Welcome to our brand new DevX publication! We hope that here, you find intriguing reads on all things technology and product related, and learn more about how our organization is bringing amazing opportunities to UCLA students and beyond.
We’ve recently felt the need to answer a few questions about ourselves and our mission, both to hold ourselves accountable and to inform the general public. These are questions that have not been answered since the club’s founding four quarters ago, but will hopefully clarify our intent for all parties involved. These are our guiding principles, values, and goals for the future 🚀
If you have any questions you’d like answered about DevX after reading this, please reach out to any of us on Facebook, email, in person, etc!
What is DevX:
DevX is an umbrella organization for product teams, and a technology and entrepreneurship thought leader.
What is the DevX Mission:
To provide students real life experiences to turn theory into application and create products that people love. We give them an opportunity to go through the entire life-cycle of a product: from ideation to MVP to user acquisition.
What separates us from other tech clubs on campus:
As a product development focused organization, our team structure is inspired directly from industry and our goals have more in common with new tech startups than student organizations. You will directly deal with many of these practical challenges and grapple with the consequences of product choices in a real way. But beyond development, we also seek to launch all our products and continuously evaluate them to maximize user experience. This adds deployment and maintenance to the lifecycle, all of which are key transferable skills to industry. We aren’t an engineering club; we are a constantly evolving club that recruits students across the spectrum to keep up with the requirements just like a growing startup!
What do we do on a daily basis:
The teams in our organization largely function as independent units. Depending on the team you are on, you might meet as a team once or a few times a week to go over the next tasks needed to build, analyze, and market your product. Teams usually set a goal for the quarter, and spend every week working towards achieving those goals, such as “Finish our MVP by the end of the quarter,” or “Release to our beta users and understand what we need to do next from their feedback.” We also hold general meetings once a week as a whole club, with different activities planned throughout the quarter. One of the meetings is for an internal demo day, where we share with other teams the progress you have made. Another meeting is reserved for our public Demo Day, where we invite students from across campus to come learn more about the products you are working on.
What kind of people does DevX recruit:
DevX recruits talented and passionate students who care about working as a team, learning new skills, and building things that matter. In the past, DevX broadly recruited for three positions: Designer, Developer, and Product Manager. The Designer was responsible for creating the UI and UX of the product. The Developer was responsible for implementing the designs, and building out the backend services of the product. The Product Manager was responsible for creating the product roadmap, and keeping their team on schedule.
We’ve recently felt limited by these strict roles, and are moving towards a more fluid recruiting system. We’ve identified roles that we think every team should have, but encourage people to brainstorm creative ways they can use their skills to help the team, and apply if interested!
What do we do besides work in teams:
Tech Talks, Speaker Series, Boba runs, internal hackathons (new), our famous Moonshots — we do a ton! One of our values is building a community and family within our club, and we are committed to finding ways to network and grow together.
