Learning through mentoring

Elena Sinel contacted me a few weeks back to see if I would be interested in mentoring teens during a #GirlsInAI hackathon. As the father of a teenage girl, I am very passionate about women in STEM in general and in AI in particular. My daughter decided to participate, and I decided to spend my weekend mentoring a team in the hackathon.

I was paired up with a team of 4 brilliant and talented grade 9 (freshmen) students - Adrienne, Audrey, Anya and Carissa. The hackathon gave four areas to work in, derived from the UN sustainable development charter. This hackathon included learning about design thinking and applying to a product idea, building a solution using technology and AI, crafting a business plan using the Business Model Canvas, and pitching their idea to a group of judges. The team decided to work on an idea in the Good Health and Well Being area. Displaying amazing amounts of self-awareness, they highlighted that relationship between increasing screen time and mental health and well being. After working through empathy and research, utilizing their own experiences as well as that of others, they came up with a solution that allows users to measure their productivity while online. They invented a productivity metric that included measures like amount of time a person's eyes were focussed on the computer, their typing speed, amount of time spent on 'unproductive sites' that a user could configure, user's own perception of a productive day etc, and used it to produce alerts and reports.

They called their app Untasked! From designing a logo, app name, to building a functional Python/Flask based app with over 650 lines of code in 4-6 hours was just amazing to see. Some very innovative features like using AI for eye tracking to understand focus, and using speech synthesis to speak notifications in the user's mother's voice (because notifications are too easy to snooze) were amazing. Business model was clear, targeting high school students and selling to schools and school boards who are invested in their student's success. Recording their own presentations, they ironed out all the kinks and presented without help of notes in a confident, clear and concise manner. I am proud to say that the Untasked team ranked first amongst all the teams in the hackathon!

This two day experience was enlightening for me. I learnt so much from these exceptionally gifted girls:

• Self awareness: they were quick to recognize a growing challenge - screen time. they recognized the benefits of technology to collaboration and efficiency but wanted to further it's responsible use.
• Sponges: They learn so fast! They learnt Bootstrap CSS, Python / Flask and wrote over 650 lines of code in 6 hours!
• Creativity: Such creative ideas likes a productivity metric based on eye tracking / typing / user's perception, designing their logo and creating an on point app name etc blew me away.

Overall, I had a great opportunity to work with and learn from these gifted girls, and I hope to see them in leading positions in a few years!

ps: My daughter's team came second. So it was bittersweet, and I think I am going to hear about it at home :-)