chatbots and ML. How did Lemmings influence your professional live then?
It was a drastic change. I improved my public speaking skills (as we needed to make presentations every time), learnt a lot about the Facebook Messenger platform and developed a deep understanding about chatbots and conversation design in general.
We are doing this for the first time and a lot of people we are talking to ask themselves if a program like this is the right thing for them. Who is the right person for something like this?
Interesting question. Despite all the diversity of the participants (nationalities, background, interests) there is one common thing within all of them, I would say: curiosity. The “right” person should be very open-minded, creative and eager to learn something new.
You participated at Lemmings but now you are also volunteering there and helping the founders to organize the incubator. To us as organizers of Steinbock: What is important to take care of?
I think the most important skill for organisers is to keep the level of the participants’ motivation during the whole programme up. Possible techniques could be gamification or providing some challenges that the participant needs to accomplish.
Thanks Natalie.
Sei wie Natalie. Melde dich jetzt hier an.
