What a year it has been at DevX! We’ve accomplished so much during the past year, and as we look to build upon these successes heading into the next academic year, we want to share some of these accomplishments with you.
Woot, We’re Official!
This past year, DevX graduated from a small band of students determined to build some neat projects to a registered UCLA student organization! Along with having the resources to support more than just a few determined students, we also set in place much more structure to ensure that DevX can grow in a sustainable manner. In particular, we introduced a new set of board positions to promote and maintain various aspects of the club, including recruiting, mentorship and more.
Team Matching
We made drastic changes to our recruiting and team-placement procedures. During the 2017 Spring and Fall quarters, we matched new recruits to teams based solely on recruit preferences. We quickly realized the problems with this approach. Teams ended up with too many, or not enough, developers. Recruits were placed on teams for which their skills may not have been the best fit. The result was a whole lot of frustration within some teams. To remedy this, we injected an extra step into the process — a mixer. The mixer is a more casual space where Product Managers meet with new recruits and leave with a better assessment of their skillset and fit. This way, team matching is much more holistic and caters to the needs of different teams.
Speaker Series
We also introduced Speaker Series! Throughout the quarter, we bring in other students and members of the tech and entrepreneurship community to share their story. We kicked off with two speaker events led by internal members of the organization, and soon brought in guest speakers like Gregor Martynus, an open-source offline-first enthusiast, and Ben Junya, a self-taught software developer and public speaker. The most successful event of them all however, was the event we did in collaboration with the founding members and engineers from Bird. We had over 100+ students come out to listen to the CTO, VP of Engineering, and more from Bird talk about kick-starting their company.
Launched Products
DevX was originally founded with the intent of applying the theory we learn in the classroom to solve real problems at UCLA. Our teams are set out to build better tools and products for UCLA students, and they’ve come a long way in accomplishing that goal. Some of our launched products include
- BruinMeet, which has set up numerous UCLA students on successful blind dates
- Mappening, which provides Bruins with a holistic view of all events going on around campus
And we’ve got several more in Beta testing so watch out for their release! It’s definitely an exciting time, and we’re itching to have all of our products hit the real world.
The Year Ahead
Back to Our Roots
We sat down to reevaluate the mission statement that we’ve been abiding by this year, and we’ve decided to go back to our roots. We want to be a club that provides students interested in the tech and entrepreneurship industry the resources to apply their skills in meaningful ways.
There are several things that we want DevX to be and mean for its members next year. We aim to make meetings next year more meaningful and useful for everyone in the club. We want to run activities and events that make our members excited and eager to come out.
Team Structure
In order to keep teams on track, we are looking for systematic ways to make sure that each team has the resources to maintain their schedule and push out a finished product on time. We want to standardize the ways in which teams keep track of progress, while also allowing flexibility and freedom for Product Managers to run the show how they see fit. This may mean moving every team to GitHub projects and milestones. Meeting deadlines and being held accountable are all essential components of the tech industry, and we want to provide those same experiences for students in the club in a fulfilling and enjoyable way.
Intern Program
We are also planning a brand new intern program within DevX! We want to make the onboarding process as smooth as possible for new recruits, and give them the skills they need to be successful right away on a DevX team (as well as in the real world). We want to conduct a bootcamp at the start of each quarter with our new recruits, and expose them to all the different technologies they may come across while developing. We want to support new developers (or developers who don’t have as much experience) as much as possible, because we all know how it feels to be faced with unfamiliar challenges.
DevX Culture
To promote a better team culture and cross-team communication, we want to implement developer/designer shoutouts of the month, to congratulate people who have been contributing a lot to their team and putting in work. We want the Board to reach out to members and provide feedback. We want to establish a great culture in DevX. More than anything, we want DevX to be a family — one whose members provide support for one another and push each other to succeed in all aspects.
Client Work
That’s right, you heard it here first! DevX is looking to start external, tech consulting work. We’ve grown such a strong foundation this year, and we believe it’s the right time to begin taking our organization’s talents outside of just UCLA. A lot has to be planned before we embark on this mission, so keep on the lookout as we get started.
This wraps up some of our thoughts about the current year, and all that we hope to achieve moving forward! We hope that if you desire to work in dedicated teams made up of your fellow peers, you consider applying to DevX during our recruiting seasons. Sign up for our mailing list so that you don’t miss out on the applications. We’re here to build #Moonshots for UCLA.
