A story about giving back, doing good and being cool
By Brandy Foster
Every day I discover the coolest thing about working at Detroit Labs. Seriously, every day I go home thinking, “This is the coolest thing about working here.” And every day it’s something cooler than the day before. You would think that after six months I would be all out of cool but, nope, I’m still in awe that I am an employee of the coolest place in Detroit. But lately there has been a definite hot streak in one category of cool: Youth outreach.
I dreamed of becoming a teacher since I was in grade school. I thought teachers were superheroes and I wanted to fly. I wanted to teach others to fly. I wanted to write books about teaching others how to fly. I wanted to be an education hero. The thing about making a plan in grade school is that often by the time you reach the age to actually start working on accomplishing the plan, the plans have changed. My plan was no exception. So I tabled the cape, and then there was life – and then suddenly there was code.
Detroit Labs came together to set goals for ourselves for 2015. I decided to share my personal goal with the company: Visiting schools to talk to students about how cool development is and how capable they are of becoming developers. This is something I feel personally passionate about as a parent of two inner city public school students, as a lover of education, and as a believer in youth being our future. I know that if you ask students who love to use apps if they think they could create one, they would likely say no. Making apps is something smart people do, right? Too many of our youth do not have faith in their own intelligence.
Detroit Labs is a place that values Learning and Teaching. We have our Apprentice Program, Hack Days, Lunch & Learns, Learn Language Eat, and of course daily knowledge sharing between team members. It is truly a beautiful thing, one of the coolest things about working here. So I wasn’t surprised when my teammates jumped at the chance to help me achieve my goal – just happy and ready to get started.
After a month and a half of planning, we stood in an auditorium of 100 ninth graders. Kyle Ofori, Kelsey Hilbers, and I started the presentation talking about who we were as individuals, then a little about what it’s like to work at Detroit Labs. The students were intrigued by the thought of working without bosses, asking, “Then who fires people?” We tied in how beneficial the skills they are using every day in school are to a life in development, such as being able to show your work, and being responsible for your contributions. We explored the different roles at Labs, discussing the traits of each one. Then we moved into my favorite portion, “Let’s Make An App” where we engaged the students in the creative and solutionary thinking that goes into making an app.
The students had really great app ideas. The top vote-getter was an app that would open and close your windows at home. We walked them through the processes we go through on projects, starting with making business decisions based on cost, time, and scope. We demonstrated how adding features later would increase the time and possibly the cost. The “Project Owners” had to make decisions about which aspects of the app were important enough to pay for and which they could hold off on. They assisted with the ideation process, brainstorming the features needed to make the app great. Kelsey, a Labs Delivery Lead, showed them how we would turn those features into Epics.
The whole auditorium participated in our Kick-Off Meeting, where as a team we decided how those Epics would become tasks for our developers to work on. We showed them how we work iteratively to complete an app. They asked questions about why we work on such small batches of work, and about the importance of Quality Assurance checking each iteration. Watching the students become excited by what we were sharing was the epitome of cool. Afterward, we opened the floor for questions and boy, were there a lot of questions. You could see some of the students were really interested in learning more. We are already planning on going back for another session!
Then, because, again, I happen to work at the coolest place ever, we got to take what we had learned from our first venture to a middle school to talk to roughly 40 sixth through eighth graders. This group wanted to make an app that would do your homework for you. One of our founders, Nathan Hughes, had them all laughing discussing how physically painful doing homework can be. We increased the interactive portion, allowing students to pick roles to play and even sketch out a design for their app. We iced the day by getting them to write some code!
What do you do if you feel like the youth of Detroit are missing out on learning about how cool technology development can be? Well, if you are as cool as Detroit Labs, you get into the schools, participate in youth hackathons like so many of our team members have, and you make ambitious goals for more involvement.
Often our life plans change. I wanted to be a teacher. I became a mobile app developer. Luckily, at Detroit Labs I am able to pursue my passion as well as my profession.