Those who can...become a mentor

2016-03-17 --- 8 min --- Technology

Confidence. Something that I work on daily.

Helping others. Something that I should do more often.

I was told about a Hackathon for teenage girls (12-19 yr olds) to inspire them to be entrepreneurs and make use of tech. I was also told that they were looking for Dev mentors. This is my story of how I become a Dev mentor to a 13 year old girl and spent a weekend working on my self-confidence.

March 8th - International Women’s Day

I had already agreed to be a developer mentor at Acorn Hack Girls on March 12-13th. Was I nervous? Yes, but thought what’s the worst that could happen? I’d do some basic HTML and CSS, or best case I’d do an Invision or Marvel App prototype (remember I said this as my story progresses).

So on this day I woke up tired and ever so slightly mentally drained after a busy few days (including the WHFNP IWD Panel) and decided I’d be having an early night. Little did I know Elena from Acorn Aspirations had other ideas.

Got to work and after a short time wished everyone on the AcornHack Slack good luck for their TedX Style talk they’d be having at Campus London later that evening

@tanya: what time are you coming?

Uh oh. Do I try and get out of this? Or do I show my face for a little while, meet the Acorn Aspirations team, meet some of the young girls attending the hackathon? Think from this blog post you know the answer, but I thought I’d go an extra mile with this one and bring my superwoman with me, so she could also be inspired. That’s right I bought mum with me.

Spending #iwd2016 with my very own superwoman. #love ya ma x

A photo posted by Tanya Powell (@mstanyapowell) on

There were so many amazing speakers at this event and the energy in the room was buzzing. Even the founders of Women Hack For Non-Profits took part in a panel discussion and I got my name dropped. I also took this opportunity to do my first periscope…my signal was bad and the room was dark, but hey I’ve put it YouTube for you to judge (well judge my camera skills).

March 12th - Hackathon Day 1

Confession time! My intention on the night before was to have an early night and get myself mentally prepared for the weekend. I mean I was still nervous. However, being Tanya Powell in nervous, excitement mode I went out instead and came home much later than I should have. In hindsight this meant I had no time to panic or back out or hesistate. It meant once I woke up on Saturday morning that was it…I was about to become a mentor.

I arrived at Runway East at 10am, saw some of the girls taking part in the hackathon in the kitchen area with their parents and discussing their ideas. They looked happy, energetic, but trepidatious at the same time. I know that feeling.

Went over to the volunteers room, greeted some familiar faces, put my stuff done and got to work busying myself until we officially started.

Pitches

The day officially begins and the girls with ideas have 1 min each to pitch their idea so that us developers can choose which teams we want to work with.

Mentoring at #acornhackgirls this weekend and the first round of pitches have just kicked off #womenintech

A photo posted by Tanya Powell (@mstanyapowell) on

#acornhackgirls these young ladies are so brave to be pitching in front of a room of strangers 👏🏿#womenintech #iwd2016

A photo posted by Tanya Powell (@mstanyapowell) on

I AM COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY

Not only are these ideas amazing (so good I was jealous I didn’t have such a creative imagination), but the confidence of these girls was amazing. I couldn’t pitch to a room full of strange adults, but they did.

Ok, time to be put with a group. I was paired with a girl who came be herself and didn’t have a team. Katie was shy and nervous, but I couldn’t let her down. Her idea…to make a native mobile app called Forgetmenot. Uh oh! Remember what I said about being the worse case. Yes, still could’ve just produced a prototype in Invison or Marvel App, but where’s the fun in that? Let’s make an Android app and flex those Java muscles I’ve been practicing since January.

Day 1 ended up being a day of organisation, prep and deciding on our MVP. Getting laptops configured, getting ideas to paper and me teaching the basics of GitHub.

The day officially ended at 5pm and we had a solid idea. My day didn’t end there mind you, I had to go home and learn all the tricks of Android Studio and practice what would possibly be the Hackathon winning part of our MVP…getting the text you enter into our app to speak to you.

March 13th - Hackathon Day 2

This day again began at 10am, but we knew we had a deadline. At 3pm the final pitches to the judges will begin and at 10am we had no code in our repo, we haven’t spoken to any business people to help create a pitch and we have nothing to present. No need to panic…it’s a hackathon and you always crunch.



Forgetmenot Emulation
Forgetmenot Emulation

By 3pm there was a working prototype, a well-researched presentation and a wiki in the GitHub repo. All that was left was to pitch to the judges.

Guess you want to know if Forgetmenot came first? No, but came close. Katie won some amazing prizes - a sphero donated by Women Who Code London, a fitness watch, tickets to Droidcon and FullStack - and most importantly, she had fun.

What did I learn from the weekend?

  • Close your eyes and just jump

Sometimes overthinking and panicking will only make things worse. If I hadn’t just taken a leap of faith and just “did” it, I never would’ve made a quick Android prototype and would’ve doubted myself for the whole weekend. I was mentoring and my needs were not at the forefront. Close your eyes and just do it.

  • Just because they’re children doesn’t mean they can’t teach

The ideas were incredible. They knew about tech that I had only heard of, but never thought about using or even looking up. I’m about to purchase a raspberry pi 3, and all those insane ideas I have in my notes I’m going to close my eyes and just jump.

You can keep up with Forgetmenot by watching the GitHub repo.

Tags: Mentoring, Technology, Hackathon