Inspiring the Future of Tech: The Founding Story of exploretech.la
The exploretech.la we know today is a massive event in which hundreds of high school students from underserved communities across Los Angeles come to UCLA to explore computer science, engineering, and technology through various panels, workshops, and exhibitor booths. While it may seem like well-organized event with a passionate team behind it, it wasn’t always like that. Looking back, the story of the founding of exploretech.la is one of uncertainty, perseverance, and camaraderie and actually started years before the first iteration of the event in 2018 and my time at UCLA.
In spring of 2015, I was a high school senior taking my school’s first offering of a CS class. The class was taught in partnership with Microsoft Philanthropies TEALS, a program that sends industry volunteers to teach CS in schools across the country. At the end of every year, they invite their students to participate in a field trip to an event called the TEALS Computer Science Fair in San Francisco. I initially thought it would be like any other educational field trip, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fun interactions I had with software engineers and industry representatives. I distinctly remember one speaker in a cat onesie teaching us about entrepreneurship. In the end, I thought the event was a good representation of the tech industry and it actually re-affirmed my decision to pursue a career in tech. Fast forward a few months, I graduated from high school and started studying computer science at UCLA.
In spring quarter of 2017, I was fortunate enough to join ACM at UCLA as an officer for their Hack committee. When officers start their term, we’re asked “what do you want to accomplish?” At the time, I knew I wanted to give back to the community but didn’t know how other than through ACM’s existing programs. However, after speaking with my peers, I realized that kids growing up in the Bay Area had significantly more access to STEM resources compared to those in other areas such as Los Angeles. Growing up in the Bay Area, I never thought much about being surrounded by tech; it just seemed normal to me. With this in mind and taking inspiration from the TEALS CS Fair, I wanted us to host an event to introduce students from underserved communities in LA to CS and tech in ways they might not have had access to otherwise. As a result, on May 15th, 2017, a group of ACM officers and I gathered in the second floor lounge of Dykstra Hall to discuss the idea of a “Tech Industry Showcase” for the first time.
Over the next few months, we continued to shape our vision. We created a written proposal, successfully pitched it to ACM’s leadership and the UCLA Computer Science Department, and got the event added as its own line item in ACM’s 2017–2018 budget. Despite these early successes, there was still a lot of uncertainty since it wasn’t clear which ACM committee would own the event, how much it was going to cost, and how we were going to get attendees. It wasn’t until January 2018 when the pieces started falling in place.
Unfortunately, all the members from the original group I had met with in May 2017 were no longer available to continue working on the event so in January of 2018, I recruited a new team consisting from various ACM committees and began operating under a new name: the Tech@UCLA Showcase. We started making progress: we created a team structure, booked Ackerman Grand Ballroom, and formed partnerships with various companies/organizations. Our biggest concern at the time was funding the event. Even though we received some funding from the UCLA CS Department and UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, we still didn’t have enough money to meet our goals. Our only hope at the time was to make up the rest of the money from corporate sponsorships, which was a big risk. I was so afraid that we wouldn’t have enough money to pull it off. There were times we were close to cancelling the event. However, everything changed when we connected with TEALS.
The mission of exploretech.la is to inspire students to explore opportunities in computer science, engineering, and technology.
Through our initial conversations with TEALS, we discovered that they were actually planning on expanding their CS Fairs to several cities across the country, including Los Angeles and offered to combine events with us rather than compete with each other. However, there was one condition for this offer: we would need to rebrand our event to the TEALS Computer Science Fair in exchange for funding the majority of our budget. From TEALS’s perspective, they wanted to maintain consistent branding across all their CS Fairs and preserve the sanctity of the event’s name. As a TEALS alumnus, I empathized with them but it was a difficult decision for us because we had to essentially sacrifice the identity we had created. However, we decided that joining with TEALS was ultimately the best decision to keep the event alive, especially since our mission would still be the same: to inspire students from underserved communities in Los Angeles to explore opportunities in computer science, engineering, and technology. Thus, we became the “TEALS Computer Science Fair presented by ACM at UCLA” in March 2018.
The three months prior to the event were the most exciting months. We had secured all the funding we needed but knew there was still so much left to do. Since we hadn’t done anything like this before, it was exciting yet daunting to be the trailblazers for this new event; it really felt like a startup. Our team frequently stayed late after meetings in the ACM Clubhouse in Boelter Hall trying to finish our what seemed like an endless list of tasks, all while forming a sense of camaraderie between us all. The part I loved the most was watching everyone take our original idea and add their own twist to it, whether it was creating interactive workshops, designing new branding, or coordinating with local high schools.
After countless hours of planning, meetings, swag bag stuffing, and printing issues, the event date of Monday, May 21st, 2018 finally came. We were all excited event day was here but little did we know what the day had in store for us. The first sign of trouble was when high schools weren’t arriving on time. We had planned for the event to start 10 AM and asked schools to arrive starting at 9 AM. As we waited outside at 9 AM, no one came. It wasn’t until after 9:30 AM that the first schools bus arrived. Since schools continued to arrive after 10 AM, we decided to change our whole event schedule at the last minute and push our start time back by about half an hour. Luckily, our team was able to adapt and our wonderful opening speakers were willing to be flexible. Once everyone arrived, we began the opening ceremony with amazing talks from Hacker Fund President & CEO Justin Brezhnev (who is actually the person in the cat onesie from the CS Fair I attended in high school), UCLA CS Professor and ex-Google principal engineer Carey Nachenberg, and UCLA Engineering Dean Jayathi Murthy. After, students were released into the exhibition hall and our panels and workshops began.
However, the morning’s trouble only proved to foreshadow what was to come. For example, some high school students trying to leave the venue unattended and some panels and workshops having low attendance. The most memorable situation I ran into when was a random group of elementary school kids walking into the event, which was only for high schools. As I was running running errands, I all of a sudden was shocked to find a group of very young kids roaming around the exhibition hall. I asked them how they got in and they pointed at their teacher, who was taking swag from one of our tables. When I confronted their teacher, she refused to talk to me and ran away with her back hunched over saying that she was leaving. I was in disbelief. This was a private invite-only event and this teacher brought her students into the event as if nothing was wrong. To be honest, I’m still shocked to this day. Tyler Menezes from SRND later reassured me and said that “even though you might think things are falling apart, no one else knows so don’t stress yourself out about it.” So the day went on.
As the event came to a close, one final bump we encountered was schools leaving before the closing ceremony even began. By the time the closing ceremony started, only about a third of our total attendees were still there, which was disheartening to see. Unable to do anything, we gave our closing remarks, shared a hopeful message for the future, and officially brought the event to an end. (I may or may not have teared up when thanking everyone.) And with that, from ideation of the event in May 2017 to actually hosting it in May 2018, a year’s worth of hard work was done.
In the fall of 2018, a new team with new leadership was formed from our founding team to continue our work. And after further discussion with TEALS, they dropped their branding condition due to shifts in their internal priorities and we created a new identity for ourselves: exploretech.la. We continued to grow our team, declare independence from ACM, and become recognized as an official engineering student organization by the UCLA CS Department and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.
Reflecting on the whole experience, I’m in awe of how far the team had come. Having worked with several student-led teams before, I can say that our founding team was undoubtedly the best team I’ve ever worked with. Without each and every one of our members, we wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. And since this was my first time leading something of this scale, I learned so much as both as a leader and individual. However, I’m most proud of the impact we had. Not only did we create this event from scratch, inspire hundreds of high school students, and possibly changed how these kids were going to pursue their academic and professional dreams, but we also formed new friendships and memories together. I watched people who met as strangers through exploretech.la become close friends and it amazes me that if it wasn’t for this organization, some of these friendships might not have existed. In the end, I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished for ourselves, the UCLA community, and the Greater Los Angeles community and can’t wait to see what’s in store for the future of exploretech.la.
Acknowledgements
To our partners at ACM, TEALS, and all the student, departmental, and professional organizations at UCLA that partnered with us for the first iteration of this event, thank you for all your support. Without it, we wouldn’t have been as successful as we were and this organization might not have continued to exist and grow. Great things happen when people come together and exploretech.la is evidence of that.
To our founding team, thank you for being the best team ever. None of this would have happened if weren’t for all of you so thank you so much for all your dedication and passion for this team. And thank you for taking a risk on me and this event. Many of you could have chosen to pursue opportunities with already-established student organizations or taken time to enjoy the rest of college before graduation for you former seniors, but instead you decided to join me in trying something drastically new. I’ll miss working with you all.
To future teams, I have three pieces of advice: do it for the mission, start early, and don’t forget to have fun. Every decision our founding team made had one consistent goal in mind: do it for the kids we’re serving. Our mission is to inspire high school students from underserved communities to explore computer science, engineering, and technology. As long as we continue to uphold that mission, I believe we’ll continue to be successful no matter what happens. Next, start early, seriously. It will save so much stress and uncertainty and allow more time for creativity and innovation. Finally, don’t forget to have fun. At the end of the day, we’re a student organization. Our event is for students by students. A major part of the college experience is participation in extracurricular activities. The lessons learned and friendships you made through these activities are the ones you’ll remember most fondly after college. So enjoy it, take it all in, and have fun! I believe that our best work is done when we actually enjoy what we’re doing. And if we enjoy what we’re doing, is it actually work? Best of luck with the future and I deeply hope the exploretech.la team will still be going strong years after all the members of the founding team and I are gone.
Thank you for reading the founding story of exploretech.la! If you’re interested in learning more about, getting involved with, or supporting us, please visit us at exploretech.la.
More photos from the inaugural event can be found on our Facebook page.
