#nycgentech

Demo day is almost upon us. This thought is accompanied by jitters galore; leaving me almost incapable of thinking about anything else. The only thing somewhat keeping me sane is our mentors constantly assuring us that practice is the only route we should take to escape the yellow brick road of apprehension.

Our company chromART’s vision is to create an app that connects up and coming artists with each other and users who are interested in art through art sharing, storing, and discovery. As passionate as I am about our project I feel like the more support available to us, the better we become as a company. This is wonderfully exemplified by our latest meetup at Microsoft where I personally felt so consumed with doubt about our ability to make our vision a reality and was blatantly told by one of our mentors that this was a part of the process and if we weren’t struggling then the task just wasn’t big enough. This made me feel like chromART was so much more than just a “summer assignment”; I was now a part of a company, a team and we weren’t going to let our wonderful vision suffer because of a bit of doubt.

                It’s been quite a while since I last posted. Since then, a lot has happened. Mentoring sessions officially began and we’ve visited Deloitte, LivePerson, and AlleyNYC. We had our first meeting at Warby Parker last night. All the venues were great and I really appreciate the food these spaces have provided us. I’m especially thankful for the backpack and notebook set from LivePerson—thank you so much for your thoughtfulness.  

                We have grown much stronger as a company and various changes have been instilled in the branding of our company. MTAlarm has finalized its logo and cover photo on social media.

NYC GenTech's bootcamp has ended, and it was an amazing experience! I've learned so much more about entrepreneurship in the past two weeks than I thought I would. From hands-on activities and projects, I've gained valuable skills that will aid me in the real world after college.

There is, however, one skill that I found to be the most important, and that's finding the right people. Surrounding yourself with the right people can make a world of difference. My group for this program, "Intersum," taught me this. Although we are five different people with varying opinions, we get along with each other. We respect each other and can express our thoughts, and offer help when needed. Most importantly, we have fun doing our work. Even though at times we can get a little too distracted, we still work efficiently to meet our goals. This makes work feel more enjoyable and interesting. Even more important could be the fact that we are willing to sacrifice the time and energy to meet these goals. Each member believes in our app idea, and is serious about making it. One night the five of us stayed until nine just to prepare for our pitch the next day. Seeing my fellow students put in all that effort was inspiring, and helped me to keep going and push harder to make a good pitch for our app idea. We are a group of people that love working with each other, and are excited to face new problems together.

*Thought the image was cool to be view, have seen it before some time in the program*

It has been 5 straight and continuous days of GenTech 9am-5pm and it has been exhausting. Throughout the week I have gotten home late at night and would have to stay up even later to finish up the homework that was assigned for the day. Nevertheless, I genuinely have enjoyed the entire experience. 

I especially liked hearing the guest speakers talk throughout the week. There were multiple entrepreneurs of color that were talking and I really enjoyed hearing how they started and how they became successful. Unfortunately, I did not have the privilege to hear a female entrepreneur of color yet, but nevertheless, yesterday Jessica Brondo was the first female entrepreneur we had the honor of listening to. She is currently the founder and CEO of Admittedly which is a college help website and program for high school students who aim to receive a higher education in a college institution. Hopefully, I remember to use it this year and next year when I start applying to colleges.

Some of my other favorite speakers I had the privilege to hear were Jean Luc, founder and CEO of The Living Lab For Digital Health and Gil Addo, founder and CEO of RubiconMD. They were both speakers of color which definitely encouraged me personally, but their presentations also sparked my interest because for a good chunk of my life and even now, I continuously consider going into the health sector as a doctor for a career. What I especially liked about Luc and Addo was that they combined their passion for human health and coding and made an entrepreneurial business out of that. I want to use the knowledge I receive from GenTech for the public good and I am leaning towards coding for either social activism or public health.

Both the book The Lean Startup and the video that we actually watched promoted using computer programming as a means of social change. I want to figure out some way to do that; to use computer programming to somehow help the world through a social issue.

There are two apps I am currently aware of that promote social change and social awareness. The "Stop and Frisk" app by NYCLU allows users to video record an interaction between the police and someone on the street and the best part of the app is that if it is shaken (like in the instance that the cop wants to take away your phone) the video instantly uploads to the NYCLU page for all to see. Apparently, there was an occasion when some police officers got a hold of someone's phone and the phone had the "Stop and Frisk" app and to make fun of it they were saying all of these horrible things about people and the best part was that they shook it and it instantly uploaded to the NYCLU page for every one to see.

Another app is an app that sends users 'texts" on the latest drone strike including information on the location and how many civilians killed. Apparently Apple did not want to put the app in the Apple App Store but the creator did a whole campaign shaming Apple for their uncooperative behavior and so then Apple finally allowed the app in the App Store.

Both ideas are really cool and are convenient and strategically address the issue the app is about. I have to figure out how to do something similar but in addition allow the users to have a virtual experience using the app. 

We broke into teams on Friday and as of Friday have had an app idea that is subject to change.

                For the 30 second pitch on Friday, I thought I had come up with a brilliant idea, DesignAR: an interior design app that made use of augmented reality to allow users to seamlessly layout and redesign rooms at the touch of their fingertips. It seemed flawless at the time—surveys testified my hypotheses about market demand, friends were super excited about the idea, yadayadayada. And then there was reality. Reality was, no one was as interested in interior design as I was (To ~80% of the group whose ideas were ultimately tossed aside for the better good of the group: We are the true martyrs!). Reality was, I couldn’t be my own group. Reality was, I don’t know how to write the code for augmented reality and neither did the rest of my peers. So ditching my idea, I formed into a group with 4 other very intelligent individuals and we decided to create MTAlarm, an application that adjusts user set alarms accordingly based on subway/bus delay data. Super cool idea, I’m really forward to working on this app and collaborating with my other teammates (Go MTAlarm!!!). As for DesignAr, as long as I’m passionate about this idea, putting it aside for the time being certainly doesn’t equate to saying goodbye. So a really big thank you to everyone who critiqued, complimented, and simply listened to my idea and watch out for MTAlarm because we’ll totally be the next big thing.

                I totally skipped this but highlight of the week: I created a mini-me using Shapeway’s ShapeMe software and made myself look like some extraterrestrial object . 3D printed mini-Michelle will be arriving soon and I’ll definitely keep you guys posted!! Also congrats Germany!!! (Even though Messi will always hold a special place in my heart). 

What do you get when 80 high school students #Code4Tomorrow?

Lots and lots of product. 80 high schoolers gathered at Microsoft’s NYC headquarters this past Saturday, and embarked on an intense, day-long adventure as part of NYC Generation Tech’s (GenTech) first NYC hackathon. 

Their challenge? To identify ways to make a positive change in the communities where they live and to think about solutions for large social problems related to health, education, employment, and seniors.

Congratulations to the winners:

1st Place: Flappy Words: Helps students learn SAT vocabulary words by integrating word definitions into the game Flappy Birds ($100 prize and year-long subscription to Squarespace

2nd Place: MonsterNote: A note-taking tool that allows students to add notes to educational YouTube videos as a study aid ($50 prize)

3rd Place: TechIt: a jobs platform to connect students to STEM internships and job opportunities ($25 prize)

Honorable Mention: Senior Chat, a video chat platform to connect students and families with seniors seeking good conversation