Courage to care, solve and share - Sunnyvale DSC Summit ‘19

Key Takeaways

hi everyone good morning how are you good great it's I'm so excited to be here at the first developer student Club summit in the US I've been to summits around the world recently I was in Europe so I met the 62 leads there was in India but the 200 leads there also in Ghana meeting the leads across Africa and Canada as well so it's been a really cool experience and I met some of you last night and what's really cool is you know all of you are just fantastic and really inspiring I loved hearing your stories and the stories of these leaders around the world I one common thread people are excited to start a community excited to teach excited to share enable other people so it's been just really really inspiring to meet all of you around the world so as Naveen mentioned I'm Erica Hansen I lead the developer student clubs program globally I'm based in New York and today I'm going to be talking to you about having the courage to care solve and share but first I'm going to share a bit about my own career journey as well and how I got to Google so I grew up in California and Los Angeles and I went to Stanford around the corner so that's where I studied psychology and communications and I took a computer science class where I learned HTML and JavaScript and I built my first website which was really cool and it was a rugby 101 site I played rugby in college and I thought okay let's I'll try and make a website and so that really sparked my interest in technology I really enjoyed that my father would code on the side and so I'm like okay this seems interesting and after I took this class that was it was really exciting for me and I ended up joining Google I gave my resume to them at a career fair and my first job was in customer service I basically answered the phones anybody could call Google about questions about the internet and I had to answer those questions and I also help people with their advertising accounts and there their businesses eventually I moved to London that's London at the top right and I did sales operations there and along the way I did various 20% projects which I found to be really fun so one was with google.org another 20% project was handling the mentoring program at campus London which is a tech startup hub for startups and I connected Googlers with startups there and I base I found a rotation program in Singapore it was called women on the web and it was helping women start businesses online so I went there and I to Singapore and I absolutely loved it I got to go to Pakistan and and Malaysia and I just found it to be so meaningful I loved teaching and enabling teaching and and meeting these awesome women so eventually I a job opened up in Singapore I I thought I don't know that I want to live here but let me just give it a try and I ended up loving it and I stayed for four years so that's where I joined the developer relations team and I worked with developers and startups in Indonesia Nepal and Sri Lanka and one day my manager at the time challenged me and he said hey you know I know you come from a non tech background he studied psychology are you interested in getting a bit deeper in technology and so I said yes so I ended up taking part of the nano degree for on Udacity and learning Android so I learned Java for the first time I had a mentor who helped me along the way and eventually I taught a group of eight women over a weekend just what I had learned and some of the basics and so I found that to be a really cool process and and I wanted to continue to support other people who want to do the same so eventually in Singapore that's also where I got excited about community so this was the first community event I went to on the left and I just loved this community event it was people just sharing ideas and and wanting to build things together so I thought hey maybe I can start a community in Singapore so I co-founded geek girl meetup Singapore which is a community for women intact we did a lot of Design Thinking workshops we did a 3d printing workshop so that was a cool experience I didn't have the experience of starting a community and this was my first one and I really enjoyed that and lastly I moved to New York where I am today it's been about a year and a half and I'm working on developer student clubs globally so that's that's been my journey so I know before I talk about share a few stories I wanted to just set the stage and make sure we're on the same page about what is developer student clubs so developer student clubs help students student developers learn globally and work with their communities to solve real-life problems and that's what it's about it's about learning people growing as developers through workshops the workshops that you're running and also solving real life problems to really get their hands dirty and and apply some of the things that they've learned and our goal is really to create impact we want to impact students and empower them to impact their communities through technology and that's what all of you are doing in your communities all of you will have an impact even if you're mentoring just one student or helping them on their career journey or maybe it's a non tech major who is wants to learn a bit about Android or cloud and you're helping them start that journey that's impact and so where did this program begin it started in India in 2017 as a way to bridge the gap between theory and practice and we really wanted to give students the experiences and resources they needed to become more Industry ready and actually the person who started the program is here with us Deepak want to raise your hand so I'm so happy he's here I hope that you all speak to him he started this program and I brought the program to Indonesia so I helped select 60 leads there then it moved to sub-saharan Africa and now where is it it's all over the world it's a global community program there's over 700 clubs all over the world not only in US and Canada but also in Europe Southeast Asia Hong Kong and Taiwan India Middle East Korea Africa and Latin America very soon so you're part of this global community and I really encourage you all to connect with the student leaders all over the world share ideas connect with them on social media also we're gonna be adding you to a global slack channel I encourage you to share ideas best practices what's working any challenges that you have just yeah it's a really great networking opportunity and so as you get started with your communities along the way I really encourage you to have the courage to care solve and share and what do I mean by that I know some of you are setting up communities for the first time I set up my community for the first time a few years ago and some of you are maybe teaching for the first time I along the way I just encourage you to have the courage to care about the members in your community and their journeys and mentoring them along the way and encourage them to care about some of the problems around them that they can solve in the community whether it's helping out small businesses or it's how it's solving a local problem that they just find in the community I really encourage you to also care to solve some of those problems in the community and build some technology that might help them and also the courage to share to share those stories back and inspire more people to join your community and to even become developers so I'll get into each one first having the courage to care so I'm going to share a story about a community member that had the courage to care and so to do that imagine that you're on an airplane and you're flying to Jakarta and that's where you meet Haas - so Haas - is a she was a member of a developer student Club she was interested in learning more about Android so she heard about developer student clubs she joined a workshop that was led by Tessa so that lets test you on the left she was a DSC lead like all of you and an Tess who really mentored has - through her journey and then has to join a project team and they thought is there is are there people we can help is there someone we can support so what they ended up doing was building an app to help blind students in the community and connecting them with site volunteers so that was the first project that she worked on and Tessa her DST lead shared the story with us we really enjoyed the story and made a video and shared it and ours in sundar the CEO of Google heard about it as well and met tasu at Google IO where she shared her journey with him then hasta took the stage and shared her journey with over 500 GDG leads at a summit and and so this is hostas story and one thing that was inspiring is that she said that basically she thought she wouldn't be able to be a developer because she's hearing impaired she thought that that was a challenge that would get in the way but actually through the help of the community people supporting her she was able to start her journey and is now is building more apps and she's still a university student so this stories about has to having the courage to care care about other students in her community and helping these students through technology and the story is also about Tessa Tessa a DSC lead like all of you had had the courage to support her and give her a platform to grow as a developer so Tessa cared and also it's not just about how student s it's also about the community the community cared they were there to support her through her journey and and help her to build her first project so that's having the courage to care and now we're gonna be talking about having the courage to solve to solve a local problem of a business or something that you see in your university that can be solved through technology and to do that we're gonna hear two more stories and one again you have to hop on a plane and now we're gonna go to Ghana to hear this story about this project team at this university they were looking around and saying is there something that we can make easier on our campus so let's hear more from them directly about what they did when I came to face here I found it difficult navigating a lot of facilities on campus most first-year students they founded a major challenge so I said okay this is something that we really need to solve that this is a community where students who are like-minded come together to learn technologies in cloud Android development and web development so after a few workshops I figured that we could solve accessibility for first-year students we decided to use them more as a use case to build a navigation system using our technology at first people were like this really a complex problem to solve but then after we broke the program down we realized that all the technologies we had to use we had already lent them in our DC West shops when I heard about it I was like David I need to join this project because I was lost basically the entire first and only key and that's what DAC does it gives you a project and it makes sure that you are well equipped to work on the project so we had a lot of volunteers and we brought them into teams first we had a blended team to get a 3d model of the building then we had a unity and scripted team who got the Moodle and made it interactive and available to the Android team who build the screens and we up and used firebase which toss user data and for business analytics and we had a UI team who created a designer set a modern dynamic interfaces you see last we had a documentation team who put everything into alpha to make it available to the open source community my name is Paul and I study chemistry I'll go inspired by attending one of the DSC semanas I'm actually very impressed about my methods Jenny here because as a computer science students I just have to focus on the clitty pass complete to build apps but he has something else to do Maya stop taking some time off to help us and he's leading a good job now I can do Android apps that means I tell you there's a part-time job and maybe chemistries my full-time job or maybe the vice versa there were times that we had to meet in the evenings the time you have to meet early in the morning just get a project working it was hard but then we look at the bigger picture and realized ok we can do this so yeah DSC is a family and it's about the learning of teamwork and leadership what we built is not a perfect app but we've come a long way by being able to use the knowledge that we gained from our DC where shows my god is cool who do you love this [Music] so what I love about the project that they worked on is they they notice that a lot of the students were getting lost on their campus and they're like hey can we solve for this in some way let's help them not get lost or help guide them so they they had a use case of the local mall and then they built this AR VR navigation app and what's cool as well is that they as a whole entire Club they got together to work on this project they divided and conquered and split into teams and had one project as a club that they worked on I know when other campuses some students they split into small groups and each group has their own project in this case they decided hey let's work on one together and and I like what Joseph said he's a member of the club and he said that's what DAC does it gives you a project and make sure you're well equipped to work on that project and so the students our work they're going to workshops and they're learning but this really helped solidify some of that learning get their hands dirty and build something and so they felt that they were prepared to do that and I also like that he said that DSC is like a family it is about the learning of teamwork and leadership and that's also what it's about getting those teamwork and and collaboration skills in college I think I had one project I worked on and I really wish that I had more because my job at Google everything is in teams we're constantly collaborating so I think having more projects at University would have would have helped me but that's fine but through DSC that is a way that people can really work in teams and work on projects so that's an example of a club that had the courage to solve to solve a local problem at their university specifically and hey maybe make the lives easier of the students who are walking around the campus so the next story we're gonna go on a plane again and imagine that you're flying back to Indonesia and this is where we're gonna hear another example of a project that a club worked on there and so let's let's hear from them directly [Music] - I can't approaching ocurro it was a money desire to live in mind I could magnet on the couch I owe some money like a Kazakh pengiran the Impala pal totally put it to timenado Medusa not pendulum Pena or punch if I ain't eating broken Marina marina our Mayan Marin well I assume our kidneys in vegan the Skandera and 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together and other to solve local problems Tina Tina potential for a museum or assassination acoustically sorry suburban to our cameras a picnic or totem on topaz [Music] so what I love about this is that they they basically were like okay what can we work on and one of the the members of the community said hey there's heavy flooding in my sister's village let's go talk to them and see is there value we can add here is there something we can work on so they got feedback they they and one thing they learn was they want a better warning system so once there is a flood some communication channel to people directly and also for people to know where the safe zones are so those are the two things that they they wanted to solve for so they identified the problem gathered feedback they did a lot of white boarding and then they shared the prototype directly with the village leader and now this app is up and running and being used by the village so I really encourage you to have that courage to solve and that's what they did in this case sometimes it can be tough to go up to people and say hey is there such a challenge you have of you know thinking about like what project do you want to work on but I just encourage you to have that courage to solve and ask those crest questions and see if there is something that you can do to support here through technology and once you have a project we do encourage you to participate in the solution challenge so this happens once a year and you're able to submit your best projects and you're gonna be hearing more about that soon and lastly I want to talk about having the courage to share so to do that I'm gonna talk through some of the the tweets that one-club did so basically they shared their journey along the way they shared what workshops they were working on and encourage more people to join so I'm gonna walk through a few of these also as an example of types of workshops you can run so they basically launched their Club this was their info session they did a workshop on collaboration tools like github on the left they ran a cloud study jam they went to dev fest which is an event that the Google developer groups lead then they participated in hackathon a firebase workshop and a tensorflow workshop and lastly they close it off with a showcase where they showcase back to their community and their university what projects that they worked on so this is an example of ways that you can share you can through social media sharing with your community what some of the workshops what are some of the projects that you're building and you can share that another way of sharing you know has to join me on stage and shared her journey it doesn't have to be this big of scale sharing a story in front of hundreds of people but it could even be someone who was impacted or has a story to share or has built something cool sharing just back to your classroom or sharing back to your University in some way and also sharing stories online about your own journey as well to inspire other people so one student in India shared his journey through a medium article and we do want to hear these stories so this is an open forum now where you can submit any stories and by impact it doesn't have to be huge it could be mentoring one student and you help them build something new for the first time or you helped a non tech technical student start their journey or it could be someone working on a cool project it could be somebody taking the stage for the first time as a speaker so these are all examples and we really want to amplify those stories so we want to amplify and and share these stories through our Google developers channels and I just want to let you know that really the only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment really anything is possible and impact can be big and small but I just encourage you to have imagination and and commitment along the way because all of you will make an impact and I encourage you as you do to have the courage to care solve and share and make sure that you have fun as well we need to have a laugh every once in a while so thank you so much and please do follow me on social media on Twitter on LinkedIn and I'd love to stay connected with you and thank you very much you