The Solution Challenge - Sunnyvale DSC Summit ‘19

good I have no slides so I am just going to plan on charming you all with how eloquent I am so hi everyone my name is Komal salut and I work on developer student clubs globally based out of New York with Erica thank you so much for the amount of attention that I've been seeing from all of you I've been kind of like walking around the back and through every session seeing how engaged involved all of you are taking pictures of the content really really cool and I hope that you bring this back to your communities and share back and get them as excited as we all are to have you here right so um I'm gonna start with a few questions how many of you want to work in tech once you graduate show of hands that's I would say about 95 to 100 percent right now how many of you feel like you have everything you need in order to actually get that job in tech take a look around do you see a breakdown yeah so you've seen this kind of like phrase pop up a couple of times today and it's that we're trying to bridge the gap between theory and practical application for student developers because there is a breakdown and that's a key reason why developer student clubs exists now how we actually go about bridging that gap is not just encouraging you to host workshops and events where you do cloud study jams and you kind of grow the knowledge of student developers on your campus well we tell you to take that knowledge and actually identify local problems around you right and build real solutions for real problems so let's take it from theory and actually apply it in a practical fashion that can on not only allow you to add hey on my resume actually build a solution but now all the students that you brought along with your journey get to have that skill that will really really allow them when they graduate to attain that job in tech which from the sounds of this room everyone wants to do yeah so to talk about the solution challenge specifically and why it came about is we had students last year doing so the program launched in 2017 the way Erika said and we had communities India Indonesia and parts of Africa and these students were incredible I mean the momentum the innovation the creativity the drive was truly inspiring but one piece of feedback these students shared was how are we getting recognized hey because a lot of responsibility falls on your shoulders on the shoulders of the core team and that was feedback received from students and we said you know what we need to create a platform where we can recognize students so how many of you feel that problems go unsolved around you now how many of you feel that oftentimes talent goes unnoticed and that's why we have the solution challenge right it is happens once a year and it will happen around February and March of 2020 so you know when right but we're starting talking about it right now because we want you to really understand what it is why we're doing it how it's going to work so you can start building out your plan for the year to make sure that you're set up for success cool so I'm gonna talk a little bit about the program I only have a few minutes I want to save some time for questions so what it is is it happens once a year it's an open call for the best solution that your community has built right what does that really mean so the things that qualify as a best solution we want to make sure they are addressing a real problem now you hear hey work with local businesses and you know what sometimes it is a local businesses big business but sometimes it's also a greater community problem if you think back to the video we watched earlier with David Wright they were solving for a problem that was felt in their community of students coming to their campus right if you think back to another the any stories you notice that the problem goes beyond just a business it could be something that you sitting together as a group identified that's face shared by a lot of people and maybe you find users affected by it and go collect some feedback on that so make sure that it's addressing a real problem we want to make sure that you have taken the steps from that problem and worked with your real users collected feedback gone to them and said hey this is some kind of solution that we're working on what do you think how's it working does it fit your needs iterate what we are looking for is that you're not only identifying a real problem but actually bringing solving that problem through the development cycle right that gets you working with real clients real users getting that feedback right now one thing that's really important particularly in the US I don't know if you guys know this but about 89 percent of all businesses in the US are small businesses with less than 20 employees right think about that a lot of those companies and small businesses have problems and challenges that they're facing so a lot of you will solve problems for local businesses that will happen in this ecosystem but what's really really important to note is making sure that you're setting the right expectations with them right you're not committing to too much you're managing those relationships because even outside of DSC if you build a relationship with a client you want to make sure they are setting the right expectations you're making sure that anything that you build for them you're bringing back to them collecting feedback all right so to go back to what is a great solution or what's the best solution you should submit make sure it's addressing a real problem make sure that it's involved connecting with the user and getting feedback we want to see that it's incorporating some kind of Google tech it's not limited to just Google tech but we want to see you incorporate and be creative and innovative with technology right so thinking about things like okay is the solution that I'm building scalable how am i doing it right those kind of questions and the way that we actually evaluate this is you guys submit all your stuff through a google form that will include a demo of your solution and then we'll have it evaluated through an unbiased group of Googlers and then in addition we'll have interviews where we actually reach out and probe around understanding how did you get to the solution did you build it yourself did you build it with a team did you actually connect with the user how many times what you had - did you have to iterate on this because those are really really important attributes of building a great solution so that we can then surface and recognize the work you're doing through the solution challenge okay in regards to who can participate it can be the lead the core team and members involved in the per student Club we want to make sure it's open because it's a great opportunity to recognize the work that you and your community are doing okay so this is kind of my little snapshot of what the solution challenges in regards to next steps I want you to start now so how many of you have already started thinking about problems that you want to solve that is very impressive so I think that's amazing right so if you already have an idea of problems that you want to solve now start working backwards if you know by around February you want you want to submit a solution for that problem maybe that informs your decisions of the kind of workshops the kind of events the kind the way you set up your core team right these are important things and can work backwards which technologies do you think are being covered in your curriculum maybe what are technologies that you can incorporate in your workshops right so start now and make sure that you report once you get a project to a state that you want it to be reviewed by Danny or someone right so start working on the solutions now make sure that you report them so we can provide them provide you with relevant support and then when the solution challenge comes prior to that we'll make sure that you have all the information that you possibly need cool how are you guys feeling thumbs up yay all right guys that's all I have for you [Applause]