#memsi

Haha, I thought TAing MEMSI would be a walk in the park, 

but heck was I wrong. Mad props to Kate, JebJeb, and Jake for being my awesome TAs and making my first MEMSI experience awesome. Writing this at 4am Friday (a day before showcase day), I don’t think I ever stayed up this late for work during my MEMSI (closest rival was when I went to get food at 4:30am after our last night out at LKF; shoutout to Matt, Kat, and JebJeb). 

When I was participating in MEMSI, I put everything out there, for my team and our product. Quite honestly, I didn’t have much energy left to care much about other teams, let alone help them. I also worked a lot harder for a longer period of time, so I played harder as well. If my short-term memory serves me correct, I went out six nights during the intensive two week bootcamp. In addition, I had very little personal time. Although I wanted to visit my aunt who lives in HK, I didn’t get to see her until the day after MEMSI, an hour before I left the country. 

The life of a TA is quite different. Now, the people that I am accountable to expanded to everyone involved with MEMSI. This includes all the TAs, staffs, and all 27 of the student participants. This redefined what success looked like for me. I can no longer be selfish and focus on just making my individual team successful, but every single person in MEMSI. To do this, the TAs self-organized to design several activities that brought the teams closer together, like building the tallest freestanding structure to support a baby Teletubby, pitch practice, morning SCRUM… But this was just the easy stuff. In order to really help teams progress, especially during the second week when everyone is aggregating their learnings from their PMR and narrowing their focus to work on a significant problem that matters to someone, I needed to better understand what they’re up to and get involved with each of them directly. 

As suggested by our fearless leader, Elaine Chen, we should be very mindful of when a team actually needs help and “how much” we are helping. There is great value in ownership of the project and learning from both success and failure. As a result, it is important that we just touch the teams “lightly”. I started checking in with the teams once in the morning, and at least once more later in the day, and whenever I get the chance, chat with individual team members about their project with a casual tone. I really enjoyed not having to actively participate in one of the projects, because it allowed me to allocate all of my energy to the five projects and just serve as a guide as they reach certain checkpoints. 

Some fun stuff. Before our day off, I had an awesome night of sleep prior because I stayed in like an old man while everyone else was out at LKF. Then during Sunday, I went to hike Dragons Back with Sal and Rahul, who were troopers because they went out the night before and came back super late. The hike was gorgeous and our team was a great crew. We saw really cool views in addition to seeing a man flying his RC plane at the peak (which we confused for a bird at first), a Pacific Ocean facing prison, and several good looking mansions with oversized pools. Additionally, the entirety of showcase day was eventful as usual: running A/V on showcase day was intense and fun, the spontaneous Karaoke party turned into a contagious forcefield that could not be stop, eating some of the best HK food with the locals at 品香楼, and ending with lit activities at LKF (quantified by 5 hours and 85HKD of cover fee).

All in all, I am really happy to have TA MEMSI this June (possibly the last june session) because I got to experience the TA side of the program and spend time with some very special people. The world really is as tiny as you want it to be and ain’t no mountain high enough.

……

Most recent update: On my last day in HK (today), 6/11/2018, I pulled an all nighter. Caught the 8:30a flight to leave HK 😞. Landed in Beijing 30 minutes late for my transfer to Tokyo. But since I slept like a pig on the flight (from moment I sat down), I actually didn’t know I was running late until this old lady ran into me and I was like “yo you okay?”. Then it was all rush hour after that… and I made it to the final boarding call luckily. Unfortunately, when I reached Haneda, I found out that my luggage wasn’t as quick as I was back in Beijing and got left behind as a result. I’m a bit bumped but my solo plans is still on schedule so all is well. 

MEMSI is a 2 week entrepreneurship bootcamp in Hong Kong. It is an opportunity designed to bring together 15 MIT and 15 HK students from various academic backgrounds and to make something awesome. Even though it sounds like a hackathon (since most of the teams built in the last 3 days), it’s so much more than that. Of the 2 weeks, we spent almost 10 days identifying an actual problem and talking with potential users to make sure we weren’t just making it up; during this process we pivoted several times as we hit dead ends. This in itself is such a valuable skills. Engineers like myself often build something because we think it’s cool, only to realize after building that it doesn’t have any potential beyond my personal gallery because it doesn’t provide value for anyone else. We also took a 2 day field trip to visit 4 factories in Shenzhen. The intense days-that-felt-like-months concluded with a showcase to a judge panel that consisted of 4 top VC and MIT alum who is politically renown in HK.

Coming into MEMSI, I knew a tiny bit about entrepreneurship. I was aware of the treacherous process, the luck that’s involved, and that it’s more about going into the world and doing rather than sitting in the classroom taking notes. Thankfully, MEMSI built on top of my existing knowledge and taught me a lot of valuable lessons. I will share my top 10 takeaways in concise bullet points.

Work hard, play harder… MIT taught me this, and MEMSI reaffirmed it outside of the bubble.

Hardware is a trojan horse for data… Think back to how the Greeks hid selective soldiers inside the horse back then to infiltrate and win the war. Now, designing an awesome piece of hardware allows a company to get into the lives of the users, and in order to avoid the trash can, it must collect data and create intelligence to provide additional value to the user.

Diversity is key to building a successful team… Team EverGreen had 3 male and 3 female; representation of backgrounds in business, engineering, and design; language fluency in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English; age ranged from 20 to 27. As a result, our team was able to support each other in many different ways as the journey got rough.

Embrace pivots… I am so thankful for my team. We assembled over a common interest in sustainability, but over 10 days, we pivoted from sustainable design to air pollution masks to moment capture.

Infuse common sense with creativity to output new ideas.

Get good at telling compelling stories.

Don’t ask if they love you, but why they can’t live without you… This simply should be the goal of any startup. It also applies to relationships.

Leverage existing infrastructure and underutilized resources

Aesthetics isn’t universal… This refers to culture. Don’t assume that just because you find something beautiful, that someone else from a different part of the world will as well.

Take care of the body. Always try to eat well, sleep and dress sufficiently, drink water, and get your vitamins… With 4 days left to the program, I screwed up and got very sick with a fever and a cold (weird symptoms). I presented while severely coughing and I do not wish this upon anyone. Take your health seriously.