On Saturday March 23rd at 1:00 p.m. was the University of Nebraska-Omaha Association for Computing Machinery-Women (ACM-W)
student group. The theme of the visit was to do a “Sprint, in a hour”. A traditional design spring is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. We are going to break the 5 days into one hour.
Planning
In December of 2018 I contacted ACM-W via email about sponsoring a 2019 meeting.
Through corresponding via email the date of March 23rd at 1:00 p.m. a topic wasn’t yet confirmed, but this was a Saturday. I found out the group meets on a Tuesday and Saturday through out the year. I also let them know I would sponsor some type of snacks or lunch for the meeting.
Topic
During the ACDC All Career Fair the president of the ACM-W stopped by the booth. I pitched the idea of doing a “Design Sprint” in an hour. At first she was under the impression that this would be more of a white boarding exercise, but I expressed this would be a interactive session which has some non technical aspects like white boarding.
When I returned from a career fair I asked the two business analyst Stacey Fletcher and Jeneen Sagonon my team if they would help with this idea. The reason is as a team they booth have gone through this process. Their were some concerns about doing this process in an hour, but through some persuading and talking it through they were booth on board. I also did reach out to the floor to see if anyone would want to help. Remember you can’t do anything awesome by yourself.
Teammates
This is where I am grateful for having teammates who believe in my vision to go above and beyond to help me out. Leading up to the meeting we practiced three times on what a “Sprint” would look like. Here is a PowerPoint that would be our guide in the presentation. .
Advertising
The ACM-W has a Social/Public Marketing Officer who reached out for attached photo and company logo. The final product looked like this.
I did question if I should I be on this poster. The goal of the meeting is to talk about the sprint process from my Teammates (women colleagues) to acm-w. The acm-w felt Just like motivational events that show the person’s face and making it the focus point was OK.
Day of Event
The morning of the event I picked up chips and Quesa from Qdoba’s. I also picked up wings, popcorn, M&M’s, and pop for snacks. I arrived about 12:45 to bring everything up.
The meeting kicked off right at 1:00 p.m. Stacey Fletcher, Jeneen Sagon, and Angle Raffety joined myself to help with the Event.
The ACM-W starts the meeting with announcements. Then they gave us the floor. Stacey, Jeneen and Angel helped get the room setup.
The flow worked great. All the students were engaged and we finished on time.
Toward the end I talked a little about prototyping, but I hurried through it to save time. We finished right about 2:15 p.m.
I stayed around to network. I think this was the most interactive student meeting I had ever been part of. This also provided a nice changed of pace for the group since they have mostly guest lecturers.
The social media manger made some social network posts.
Then a video to recap the event. This is a great example of knowing how important social media is to student organizations. Another great interaction with UNO students in the books.