Coaches

Last night I got a very cool opportunity to work with the coaches of EVEPC, a forward thinking cycling studio in the South Bronx that has a holistic approach to training. It was a really fun experience. I was filmed riding my bike on a trainer and had my technique reviewed and critiqued afterwards by cycling coaches.  It was eye opening, and I look forward to fine tuning my riding skills and learning more from them.

Until this May, I had never worked with any coaches to train for triathlons. I joined the Brooklyn Triathlon Club in May and since then I've had an opportunity to get tons of feedback and ideas from coaches and fellow triathletes on my athletic development.  It's helped me realize that there is still so much more I can accomplish if I'm more intentional and reflective about my training.  Next season I will probably work with a triathlon coach to hone in on some of the things I can improve.

The last few months have also helped me remember the importance of coaches more generally.  Growing up, I worked with the same swim coach for 13 years. There is absolutely no way I could have accomplished what I did as a swimmer without him. Beyond swimming, my work with him shaped the way that I approach problems, accomplish goals and view the world.

I'm looking forward to working with a coach again.  I could probably could benefit from working with a professional coach, too. (We all could, I'm sure). If anyone has a recommendation for that, let me know!


Check out some of the photos from last night here:

Ikea Customer Service is Beyond Awful

This morning, I spent about two and half hours on the phone with Ikea's customer service. My roommate recently moved out, so I ordered a bunch of furniture a few weeks ago to furnish the extra bedroom. 

I scheduled the delivery for today, July 30th. The window for delivery was 8am-9pm, so I called Ikea yesterday to check if I could get a more discrete time period. The person I spoke with assured me someone would call that night to give me a four-hour time block for delivery.

Last night, I received an email confirming my delivery date for today, but no time frame.  I received another email this morning again confirming today as the delivery date, but still -- no time frame.

So I called Ikea. After a long time on hold, they let me know that the delivery would not arrive until Monday -- not today.  I have guests staying over on Sunday night, and had my little brother sitting in my apartment waiting for the delivery for me, so I let them know that this wasn't acceptable and that I needed the delivery sooner than that.  

The person I spoke with told me it was out of Ikea's hands -- that I would need to contact the delivery company they contracted. So I did, and they told me the same thing -- Monday.

I called Ikea back and told them I needed to cancel my order all together.  I needed a bed by Sunday night, and if they couldn't get it to me, I would go out and get it on my own on before then.  After another hour of back and forth, they finally got the delivery company to commit to delivering the furniture on Sunday morning.

----

Fast forward to right now .. about 2 hours after all of this (I'm on hold with Ikea as I'm writing this). I just got a voicemail from Ikea saying that they would not be able to deliver on Sunday -- that it would not arrive until Monday or Tuesday. So I called back and said I needed to just cancel my order all together.  

The representative now tells me that she should be able to cancel the order (after contacting the delivery company to confirm that she can .. ??) but that they would not be able to refund my delivery charge.

This still isn't resolved, and I've forked over hours of my day to Ikea at this point. I'm off the phone again, and they still have not confirmed that my delivery has been cancelled. I'm feeling incredibly frustrated.

Now I'm just praying that I can at the very least get a refund.

Coding Bootcamps - Quick Recap

We had a great conversation about Coding Bootcamps yesterday at Cornell Tech's To Code and Beyond Conference (see yesterday's post).

I think one of the big take aways -- or at least a question that went unanswered --  was whether coding bootcamps are a good alternative to college for low-income youth.

In some ways, coding bootcamps can offer a more manageable educational experience and pathway to to the middle class for low-income youth (assuming that scholarships are provided to youth for these programs).

One concerned that was raised, however, is that bootcamp graduates might hit a 'glass ceiling' and be unable to progress in their careers without formal computer science training or a four-year college degree. This might be especially true for individuals who are already disenfranchised in the tech community.

I think it's too soon to understand how this will play out, but that it's important for our community to be aware of this potential issue and start to come up with creative and innovative approaches to ensure that this does not happen.

Coding Bootcamps at #ToCodeAndBeyond

Today, I'm moderating a panel at Cornell Tech's To Code and Beyond: Access for All Students Conference on Coding Bootcamps.  I'm sharing my write up of the panel and the questions I'll ask the panelists below.  If you have a question for them, please let me know and I'll try to include it!

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Introduction to Panel:

Coding boot camps are intensive, full-time, 3-5 month educational programs that are designed to train students for jobs as entry level software developers.  The proliferation of these bootcamps has attracted the attention of career changers, philanthropists, and government as a means of economic empowerment for future developers and raise many questions around the future of technology education.  In this panel, we’ll discuss some big questions around coding bootcamps.

Panelists:

• Lyel Resner (Flatiron School)
• Angie Kamath (Per Scholas)
• Bethany Marzewski (Stack Overflow)

Panel Questions:

1. For the most part, coding bootcamps are not accredited.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of this? Why is it difficult to accredit these programs?
2. How do you measure quality or effectiveness of your programs?  What are your metrics of success?
3. How do you measure your teachers' qualifications? Must your teachers have any form of educational or teaching background?
4. For low income students, are coding bootcamps a good alternative to college? Why or why not?
5. How should a person decide whether a boot camp is right for them or not? How do you chose between programs?
6. What are the pros and cons of online bootcamps vs. in-person bootcamps?
7. If you could recommend any bootcamp besides your own, which one would it be?
8. Have you gotten any feedback from employers regarding students from coding bootcamps vs. students from traditional computer science programs?
9. What do you lose / what do you leave out by boiling down a coding program to 3-5 months (vs. a 4 year CS degree?)

Working From Home

Today, I'm working from home. I got back late yesterday from a weekend trip with some ScriptEd volunteers, and had to return a rental car this morning, so it just made more sense for me to stay in Brooklyn.

I'm not sure how I feel about working from home.  I don't feel as productive as I do when I'm in the office, but at the same time, I didn't have any in-person meetings today (only phone calls), so I've saved a bunch of commuting time (probably around 1.5 hours) and I was also was able to take care of a few personal things that I've neglected for weeks (like grocery shopping) with the extra time.

I feel a little guilty when I work from home. I can't put my finger on why I have this hang-up. I know my team is in the office today - so I should be too, right?  At the same time, I know I can easily connect to them via phone, email or video chat if we need each other.  I also know that I'm a really hard worker and I will do whatever needs to be done regardless of my location, and that if it's really necessary, I will just get on the train and go in. Still, I feel a little guilty.

Does anyone else ever feel like this?

I'll work through making sense of this all eventually. One thing I know for sure is that I'm incredibly lucky to even have the option of working from home.

In the meantime, take a look at the desk, printer and scanner I setup this morning so I can more easily get work done while I'm here!

Adjusting on the Fly

Today we're at Teach for America for our mid-summer check in with our internship students.  The theme is emerging throughout the morning is adjusting on the fly and being adaptable.

Our staff arrived this morning with about 70 Chromebooks for our students to use, only to be told by TFA staff members that we would not be able to connect Chromebooks to their network.

Fortunately, our staff is made up entirely of former teachers who have tremendous skills when it comes to adjusting on the fly. The problem was solved in about 10 minutes through setting up phone wifi hotspots, and about 10 minutes after that, our program manager Tom Bijesse figured out how to get the Chromebooks onto the TFA network.

Our students are also learning to adjust on the fly. In group conversations many students shared stories about learning to work in new coding environments, learning new languages, and generally learning how to adapt to new things quickly.

In today's job market, it's never been more important to learn how to adjust and adapt.  Technology is changing constantly, and with it, the so is the way we do work. Honing this skill also helps us to solve problems quickly and creatively. 

Adaptability is a form of emotional resilience. It means that while we spend a lot of time planning for things, we can never be too attached to our initial plans -- in work, and in life in general. Being adaptable means that we can still make progress with out becoming discouraged when things don't go according to plan.

ScriptEd Interns in Group Conversations at our Mid Semester check-in

Jewelbots and ScriptEd!

Yesterday, Sara Chipps and Jewelbots announced a partnership with ScriptEd.

Jewelbots are programmable friendship bracelets that teach girls the basics of coding, and are available for purchase through their Kickstarter.  People who are interested in supporting this awesome company but don't have a young woman to gift a Jewelbot can now purchase a Jewelbot and gift it to one of our ScriptEd students.

In addition, $5 of these pledges will go to ScriptEd after the Kickstarter completes. Awesome!

Check out this Wired article that came out on Jewelbots yesterday.

Don't Be a Doormat

Recently, Becca and I have been saying the phrase "Don't be a doormat. Be a rusty nail." a lot.

"Don't be a doormat" is a lesson that I've been learning for my entire life.  I'm much better at being a rusty nail at 31 than 21, but I know I still need to get a bit more rusty and sharp.

I think that women in particular struggle with this. So many women I know are interested in making other people happy, and will neglect their own needs, their teams' needs, or their businesses needs in order to make someone (or some entity) happy.

It's really easy for most of us to think of examples of when it's important to not be a doormat in our personal lives, but it turns out that being a rusty nail in our professional lives is critically important to the success of our businesses.

For ScriptEd, it means knowing when to say no to things that will be harmful to our staff or students, or to things that don't align with our mission. These decisions are especially difficult to make when the person or organization asking carries a great reputation, a lot of influence, or when money is being offered.

Without going into a lot of detail, I've had to do this several times in the last few months. It's really, really hard.  But every time I do it, it gets easier. I know that staying true to ScriptEd's values and mission is really the only way we can achieve our long term goals.

Thanks Steve!

Today I had lunch with Steve Larosiliere, the very inspiring Founder and President of Stoked. Stoked's missions is to inspire teens who are the most vulnerable to believe in themselves through action sports. Similar to ScriptEd, Stoked utilizes volunteer mentors to help kids -- we have coding volunteers, and they have volunteers who skateboard, ski and snowboard with kids.
Steve and I have been having lunch together once a month for the last half year or so. He has 10 years of experience as a founder and leader of a nonprofit, and has become a tremendous role model and mentor to me.  He provides advice from a place of experience and understanding, and can empathize with a lot of the particular challenges I face as a founder in the nonprofit space.  

Having worked with students for so long, I'm used to being the mentor -- not the mentee. I love mentoring other people.  Over the past few months, though, I have started to more fully understand how important mentors are to my own professional development and to making sure that ScriptEd is a successful organization. 

So thanks, Steve!  You're awesome.   

NYC Tri Race Recap / Onwards!

Team ScriptEd competed in the New York City Triathlon yesterday in the exhausting heat. Everyone finished, and everyone did great. Congratulations!

This was ScriptEd's first time fundraising through an athletic event.  I kept our team relatively small this year so I could determine whether or not this would be a good fundraising mechanism for us.  It turns out that it is: our 16 athletes collectively raised nearly $45,000 (both through our crowdrise campaign and through offline donations).  It was also a great community building event and bonding experience for our staff and community.

I feel pretty confident that we'll sign up as charity partners again for next year's race.

For me: I didn't have a great race. I was hoping for a best time, and added five minutes to my time from last year instead.  I had a ton of fun, though.  It's really a special occasion to have so many people I know racing and cheering at a triathlon, and it was great to have the chance to combine my two passions. I'm looking forward to competing in the National Championships in Milwaukee in a few weeks!

Some of our triathletes post-race, planning for next year!

Swimming in the Hudson: Tips

We're now two days away from the New York City Triathlon! Team ScriptEd has raised nearly $40,000 to increase access to careers in technology. And we're all.. err.. "looking forward" to swimming in the Hudson on Sunday morning.

Swimming in the Hudson is a pretty special experience.  Sunday's race will be my 5th swim in the Hudson. I've done the NYC Triathlon three times, and once did a 10k race in the Hudson.  Here are some insights:

1) The water is gross, warm, and salty. Keep your mouth closed. Put vaseline on and around your lips before you swim.  This will help prevent you from getting a dirt mustache. Remember to wipe off your face when you exit the water and run through the showers they'll have out in your transition run. You'll be photographed throughout the whole race -- you don't want a dirt mustache, right?

2) The river has a really strong current that switches directions throughout the day.  For the NYC Tri, it's hard to predict when the tide will be fastest, but I *think* the general wisdom is that the people who start earlier will have a faster tide.  Whatever time you start, though, you'll go really fast in comparison to anything you've done while training.

3) If you want to get some extra speed, swim closer to the center of river.  The current is faster there!


Good luck, everyone!

No Meeting Thursdays

This Summer has been all about making ourselves more organized and productive at ScriptEd.

Our most recent efficiency hack has been to institute "No Meeting Thursdays" for the remainder of the summer.  We will use Thursdays to focus on longer term projects and assignments.

If you've got any productivity hacks to share with our team, let us know!

Headed back to work :)

What's your problem?

I mentioned in a post earlier this month that I'm helping advise some start-up social entrepreneurs on fundraising.  Today, I'm giving a small presentation to them on how to write effective grant proposals.

I looked over some of their websites yesterday to get a better sense of what information might be useful to them. Several of the organizations have impressive programs with great activities.  However, one thing I noticed that was missing from most of their sites was a clear description of the problem they are trying to solve.

Without a clear articulation of the problem (with data/stats) and specific ways the organization is solving that problem (again, with data to back it up!) it will be difficult for any Foundation to justify awarding a grant. Foundations like giving money to organizations that are solving pressing societal issues.

So what's your problem? What data do you have to show that your problem is real? And how does your program or service solve this problem? These are the essential parts of a grant proposal.

Welcome, Chinnell!

Chinnell Davis is a week into her new job as a Program Manager with us at ScriptEd.  We are so excited to have her!

A native of Chicago, Chinnell comes to us with experience as a teacher in both inner-city Chicago and in rural Arkansas.  Before ScriptEd, Chinnell managed Adult vocational classes across NYC, and was a program manager with C/I.

Welcome Chinnell!

Race Week: See you in the Hudson!

We're six short days away from the New York City Triathlon! ScriptEd is a charity partner for this year's race, and our team members are starting to rest their legs.  If you haven't already, please consider donating to one of our athletes that has not yet met their fundraising goal.

Athletes will complete a mile swim in the Hudson, a 40k bike up the West Side of Manhattan into the Bronx, and a 10k run down 72nd Street and around Central Park.

I'm so excited for this race. While this won't be my biggest or most important race of the season (I'm gearing up for the National Championships in Milwaukee in early August), it will definitely be the most fun race. I love competing in New York City, and I'm so excited that so many people I know will either be racing or watching.

If you are interested in coming out and cheering for our team on Sunday morning, we'll have a cheering squad stationed on 72nd street from 7:30-10:30am.  If you want to join them, please send us an email at info@scripted.org.  If you're interested in volunteering at the race, check out this link: http://www.nyctri.com/new-york/volunteer/

Good luck athletes! Drink lots of water and rest up.

ScriptEd Staff Members Competing this weekend: Me, Becca and Tom!

Volunteer!

Beginning next week, we'll kick off a big volunteer recruitment push for the 2015-2016 school year.  All of our ScriptEd courses are taught by software developers on a volunteer basis.  Volunteers work in teams of four to teach our students front-end web development.  Classes are held twice weekly at our partner schools, typically for an hour or hour and a half per class.

Volunteering with ScriptEd is a great way to play an active part in creating a more inclusive tech community in New York City.  It's also a great way to meet like-minded people and improve your public speaking and management skills.

If you're a software developer who wants to get involved, or if you know a software developer who wants to get involved, please apply at bit.ly/ScriptEdVolunteer. For more information, visit our volunteer FAQ page.

Five more schools...

Next school year, ScriptEd will partner with 30 high schools around NYC.

We are looking for five more schools to partner with this Fall. Do you know of any schools who might make good partners? Here's some information you can pass along to people you know at schools.

We partner with schools where at least 75% of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch. We are particularly looking to partner with Career and Technical Education (CTE) schools, schools that serve female students, schools that lack technology education programs (or extracurricular programming in general), and schools that are relatively accessible via public transportation.

 Email me (maurya@scripted.org) or Becca Novak (becca@scripted.org) if you know of any schools that might be a fit!

Freelance Interns at ScriptEd!

This summer, we're running a small pilot in our internship program and having three of our students take on freelance work.  They're working with one of our volunteers, Olivia Gresham, who is a freelance UX Designer and front end developer.  I've included some photos of the team below.

We are using this pilot to see whether we can develop a more robust freelance curriculum for our students.  Freelancing is a great way for our kids to make some extra money while they're still in school, and we're hoping to figure out what we need to do to give kids the skills they'll need to take on this kind of work.

Our interns will be releasing their first product this Friday. Stay tuned for more updates on their progress over the Summer!

Using Asana

Over the last school year, one of the biggest issues we had on the ScriptEd team was an enormous amount of email clogging our inboxes.  The whole team felt under the gun to keep on top of piles and piles of emails, and as time passed, the problem got worse.  During our team retreat, we decided the volume of emails was not sustainable, so we looked for other solutions.

We're now Asana converts as of a couple of weeks ago. Asana is software that allows teams to work on projects collaboratively without sending emails. While we're still adjusting to the new system, there are definitely less emails in all of our inboxes, and we're feeling a little less frenetic.  I'm also able to look at everyone's to-do lists and have a better understanding of everyone's capacity.

I'm sure there are tons of other products out there that help solve the email problem, so if you've got any thoughts or suggestions, let me know! In the meantime, if you're looking for an email alternative, Asana is great.

Thriftiness and Fundraising

This summer I'm advising some some start-up social enterprises through 4.0 schools, particularly in the area of fundraising.

While ScriptEd has been very successful at fundraising, we weren't at first.  We had been around for about a year and a half before we got any significant amounts of money.

When we started, we had no money. We ran our whole program the first year basically for free.  We had an idea that we wanted to bring computer science education to students, and we were forced to be pretty thrifty in the way we solved the problem.  We volunteered our time and got others to help us.  We used the resources available in schools.  We worked from home and coffee shops. We relied on donations for printing, and found pro bono legal assistance.  We had a friend make our first website.

Developing these thrifty habits early on forced us to create an inexpensive program model.  Keeping our costs low ended up helping a lot with fundraising - our donors and funders know that their money is going a long way when they contribute to ScriptEd.  We eventually came to a point where we knew we needed to hire people full-time to really expand the program, and that's when we worked hard on fundraising.

If I were to give any advice on fundraising to companies that haven't launched, I would advise to do whatever they could with as little money as possible to show the idea actually works.  I would also recommend applying for as many start-up and business plan competitions as possible and to do a ton of media outreach. The awards ScriptEd won during its first year and the news stories on us helped lend us a lot of credibility. This was really helpful when we started asking grant makers and donors for money.  Finally, I would tell companies to measure everything they can to make sure they're tracking success.

Once you know your idea has legs, and other people believe it has legs, fundraising becomes a lot easier.

Growth

We wrapped up our ScriptEd Internship Bootcamp yesterday.  It's really incredible to see how much our internship class has grown each year.  In 2013 we had four students doing internships, in 2014 we had 20, and this year we've got 70 students in our internship class.  That's a 1750% growth from Year 1!


Here are photos of the each internship class:

2013

2014

2015

Teaching Kids to Use Git and GitHub

Today, we're at Google for the last day of our internship bootcamp.  One Googler who is volunteering with us for the day made a comment to a group of students that he didn't know how to use Git or GitHub until he was out of college.

For non-techies out there, GitHub is an online platform that allows developers to share and work on software projects collaboratively. In many instances, GitHub is used a professional social network and can help with hiring.

You can read more about Git and GitHub here.

At ScriptEd, we have an aim to give our kids not only the education they needs to learn about coding, software development and computer science, but also the the tools they'll need to be successful in the tech industry. Our kids have a head start because they learn how to use Git and GitHub while they're still in high school. This helps make them employable and introduces them to an important part of the tech community.

GitHub's Mascot, the Octocat!