Panel discussion - Sunnyvale DSC Summit ‘19

welcome them to the stage please clap welcome them to the stage awesome so why don't we start with one of you introduced okay so I'm Jade I'm one of the Canadian leads from Canada so I go to University of Guelph it's about an hour outside of Toronto my school is mainly an agricultural based school so for my club what I'm trying to do is get those non-technical students involved and a technical Club and just bring this kind of environment to them so that's kind of where I'm coming from in that sense I'm Alex I go to the University of Central Florida in Orlando I was a part of the SI program last year so I did a lot of the similar kind of stuff but this is my first year of course as well as all of you doing the DSC so I have a few tips on how to like get a lot of people out to your events and stuff like that should I start with them now one more intro hey my name is - fin feel free to call me - I am a student a fourth year at the University of Toronto and me Kevin and Jade are here from Canada to answer any questions you guys have and we hope you had a great time this weekend awesome I'm Kevin [Applause] okay so the way we're gonna work this out is I'm gonna walk around be able to other volunteers who are micronus we want questions from you to come out to the stage ask them before we get started what are the most general questions that you got this weekend right and then what what kind of advice do you have to them yeah sure so I'll start one of the biggest questions that I always get is about actually what happens if I miss the deadline for recognition at school and I know the u.s. program like I mentioned yesterday started a little bit later they're on Canadian program and we had trouble getting our recognitions in on time so I can only imagine for probably the most of you the recognition deadline has passed but I just want to reiterate that getting the school recognition is just one part of the process of getting recognition so even if that doesn't work out you tried pulling strings pulling connections doesn't work out that's not a problem because DSC it's in its first year and you're leaving something behind for future leaders to iron those issues out for you what's important is gaining presence and support from the students themselves and you don't need anyone's approval to do that so focus on everything everyone shared today with respect to branding marketing don't worry too much about that one recognition status it's not something that we care about it's not something that the program team cares about as long as you can carry out your your projects and your events and go find other clubs to partner with in your first year if you have trouble with the room booking and stuff due to this recognition so that's the most common question I got quickly if I could before you answer if you have a question just raise your hand so we can get the microphone to you thank you one of the questions that I got a lot is you've planned an event but what if no one shows up I feel like that's probably a big concern or like a little bit of a stressor I definitely think about that when I'm planning an event in that case before I plan my event you got to make sure it's like a good venue it's like easily accessible for all your students and then you've done like the timing thing it's on a good night I make sure all of my and every single person I know on campus is gonna come and I look at them and I'm like you're coming in my event you're gonna be there like I expect you the beat here if you're not there like I'm gonna call you and we're gonna have some problems but I make sure that I get my personal network and my personal community to be there and just talk to students and then at the events make sure that I have a connection or my team or anyone has a connection to the attendee so then they come back to your next event if they feel like they have a personal connection with you and they're like I know the lead I know someone on their core team I really want to be involved they're gonna come back over and over again because they're connected to your club and a similar thing going off that that I kind of realized towards the end of last year that I wish I knew the whole time was to give away prizes I would do whoever got the most people to come out whoever got the most friends to come along with them so that's another aspect of getting way more people to come out and that's know work that you have to put in so somebody would come and bring 20 of their friends with them and it's like okay cool you want a Google home mini rather than just brand up like raffling it off randomly because then it goes to someone who might not have been as excited about it like there will be people who come and they are like gung-ho want that Google home Mini so bad but if you just raffle it away randomly I found it always went to somebody who like barely knew what it was or anything no I wish the other person got it but so that's a good way to get people amped up and reward the people who are really excited about your club how do I get started I've not worked with Google products that's something of God and the first thing I suggest you do when you go back let's go to GDG just google search Gigi look up the closest GDG chapter to your community reach out to them tell them hey I'm starting a club here I've had the summit how can I get started how we have any tips for me how do you run events because they've run all these things already so they're through your closest friend actually they're in your community itself so make sure to reach out to them GDG you women techmakers Google developer experts we have a question there yeah hello so I just had a question regarding the Proceedings of events so I know that we have we have cloud study jams and we have those big events and obviously they require a lot of you know if you you need rooms and you know you need a lot of prep for that you need catering and everything so I was wondering that could you suggest some events or you know competitions that do not require any prep like room reservations this way we can you know get past all that prep time and stuff like that so do you have any recommendations on that if you do things online right just have a call and have everyone join the call that's free of charge no prob nothing other than that having an event where people come in most of the time gives you more value because there's human interaction and we want human interaction in this time and age if you don't if you don't want a bake like club soda jam you don't have time to organize something that's three hours four hours long the way that we're working on structuring our club is having a bigger event and then kind of like a follow-up so anything you learned in the bigger event you can come talk about it or just like smaller breakout sessions where you have like a speaker come in or like it's maybe an hour two hours and it's more low-key maybe you do like a codelab or something that's already created and you don't have to create it from scratch usually pretty helpful kind of like stagger those big events with something smaller so you're not just like big event after big event after big event I would also say ask for feedback from those who are attending your events right make sure that's you know you're actively seeking that so that way if maybe the content was too high level right maybe they didn't have enough time to like engage with the facilitators right asking feedback is really important and don't take feedback personally right it's an opportunity to grow so just take it in stride sorry just have temperature yeah and like all of the general things if you want something specific that I've tried with other clubs at campus that I think is quite fun to do get some DSC stickers for your for your club and paste them all over the campus I then do a competition on social media for people to find these stickers take a picture take your group or anything on LinkedIn Facebook whatever platform you choose to use this is a good way to get exposure and you can give out a small prize like the person who finds the most number of these stickers can get a Google Mini or something like that an activity like that doesn't require room booking doesn't require catering but it gets people engaged and people are always looking out for small DSC stickers throughout campus and I think that's kind of funny so yeah there's one specific activity but there are lots like it right so not if not all activities need to be super formal super planned and another for those longer events that you're talking about I would do so like for cloud study Jam supposed to be like 3-4 ish hours I would do every hour I would do like a prize and I would start from small to big so within the FIR at the on the hour after the first hour I'm giving away 10 t-shirts on the next hour to Google home minis and then at the very end like a Google home hub so that because it'll get kind of like boring and like sluggish in the middle so you want to like keep them like looking forward to something yeah okay so yeah you keep talking about like these prizes like how are you getting these prizes and like where's the budget coming for these prizes [Applause] so let me let me see I can't oh there's one person over there and then one person over here who can help you with that but in general in general if you run a cloud study Jam that's an initiative that directly aligns with what Google developers are pushing out to the community and for events like that is very easy to get budget approval you have to speak to one of your community managers and they'll walk you through the process how much you get per person etc so when we run our study gem that's the way we did it we're like we're expecting 200 people what's our budget I think you go by the prizes yourself if you want to run events that are not study jobs and not as big like smaller initiatives you should still reach out to your community managers but you probably will get less funding for those events but you still get some support and like I mentioned yesterday as well there are other sources of funding especially around your campus since you're studying you're starting a campus Club and most other clubs don't have financial support at all from companies so find ways to get money from your local community as well because the school really should be directing a lot of their resources to fund initiatives just like this one it's something that benefits the local community way more than you know like just pushing out some initiative that Google wants to push out it's way more than that so for the students benefits you should definitely reach out to other resources on campus as well but speaking to your community manager is a good place to start so my question is a large theme for this event has been community and this club will it's it will have a lot of students from graduate programs undergraduate different backgrounds so my question is just do you have any advice or tips for making I guess a culture and like creating a rapport among students who are incredibly different and have different experiences whether it be like tech or non tech so just like having it mean something and creating that environment where like being in a DSC is is a part of a community thank you one thing before I pass so the differences you have in your club is what strengthens your club so the more difference you have the more different opinions you have the more different ideas you have so please make your club as diverse there's an inclusive as different because that's how it strengthens itself sir did you know so when we talk about I think diversity and community in my school we talk a lot about starting from our core team so making sure your core team is diverse and you've got people from non technical backgrounds technical backgrounds different culture different experiences life experiences maybe there's master student PhD student undergrad you don't want everyone the same year or same kind of experience you want to make sure that if I have something that I'm going to present I can go to the first you on my team and be like hey can you go through these slides for me and make sure this isn't too technical or make sure you can understand what I'm trying to portray here and make sure you can do that with your people something that I thought interesting that relates to this point is in our presentations earlier we had about 10 teams and so we had 10 people up here presenting I didn't see any of my female these us leads on the stage so I think that's another point to mention when you're running events or creating that community making sure your team is diverse but making sure your events and the people you invite in the people you have like showcasing the people you're profiling are representative of the community you want to create so having lots of different kind of people talking on stage in your posts different stuff like that is good so that people who come to your club can see someone who they kind of associate with or kind of relate with so first of all that was an amazing question thank you so much that's awesome I think when we're looking for those diverse people we want these ambitious people right and so those people are a lot of times looking for how they can gain leadership what they can add to their resume they might not usually want to be just a general member so I think a great way to get those diverse people in is by adding not even adding but having leadership positions for them so finance like you might need somebody to handle dues or funding or stuff like that social media of course but also then diversifying for not only like one social media lead but also having like one person for PR one person for like maybe like alumni just adding things so that they can feel like they're getting more out of it so I think that's a great way to like get them involved and then from there it'll happen naturally I think I had a question about gaining members versus getting the core team first on one hand I feel like once I had a core team then recruiting a bunch of members with a bunch of diverse backgrounds would be much easier but on the other hand I don't want to pick a core team that's too narrow because I start when I have too few members so what's uh what would you say is a good path for going through that we talk a lot about making sure that your foundation of your clubs your core team is really solid before you start so don't rush through that don't try and get really into it make sure that your core team is what you really want to portray before you start and you don't run out the gate and then a month in under two months in you're like wow I wish I did this my core team and now it kind of limits me with some stuff so that's kind of like the core team part as far as members it's really going out and talking to people so making connections to people in different majors different programs I partner with some of the other like faculty schools in my university so I have people from our computer science department who send out emails for me or post for me but we also have people from the business school or like our agricultural school or biology or experiential learning department so making sure I'm marketing gets out to lots of people and how you market is also important so if you're running a technical event make sure you specify this is more technical but if you're running something that's not technical make sure your say you don't need to code this is a safe space just very unfit on you don't need to code just because this club sets it's sponsored by Google or like supported by Google developers doesn't mean you can't come doesn't mean you have to be technical that's what I find is a barrier people will be like still messaging me like I still market and I'm like you don't need to code and I still get questions like are you sure like I've never coded before and I'm like literally you don't need to know how to program as long as you can turn your computer on and off maybe not even like I'll turn it on for you kind of thing like we can do it together I think that's a good point make I'd like to add one Jade said and this ties back to what she said earlier and what Naveen mentioned when you're and throughout the presentations if you noticed everybody talked about diversity everybody wanted a diverse team and we're talking about diverse teams but we need to start walking and and what I mean by walking is make sure your team is actually diverse you are leaders and you make the decisions of team members make sure make sure your team has people who are unrepresented in the community because that's how you build the picture of your team you don't want to say oh we're we're diverse we're inclusive and you don't do that so make sure you walk the talk and all the good talk that had that happened here today make sure you go back and actually walk it and lead by example and your core team the valid the quality of your core team is on you be the leader you want to work with and that's how you make a good core team so make sure you are the inspiration to your core team you won't find anybody you know perfect coming to you you have to make them great how do you get past the issue if you're a department registered club okay so now we've had a lot of issues trying to go market outside of the computer science department just because we are listed as you know what's the purpose of your clubs like the category you know computer science is there first of all I wholeheartedly believe that no matter what department you're affiliated with they should not block you from having your event be projected out to other students that would seem like a weird decision is like counterproductive to the whole point of having the club honestly if the school somehow gets in the way of you reaching out to your community or a greater community find your own methods of doing it sometimes that's not easy sometimes rely on internal department letters is the best way to reach a large number of people because people sometimes actually read those letters but rely on your other channels right your social media channels for example Facebook groups and there's no barriers there's no walls there you can reach out to whoever you want for our community we even had small business owners and some volunteers in the community reach out to us attending our events from outside the school community and that's fine too because you're building a community that it's like everyone says includes everyone who wants to partake in it so yeah sometimes if the school the school should not be obstructing your way in terms of reaching out to community maybe you should provide some feedback about that if you find that to be the case but if they are use your own channels of outreaching to students build your own mailing lists right there's some great tools out there for that and sorry one more thing to add to that we're talking a lot about getting people from other majors diversity on your core team I think once you have leaders on that team with you who are in those other majors and other fields they will be able to tell you what people in that major are looking for what gets them out to events what attracts them I mean we can guess but that they will be the best person to tell you and they know how other clubs do it I had also one more thing to uh top of that so before you actually get the people from diverse majors if you're like I want a business student but I literally don't know anyone in business because I'm in computers and these are all the people I talked to I would go to a faculty member or maybe someone on campus who's liking your internship programs or something who runs like Career Services or knows a lot of students on campus and just talk to them be like hey I'm writing this club and I'm looking for some students from this department do you have any students of mine or do you recommend anyone because I've done that and you can usually get some pretty good leads from there and then reach out to them further on from that um I had a working question I guess because we've we've all just only started but um in terms of retention you know let's say you get like 200 people out or like 400 people out to your first event you gotta bring a lot of Pizza stuff like that but then you know getting pizza every single week is kind of repetitive or doing the same thing every single week regardless of whether you're giving out t-shirts something it's kind of repetitive even with prizes stuff like that so what are some strategies you may have or some things you might consider when thinking about how to keep people let's say introverted extroverted whatever they are so actually a question idea I had just a few minutes ago that I talked about I'm not sure if it's possible but I don't know if this is the same at your universities but people at UCF go crazy for the graduation cords they like live for it I don't know it's not the same higher school no not really okay well that was an idea I had like get people to like continue on with it but any other ideas I think you raise a very interesting point and I I definitely want people to have to write takeaway from these conversations your club is not a business the number is just a number right what I shared in my slides yesterday every campus is different sometimes your entire department has 200 people in it so don't fight for the number in your club your impact on campus is the fact that you brought something new to your community that didn't exist before so don't focus so much on the numbers and you know things like retention rate I almost think like that's the wrong way to think about this kind of problem as many students will come out to your events as they feel like if more people came out to your first event and last people came out the second time you should reflect and ask is there something that has changed about this or am I just doing it too often am I am i prioritizing quantity over quality and ask yourself these these come questions these kind of reflection questions before you proceed because from the students perspective they they're not going to be biased look for or against your club they will attend your event if they have a good time they'll come back oh okay it's good and so my my point is don't think too much about the numbers every campus is going to be different for some of you getting 20 students in a room from your department will be the biggest accomplishment more than getting 200 from other universities but what's what's important is that you build relationships the people that do come out that they do want to return and once a week does sound like a lot of events so set realistic expectations for yourself on your team for us once a month was a good metric but again every university is different if I can kind of jump in on one thing I think Kevin you make a really really good point right don't worry about quantity worry about quality but at one point you almost want to step back and ask what are you really trying to accomplish right I think you brought in like there's swag there's like all these kind of incentives but how do you really connect and build retention and that always will boil down to making sure that the solution that you're providing these students connects with a need so what I would almost say is take a step back and on your campus have you determined where is that error of opportunity for student developers right what does the current offering look like what is covered in classes what do students really want maybe it's a really technical school and they've got all these projects and they need help can and I'm building on those projects maybe there's particular languages they're interested maybe there's an interest in entrepreneurship and startups right so what I would say is almost taking a step back and really hammering out on your campus what is the area of opportunity for student developers tailor your strategy and your vision and your core team and everything to address that need because if you're directly connecting to a need and people can get behind that they will come right you don't need to manufacture a retention it will happen and it's okay to Kevin's point it's okay to focus on smaller numbers rather than bigger presence I think omen brings up a very good point just out of curiosity has anyone taken economics here before in high school University so you know this is a half a joke but also very serious don't enter a monopolistic market with GSC's if you are trying to bring participants out with what food you have and what swag you are giving out that's the wrong type of market to be competing in because that's not a good that's not an efficient use of resources you want to bring something unique to your community through things that other clubs may not be able to and for that I mean having money is great at all but remember my funding curve you don't want to overdo it so don't rely on what food you're catering for what catering you're getting or what prizes you're able to give out it's not that kind of a competition you're trying to enter into with other clubs on your community instead try and focus on some new and creative types of events the study gem is a really well templated event for you to launch already and that and that's something that trust me a lot of other clubs don't have the resources to just bring out because you have the knowledge now and you have the community support behind you but think of other types of creative events host small hackathons for example other sort of workshops bring in speakers from industry it's it's your world it's your community and you're building it whatever way you want but definitely don't enter that price competition with other clubs awesome thank you for sharing that we're gonna go with some of the last few questions over here as you can see we created a line over here so we gotta keep the order going so please go ahead alright so I got two questions one is a lot quicker but so we talked a lot about the why right but I kind of want to bring it back to a more superficial layer so I was just wondering if I wanted a Google pixel for Excel 128 gigabytes on my event I was just wondering this is um I get to details soon of why I'm asking this so I was wondering how what is the range of like what Google would actually support us like budget wise and what we cannot exceed right and then the second question would be right now my campus is in Silicon Valley area and we have a lot of entrepreneurial minds so a lot of my student body they want to build projects that later on become startups so I was wondering if we can take some projects that students build and kind of like cultivate a little bit more I remember a speaker was talking about Launchpad that Google has as a an accelerator and I was wondering if Dec has like an a like a leeway into this kind of like Launchpad thing okay so to be fair to these panelists I'll answer both questions okay from a budget perspective the way we look at it from a budget perspective we're always relying on DSC leads and the DSC teams to figure out a way to run their event with the least amount of money possible I love the slide that Kevin put on and from a graph or a point of inflection how much money you actually need and how much money is too much money swag and whatnot my rule of thumb to all of you is this if you're not sure or if you're curious why not ask us hey I'm running this event I'd like to do this I'd like to have pizza or I'd like to do I'd like to have a prize what do you think is there some way that you can help we're always looking at that and we say no sometimes we're like no you know what this is good enough run a few more events and we'll get back to you sometimes I'll say yes if the question was specific I want the pixel 4 X 128 gig to give it as a prize most likely the answer will be like no right and and we can go with them the second part of the question though is is a really good question of is there a pathway between DSC and other programs absolutely yes we highly encourage that interact and network with gdgs gdes you're specifically asking about Launchpad is there a direct path that if you build a project as part of the solution challenge that it becomes a startup by first of all great I'd love if all of them end up being like that you want to kick it off as a startup great we are already built a connection as a DSC lead as a DSC organization with Google to say hey there's this launch my program let's look at the requirements to get in there we can have those introductions made is there a direct path no but it is definitely a great starting point to have those conversations good awesome next question please wait wait wait I got one okay sorry you may have had a mic I'll let you take a question but go ahead okay it is like as a storytime question what was the hardest part for y'all getting started and like how did you overcome it because I know everybody had like a different story so it's got one person to answer that whoever's interested good the hardest part for me getting started is what is developer student club no one in my area knows what that is they're like what what is this what do you mean Google developers support you that was the biggest challenge as I was like oh yeah it's a tech club but it's not really a tech club we're just doing stuff using technology and they're like how does that work so explaining what the developer student club is and making your message really clear of the path that you want to create with your club and what you want from your clubs or that students actually understand what's happening here that's my biggest struggle and communicating that in a technical and non-technical way to your different audiences making sure you're mindful of who you're talking to thank you go ahead oh so kind of going by that a spirit of being trying to be more diverse in including I think Jane is gonna answer this question but I kind of just like well I want to put it out there again how would you market developer student clubs to people who are less technical because I think the problem with my school is that it's it's a mostly a business school and so when in business people or my English major friends think about Google or that I'm starting a club called developer students Club that people with Google cloud or whatsoever they get turned off because they did they just don't have the technical skills like when they hear stuff like machine learning or a Google assistant they'll just turn their heads away because they're too intimidated how would you market the club in a way that you know helps them want to come to our meetings and should we like hold these workshops and cloud study gems for these business people as well or she would just do them for the more technical people how would you like strike that balance cater your content to your audience right so how would you how would you expect or how would you want an English major to enjoy tech ask them what are some problems they face in their courses in their stream and ask them do you think you want to scale it do you think technology can help you solve it in a different way so cater your your events to your audience so for tech students run the bigger events the one that are more technical run a more introductory level for you know interested English students or business students who want just who generally want to learn make sure you cater and that's the key that's the way to go and then in my opinion that's wait and I just wanted to add on but I know we have limited time but I want to share something that Deepak spoke to me about yesterday your community challenges the challenges around which you're building your projects there are technical challenges perhaps but technical challenges exist in every industry and if you have students that are interested in music for example you walk into a music shop look for something that you can help with with dashes example of English perhaps they need a way to improve how they write their essays perhaps you can work on solutions that generate essay templates you just have to fill in the blanks you know there's a lot of interesting titled technical problems every industry you'll find them so just because they're non-technical doesn't mean they can't contribute to the project in fact the management of the project the defining of the problems and the validation that your solutions work is just as important as the development part of it so that would be the best way make sure that your challenges actually appeal to the people that you're working with non-technical a quick follow-up question so how would you like mark at that part would you in your posters would you say something like you don't have to program come join us all majors welcome something like that when I marketed my first event I remember I worked with my we have like an experiential learning hub so it's like co-op career services and they made it really clear they're like with your event make sure you say all welcome I literally everything I posted in all the capitals I said no coding experience required all welcome I said everyone from every single major and then I listed a whole bunch of majors I was like every single person is welcome to join this club this is not just exclusive for computers so make it very very clear they're still gonna get confused but try and just really tell them you don't need coding experience put in an all caps that every single person is welcome no technical background needed make sure that you just hone that at home and just keep repeating it as many times as you need in all caps all which gotta do I thank you awesome so so we've been talking a lot about diversity and recruiting students from different majors but what are some ways to recruit students from different backgrounds and why is it crucial different backgrounds are we talking about majors and no by different backgrounds I'm talking about ethnicities I know on my campus we have a lot of like different ethnic groups do you have that at your campus are there like Hispanic engineers or like stuff like that on your campus they have groups like that yeah I would consider reaching out to them I would consider especially now in the beginning doing a lot of announcements and clubs like that going in for just a few minutes and letting them know about your club and what you're doing maybe pass around a flyer or distribute a link to them to display their interest so that you can have their email and everything and then next time you're having an event you can just let them know about it and see if they're interested in coming I agree with that statement I reach out to are like women in software engine or no women in computer science and our women and science and engineering program and queer is anything it's good awesome thank you thank you last question for the panel okay so you've been talking a lot about like the core team and stuff but I just wanted to know like what are the what are your core team members like what are their majors and what are the basically what are their majors and that's it so I would focus on like thinking about your club as like a giant corporation like it could even be a tech corporation like even Google but obviously everybody at Google is not in the tech field think of all the different majors and avenues for that like marketing event planning all of that I would go to those majors for each specific thing and also not do just one do a whole not hierarchy but like people under them of okay you have a PR major then you have one for every single different social media so that even if something happens with that main person like especially in the beginning of the club they didn't think it was as much work as it could be and they left that you have somebody to like move up and take over that position possibly younger people at the bottom who are working their way up to get that leadership experience and just marketing like that because if it's somebody in a marketing major it's probably a lot more difficult for them to get those leadership positions in like a club specific towards their major because there's so many people competing for those spots but in your club it might be a little easier especially now for them to get a position like that and really grow their leadership opportunities so I think they'd be really interested in that I'll have a slightly different way that Iran might personally and that's why every University campus is a bit different for in my quarterly team I don't have any roles defined and everyone is just an exec of the club and I feel like that works because if you put someone on marketing you put someone on logistics they're doing the same thing imagine room booking ten times through the year and that's really involvement with the club right so for me I prefer to go role as I prefer to distance myself from running as a company as much as possible because you're a student club and you're not generating profit so efficiency I mean that doesn't matter as much as long as you get your things done we have in terms of major specifically computer science engineers management students and designers like architectures so it's it's a while it's a while it's a wild mix of different majors but don't focus so much on their technical backgrounds or even their academic backgrounds it doesn't matter as much because everyone in your team should be comfortable with doing all sorts of different roles so that's my take on this core team idea I don't want to divide people into different specific roles but there are a lot of different approaches it really does depend on your campus this was oh we good yeah this was absolutely amazing thanks for that question thanks for all the questions and a huge round of applause for our panelists these were not easy questions these these definitely were not easy questions some out of they're out of their realm and whatnot they handle it like champ so thank you very very very much for that all right I'll let you guys get on stage now