We’re always excited when students & faculty come together to work on projects! This 2021 WRAP-UP is from our Artificial Intelligence Senior Lecturer, Florencia Noriega, and #FourthDimension Software Engineering student Caleb Apronti.
Florencia & Caleb spent the semester working on a project onBird sound recognition – error analysis of a deployed model.
With bird recognition apps such as Warblr (UK) or Merlin (USA), people can use their smartphones to identify birds from their sounds. Bird identification is based on deployed machine learning classifiers that take recordings and return the name of the most likely bird. But how confident are we in the predictions of these models? This project evaluates a model’s predictions trained to detect the distinctive Blackbird calls.
This project collaborates with Assoc. Prof. Dan Stowell for the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University, the Netherlands. It will help prepare for an upcoming citizen science project to detect blackbirds and discover when and where they sing. For example: do they sing earlier in cities than in the countryside? Your contribution will be to evaluate the automatic detection and establish whether it is reliable in different conditions, with various smartphones, at other times of the day. We will primarily use data submitted to the Warblr app: tens of thousands of data points.
Our biggest challenge this year/semester…
My work this semester was part of a big, complex project that combines bioacoustics (the study of animal sounds), citizen science, machine learning, among others. The biggest challenge was to understand my specific role in this big problem well enough to break it down into manageable bits I can work on.
A moment we almost lost hope…
I struggled with some health (or personal) issues, but now I’m getting professional support.
Our greatest success…
Creating the first prototype for an annotation tool that can support bioacoustics research while learning software engineering skills. Mainly how to use PostgreSQL and Flask for audio data, playing sounds and displaying spectrograms.
If it weren’t for CODE…
Absolutely, without CODE’s project-based learning concept, it would not have been possible to find the time to work and solve the challenges of this project while studying on the side. Beyond time, the CODE ecosystem is very supportive to project work. More specifically, the project requirements fit well into curricula (modules). Moreover, CODE’s community -faculty and students- are always ready to help. How to plot a spectrogram with Python, and how to structure and manage the database were some of the questions I faced with this project and received support from the community. Finally, I want to thank Dan Stowell, Alberto García Arroba Parrilla and Florencia Noriega, with who I had the chance to work on this project.
A person or people that really helped us this year with my project…
This is a project would not have been possible without Dan Stowell, Professor of Biodiversity & AI, at Tilburg University and Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands, who initiated the projects and kindly provided us with the data to work with.
Today’s 2021 wrap-up is dedicated to Sarah Faber, #NextGeneration Product Management student.
Sarah has been an active part of the CODE Community and was significantly involved in organizing unicon – hosted at CODE in 2019 as Head of Speakers.
Sarah currently works for BUNCH, the AI leadership coach on a mission to help anyone become a great leader.
BUNCH enables you to overcome everyday leadership challenges with personalized 2-minute leadership tips – all in the format of a sleek, intuitive app. They don’t use titles, so Sarah’s role would be the equivalent of a Technical Product Manager. She mostly focuses on Delivery and less on Discovery.
If it weren’t for CODE…
“Today I am very proud of my self-management skills that allow me to perform well for and with my team as well as take care of my health and happiness. The project-based CODE curriculum which can only be run with determination and discipline gave me the vision I needed to stay motivated and the complex obstacles I needed to learn fast and smart.”
My biggest challenge this year…
“Was starting in a high-performing team that required me to adapt quickly and deliver quality. A very mission-driven team always comes with a variety of interpersonal challenges that I believe CODE prepared me for a lot! Matching the team’s wisdom with my foundation from CODE allowed me to become a better leader myself.”
RemNote aspires to reinvent how we learn, think, and collaborate. We’re building an all-in-one thinking and learning workspace to help individuals and teams organize their thinking, master their craft, and grow their knowledge.
We’re a MIT-born startup that grew out of frustrations with existing learning and knowledge-management tools. As students and researchers, we had become increasingly aware of how little we remembered after reading an article or completing a course. We were also frustrated with how hard it was to keep our thoughts, research, and projects organized. We needed a tool to streamline our thinking, connect ideas, and optimize our learning for the long term.
RemNote is that tool — an all-in-one workspace that supercharges your work, thinking, and learning.
Moritz Wallawitsch, Third Party Software Engineering student and CPO/CO-Founder of RemNote tells us about his 2021 wrap-up;
Our biggest challenge this year/semester
“We greatly underestimated the time and effort of outbound sourcing and selling to get great candidates.”
Proud of myself because I…
“I’m proud of helping to build a profitable fast-growing SaaS company that makes the life of hundreds of thousands of students, professionals, and researchers easier. By building a new evolution of tools for knowledge creation, we’re accelerating scientific and technological progress.”
A person or people that really helped me this year with RemNote…
“Lennard Schmidt, among others, was a great help. He has an incredible network and introduced us to some of Europe’s best investors. I think Lennard joining the leadership team is one of the best things that happened to CODE recently.”
This year, Marie finished her Bachelor of Arts in Interaction Design at CODE.
During her studies, she worked as a UX/UI working student for MBition, doing user research, among other things, for the current Mercedes Me App.
My biggest challenge this year…
“Learning to navigate through a 40/h-work-week. It’s tough he.”
My greatest success…
“Graduating from CODE. Whoop whoop.”
My biggest project f*** up…
“To be honest, retrospectively, I’d do everything differently. Not because the projects were “f*** ups” more because “now I know better.””
Proud of myself because…
“I finally put together a proper portfolio with the work that I did throughout my studies. Have a look here.”
If it weren’t for CODE…
“I wouldn’t have met some of my closest friends, which are the real lifesavers. :-)”
People that really helped me this year…
“Pras Gunasekera (Senior Interaction Design Lecturer) & Julia Zielke (Former STS Lecturer) supervised my capstone project & taught me about inclusive & sustainable design practices.”
Marie is now working as a junior product designer at SinnerSchrader Swipe, part of Accenture Interactive, and is curious to see what will happen next.
One of the (thousands of) perks of the Digital Age is enjoying access where there wasn’t any before. Vincent Amm (#ThirdParty Product Management), Mona Feder (#ThirdParty Interaction Design), Lenny-Campino Hartmann (#ThirdParty Software Engineering) and Alexander Borowski (#ThirdParty Product Management) founded tokenstreet, and soon, Jonathan Freiberger (#NextGen Software Engineering) and Daniel Reichhart (#ThirdParty Software Engineering) joined them.
VIncent Amm
tokenstreet’s goal was to give The Everyperson access to financial spheres that were previously unavailable unless you had years of investment knowledge and/or Scrooge McDuck-levels of money.
This intro into the project might sound very abstract, so let’s share what Vincent and Mona told us about tokenstreet as a way of summarizing what it is and why it needs to exist.
“With tokenstreet, we are building a digital family office that enables everybody to invest in high-quality alternative investments such as venture capital, private equity or real estate in an easy, seamless and accessible way. Our goal is to deliver attractive returns over the long term by applying investment strategies that were available only to the wealthy.
We founded tokenstreet to solve exactly this problem and provide retail investors with the same access to alternative investments that institutional investors have, even with a small ticket size.”
Vincent says that the amount of money you typically need to invest was a barrier for people who otherwise would have invested. “There are alternative assets such as venture capital funds or private equity funds which usually have a minimum investment of 1 to 10 million; with tokenstreet we can give access to these investments from twenty-five euros.”
tokenstreet team
Investments are their own universe of considerations, and one of the things the founders of tokenstreet experienced, is that one of the strongest gravitational pulls in that universe is regulations. We asked if this caused hurdles for them. “So many.” Vincent laughed. “When it’s about capital markets and investments, it’s highly regulated, so you cannot just launch a product and see if it’s working.”
Hearing Vincent talk about these obstacles led us to ask about some of the team’s learnings since working on tokenstreet. Vincent told us that his experience taught him that working on such a topic should be fun, but you need something motivating you beyond fun. “As in every business, things don’t always work out – there are so many difficult moments and problems. At those times, you really need to know why you are doing this, take a step back, look at the bigger picture. In these moments, I remind myself: ‘I have the chance to transform the way people deal with their financial future and to contribute to financial independence for everyone.’ And that’s not just because I think it’s important, but because it’s important for me. It’s really important to have the right mindset.”
Mona agreed. She added, “it’s this mindset and knowing why you are doing this that keeps you motivated even during hard times. But one of the biggest learnings for me was the importance of focus combined with pace, testing and making everything measurable. While building a company, there are tons of tasks you can do while many of them lead you nowhere. I learned that it’s crucial to allocate your resources – like time and money – optimized on the step that is bringing you to the next level, and cut off everything else.”
Mona Feder
tokenstreet’s had happy moments too of course! Vincent talked about one of his favorites. “It was around Christmas. I remember we’d had three months of intensive work with our lawyers, modelling, evaluating and testing different models. Then, just before Christmas, we got the news: one of our models works. It was a good Christmas present.”
As we neared the end of our time together, we asked tokenstreet one last question. If you could communicate one message to potential users, what would you say? What’s your core message? Here’s what they told us: “With tokenstreet, you are able to build up a portfolio that is similar to those of super wealthy people. There are so many people who work hard to gather some money. And diversification with alternative assets is an elementary strategy for long-term asset accumulation. It’s not like we have a certain magic formula, but we use technology to improve transparency in the investment process. We use blockchain technology to create efficiency when it comes to investment, and we use the access we created to make our vision reality.”
You can get more information on tokenstreet by checking out their website.
CODE students are coming from 67 different countries across the world. Irina is one of them; she’s an Interaction Design student from Russia. She applied in 2018, got accepted in 2019, then did a gap year to work. During this time away, she became even more sure that CODE was the right choice. She read on our website that studying at CODE means studying with “freedom”, but it took her a while to understand what that actually looks like.
“You come to CODE and it is actually about freedom, your personal choices, and about your curiosity: you start learning what you are actually interested in.” That process is indeed challenging. Irina recalls the saying that “with a great freedom comes great responsibility”, and somehow she didn’t expect it to be so real.
This feeling is very familiar to Filip, another Interaction Design student from Bulgaria. “You don’t think about how hard it actually is to be pretty much on your own and choose what you want to do, what you want to learn. That’s hard, but for me that’s great. I learn way more this way,” he says. CODE’s foundation is our belief in curiosity-driven education, hence the freedom that our students have. In a traditional university, what you learn is determined by what the lecturer feels is most important for you. At CODE, you decide that, based on where your curiosity leads you. If you’re used to a more traditional higher education setup, the first months at CODE can be a rollercoaster. Rollercoasters are fun, but if it’s your first time on one, you have to get used to it before you can start enjoying the ride.
2020 and the remote setup may not have been the way we envisioned welcoming our 4th generation of students to our way of learning, but Samuel, a Software Engineering student from Nigeria, is fully embracing it all. He studied at a traditional university before CODE, so he knows very well how unique CODE is. “For someone like me coming from a traditional institution where you were told things you have to do – and if you are not doing it, then you get an F or a terrible grade – it was a total change of concept for me.” The fact that your individual learning journey at CODE isn’t set in stone allowed him to feed and follow his curiosity. “The most interesting aspect of learning at CODE? You have challenges, but you are empowered to confront them because you have a community of people that can support you and guide you.”
Yoana is from Bulgaria, studying Software Engineering, and so far is super thrilled about the CODE community. “After joining, there were small things like having a beer with the founders and things like that. We’re a community, and I love this about CODE.”
The question of moving to Berlin during our second year of a pandemic might sound a bit funky: while we jumped into the remote setup with both feet, we are encouraging students to move to Berlin as soon as they can. Irina and Filip are already here, Yoana is currently in Bulgaria but can’t wait to be back, and Samuel is hoping to finally move in June.
CODE is all about freedom – and Berlin is already a longstanding synonym for freedom. Sure, moving to Berlin requires some investigation: finding a flat, getting familiar with German bureaucracy (they looooove it), navigating through Berlin’s super diverse districts – each one of them feeling like a new city and adjusting to the fact that all shops are closed on Sundays (a real issue, apparently). “It’s the craziest city you gonna live in, that’s for sure. Doesn’t matter where you come from, you probably never seen anything like that,” Filip laughs.
Yoana and Irina say that Berlin is just so diverse and so different, and even during the pandemic, you can travel within the city and see different architecture, customs, culture: every district surprises you in its unique way. On the other hand, Samuel’s family and friends were suspicious of Germany. “They are so strict there: Germany is the strictest country of all!” but so far Samuel’s experience showed him something different, and he was positively surprised to meet his German peers and realize that they were actually nice. “You should be harsh, why is everyone really so nice?” he recalls thinking.
We get a lot of questions about whether CODE will be expanding to other cities anytime soon, and we are never sure what to say. So far, Berlin and CODE have been the perfect match: the same way you’ll be navigating through dynamic districts of Berlin, you’ll be navigating through a unique and dynamic learning journey at CODE. In both cases, never forgetting that you should continuously stay curious.
As a clothing lover myself, everything that includes fashion catches my eye. I’m not interested in typical (mainstream) clothing companies, we all know that ultra-fast fashion is eating the world and people are often buying clothes they don’t need. My special interest in clothing lies in a story that a piece of clothing can have, whether this is a unique piece produced in a textile factory that no longer exists, or if it belonged to someone else in the past. I love worn clothes, as long as they remain in good shape and condition. That being said, it’s hard to imagine how excited I was when I saw a pitch about the Worn Stories project during the last Expo Day at CODE in December. I immediately thought “OMG this project needs to be spotlighted”.
Since I’m into worn clothes with a story, I was so delighted to find out what motivated them for their project.
“Our initial idea was something like a blog where you could write stories about your piece of clothing to make people aware of this fast-fashion and to engage with their clothes a little more. Instead of saying ‘this is a really expensive sweater’, saying something like ‘this is my grandmother’s sweater,’” says Hannah Rau, an Interaction Design student and the initiator of the project. Erm, this was everything I ever wanted to know – what kind of a life my now favorite sweater had before it belonged to me!
“Our initial idea was something like a blog where you could write stories about your piece of clothing to make people aware of this fast-fashion and to engage with their clothes a little more. Instead of saying ‘this is a really expensive sweater’, saying something like ‘this is my grandmother’s sweater,’”
How did they start to develop their idea? “Hannah and I started to work on this project last semester as part of the Screen Design foundations module, mostly focused on a design brief from our lecturer Natalía Papadopoúlou. Then we got curious to trace exactly where donated clothes go,” explains Marie Spreitzer, Interaction Design student. Then they came to an idea of having a platform where you can swap clothes, and there you can say what kind of an experience someone had with that piece of clothing. “Then the other person you swap the clothes with will also see what you’ve experienced with it and can add their own story to it,” adds Marie.
Worn Stories team
Since this was a design idea rather than a technical one, they still need to think about how this will work in practice, but back to that Expo Day, they’ve received an “Investment Ready Award” (meaning ‘you would bet money on this succeeding now’) from Product Management lecturer Chris Bonau Schmidt. This was a nice push, but also led them to the conclusion that the two designers, Hannah and Marie, really needed that Product Management perspective in the team. This is where another fashion lover came into play.
After Worn Stories gave talks to find a PM, there she was, a perfect PM. Mia McCarthy elaborates on her motivation to join the team: “I remember Marie and Hannah working on the project a little last semester because we did the PM module ‘Communication and Presentation’, and the project caught my eye right there. I am into fashion, and I wanted to go into fashion professionally. One thing I really wished for was some kind of project in the fashion industry.” Having done market research beforehand on other projects, she was convinced that she would be able to help them with Worn Stories.
So, now that you know more about their motivation for the project, I asked them to tell me more about some of their hurdles and teamwork. I also wanted to especially underline the fact that they were an all-female project crew. It’s 2021 yet women in tech are still seen as a minority. That’s a rather sad fact, and while CODE hopes every year to see more and more women, we are aware that the problem is systematic.
Photo by Duy Hoang on Unsplash
In one form or another, women still hear “You’d be better off doing something else” on an everyday basis. 2020 showed us once again that Covid-19 has, in many ways, “exacerbated existing inequalities” for women in tech. It was a natural moment to ask how they feel about the label “Women in Tech”.
“CODE is a very safe space that gives us a lot of opportunities, especially for women, like the ‘Women at CODE’ Slack channel and special events organized for female-identifying individuals,” explains Hannah.
“As a student, I don’t consider myself a woman in tech yet, and I think a big part of that learning journey is also how to navigate as a minority in such a big field like tech,” says Hannah. Her experience at CODE was so far really positive and she never thought of herself as a minority. “CODE is a very safe space that gives us a lot of opportunities, especially for women, like the ‘Women at CODE’ Slack channel and special events organized for female-identifying individuals,” explains Hannah.
Here at CODE, our students are familiar with working in teams from (almost) day one. Having several experiences working on teams already in her studies, Mia wanted to comment on the dynamic in an all-female team. “The beginning of last year, I just worked with my project partner, James. The second half I was with him and three other white, male students. I feel now – also because we have a history of friendship together – it’s something definitely much more comfortable and easy to work with someone like-minded. I enjoy working in an all-female team. We know how to communicate with each other and there are certain things that you just get as a woman.”
All three identify as strong-willed, confident women. “I try not to label things when I’m doing them, as in ‘I’m doing this because I am a woman of color from xyz background’. I just want to be doing the best I can at what I’m trying to do, and we should be confident in what we are doing,” says Mia.
Although I used the term “all-female” a couple of times in this article, Marie is careful about labeling the project as “all-female”. Her aim is not to be celebrated (only) because they are a female team, but because of what they deliver with this project. This is a legitimate concern, but it’s great not to forget about the power that role models can have. They agree. “Some younger girls will know that they can achieve things by seeing others do it, and we need to be at the stage to make that happen,” they say.
I’d be more than excited to use their app and read all those (always) amazing stories that a piece of clothing might have. Fashion industry desperately needs some fresh minds, fostering change to fashion products. Hannah, Marie, and Mia’s ideas are exactly what we need.
“I might be addicted to cannabis. I do it a bit too often, maybe I should cut down? Lemme check the internet for what’s out there…Hey! There’s a way for me to practice therapy on my own first.” This is the thought process Jan Brebaum, #thirdparty Interaction Design student, is prepared for…and why he wants his and Dr. Milosz Paul Rosinski’s app Leaf to be at the top of the search results. Jan and Milosz’s goal is to bring addiction therapy into the 21st century.
Your question is probably: why is an app necessary for addiction therapy? Why not just choose the typical/traditional channels? According to Jan and Milosz, there’s a couple reasons. “Cannabis is the most popular illegal drug. Its users are on average younger than those of other drugs – to combat addiction, therapy must adapt to the needs of young people.” Typical addiction therapy “starts after weeks or months of waiting for a therapist to be available and then follows a weekly schedule of meetings. But what is there apart from this? Patients are basically on their own; it’s not really effective.”
This is where Leaf comes in! “Leaf is developing a system for patients to reflect on themselves. It integrates modules from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Motivation Enhancement Therapy, and then gives them the opportunity to do interactive therapy with their phone. So they have time decentralized therapy over the week (or therapy on demand, whatever you want to call it).”
A lot to break down there, in the best way! Let’s look at Leaf’s role in the sector of digital health first. Jan explains that Leaf creates “the opportunity for health products that really suit the individual, and not only come from a doctor’s or professional’s perspective.” Seeing the individual as exactly that – an individual – allows Leaf to address more nuanced patient needs. “It’s more intimate than normal doctor/patient relationships.” And one of the best parts: it lowers the threshold to go into therapy for digital natives.
Leaf is developing a system for patients to reflect on themselves. It integrates modules from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Motivation Enhancement Therapy, and then gives them the opportunity to do interactive therapy with their phone.
Leaf’s still growing and developing, so we asked Jan about one of the team’s next big hurdles. You won’t be surprised to learn that overcoming this hurdle would add another big advantage to Leaf: The team is getting in touch with various addiction counseling programs to find out what self-reflection really means in addiction therapy. Since self-reflection is one of the strongest weapons in dealing with addiction, speaking with people who are in addiction therapy now is the best way to gain insights into effective techniques.
And here’s one of our favorite questions to ask any startup: What’s your end goal? “To be a Digitale Gesundheitsanwendung: if patients go to a therapist, they have the opportunity to get the app prescribed, and health insurance covers it.”
Of course we can’t forget that Jan is working on Leaf while studying, so let’s hear about some of his learnings! We asked him about some of the ways he’s grown professionally through his work on Leaf. “It’s great to build my own project. I’ve learned a lot about startups and social startups and how to build them. Working together with a co-founder and being accountable to each other because there is not a classic ‘boss’ who watches us, but rather we are building it on our own. I learned how to talk to users or potential users. Still learning of course.”
Professional growth is incredibly valuable, but it’s only one side of the coin. What about his personal growth? He says, “I’ve been learning a lot in terms of motivation. I’m really driven by great ideas, I love to explore them, elaborate on them, work on them. It’s a form of self-discovery, to build this thing. It’s an amazing experience to work on a project that also might help people in the future. This might be what I really love to do in life.”
It’s great to build my own project. I’ve learned a lot about startups and social startups and how to build them. Working together with a co-founder and being accountable to each other because there is not a classic ‘boss’ who watches us, but rather we are building it on our own. I learned how to talk to users or potential users. Still learning of course.”
Recovering from addiction isn’t a journey that’s typically associated with the idea of “joy”, but the way Jan talks about it, these ideas can go hand in hand. We asked him an interesting question: if you had a magic microphone to broadcast a message directly into the brain of a potential Leaf user, what would you say? “Every small step matters. Improve the small things. Addiction is something to do with self-judgement, so many people who struggle with addiction are not happy with parts of themselves. If they learn to see addiction not as a bad personal trait, but what it is: a psychological condition, they can then accept that, accept themselves, and build on that.”
We as a society can do even better than “just” acceptance. Leaf offers something even beyond medical support: a change in perspective. “It’s important to see the effects of the societal stigma of addiction. Today, it’s kind of taboo, ‘Oh, you’re addicted!’ It’s something really bad or you must be a bad person. But addiction is something normal, it is something very human. Many people struggle with addiction in their lives at some point. It would be beautiful to see a societal change there.”
Cover image: photo by Bence Sandor Sztrecska on Unsplash.
Hey you, come closer! I have something super secret to tell you: what it’s really like inside one of CODE’s Admission Days! Don’t tell anyone I’m telling you this…
I know you’ve been nervous about the application process, and I totally understand, but you don’t need to be! Let me give you a peek into what your Admission Day (AD) will look like to show you what I mean. Keep in mind: by then you’ll already have done your written application, submitted a challenge and had a call with our amazing Admissions Team. Now it’s time for your AD!
“If you’re excited about the unique program that CODE is offering then you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that the rest of the applicants in your Admission Day will be similarly excited. Having a room full of passionate people can be an electric experience.” -Nicholas R, Software Engineering, #4thDimension
The ADs are great because 1. You get to meet members of the team and current students 2. You find out all about our learning concept 3. You learn more about CODE’s culture and 4. It’s just super fun. It’s an intense day, but the kind of day where at the end, you take a deep, satisfying breath and say, “Wow, I did a lot. I deserve some cake.”
Until after the pandemic is over, the ADs are all remote, so bonus: you get to do the whole day from your home desk – very comfy. At 9 AM CEST, you’ll tune in, along with the Admissions Team and the members of the team (meaning staff and faculty) and current students who are helping out that day.
And this is where it really gets good. Oh, if the Admissions Team knew I was telling you this, I’d be so busted, so let’s keep this between us.
Icebreakers? Pft, the Admissions Team knows them all. Let’s just say that I’m #VideoGames, #Diversity and #KidsAreCoolerThanAdults ? After the ice is sufficiently broken, you’ll jump into your first activity. I can’t tell you what it is, BUT I can tell you that it’s really fun. Just check out these pics of the team when they tried it out earlier this year!
The Student Lifecycle team
Next you’ll have some info rounds! You’ll learn about our curriculum and about our community – all the best CODE-y stuff. I’ll be in one of the info rounds, but don’t worry: when I see you, I’ll pretend this conversation never happened.
On to the meat and potatoes of the day: your second activity! This one’s more of a structured task. I can’t…*looks over shoulder* I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s the kind of thing you’ll have a few hours to work on. This part’s amazing because you get to work with the other applicants, making it the perfect practice for the group-working-on-a-project stuff that happens every day at CODE. It’s also just…awesome to spend time with the other applicants, laughing with them while you work together on something cool.
“On the Admission Day we found ourselves in an environment which was a lot like what CODE turned out to be. The people I met there were both driven to do their best and supportive of one another. The air resonated with cooperation rather than competition. The people I worked with payed so much attention to help each other’s work, so we could rely on our teammates right away. My first friendships at CODE formed at the Admission Day.” -Péter W, Software Engineering, #ThirdParty
You’ll have time for an interview then too. I know what you’re thinking, but don’t freak out! It’s really just a way to spend time with the team one-on-one. It’s hard to get to know everyone well when we’re all in a bigger group, so this is your chance to have the team’s undivided attention to talk about the coolest person ever: you!
After that’s all finished, all the applicants come together to talk about what you did in your task, get some feedback from the team and students and settle in for your last info session (all your questions about payments: answered!). Last, but not least for the day: the team and students will come back to wish everyone a fantastic evening, and you can leave the Zoom call to go sleep for 15 hours straight.
“Scary as it may seem, don’t panic. It’s kind of fun actually. Try to enjoy it.” -Sijia T, Software Engineering, #4thDimension
See? Not so scary! You’ll even find out if you got accepted by the end of that same day! I didn’t mention earlier, but of course there’s also some breaks sprinkled in there, so you’ll have time to catch your breath now and then.
Oh…oh no, some team members are headed this way, I gotta go. Remember, I never told you all this insider information! ? See you at your AD! Apply here.
Say you’re putting together a panel for an entrepreneurship event. You want your panel to feature people from diverse backgrounds…but your pool of potential panelists doesn’t reflect the diversity you’re shooting for. Because the lack-of-representation problem started long before any single panel’s selection process, how do we know where to even begin to make things better? We have CODE Catalyst to save the day! More specifically, one of our #thirdparty PM students, Aya Douba, works with Catalyst to add a layer of support targeting female founders.
Now we have to ask the nitty-gritty questions: Why isn’t female representation where we want it to be? What can we do about it?
For CODE students who want to found or grow their startup, Catalyst is our entrepreneurial hub: a springboard for founders.
Forgive the cliffhanger, but let’s give some context first: CODE Catalyst isn’t only for female founders, but all founders! For CODE students who want to found or grow their startup, Catalyst is our entrepreneurial hub: a springboard for founders. Since CODE and entrepreneurship go together like peanut butter and jelly (a reference for the Americans in the house), CODE Catalyst’s existence was a natural continuation of many of the attitudes found at CODE.
CODE Catalyst Graduation Day, August 2020, photo by: Tobias Wittekindt
Ok, back to the burning questions. Let’s dive into Aya’s wisdom by directing some of our questions to her: Why is female representation in entrepreneurial spaces something that needs attention? Her answer is simple: “From research and surveys we know that women want to be there founding companies. It’s not like CODE Catalyst is forcing hopes and dreams on women. They want to start something.”
Well great! So…why don’t they? Let’s return to the idea of panelist selection at the start of the article. How can you select women when there’s no women to select from? Aya’s advice: ask different questions. “Did we really ‘just’ not select any women or was the event not appealing to women? How can we make it appealing to women?
“The instinctual decision might be ‘let’s just find a woman, any woman, so we save face and fill in a quota’. This would be putting a stick in the wheel instead of fixing the problem. Underrepresentation will keep happening over and over until we find the real reason why there aren’t women in that space. It’s a circle that feeds itself: there’s so few women in the business world, we don’t see ourselves represented, so now we’re producing even fewer, and it goes on…”
PM student and a founder Mia McCarthy working in the Catalyst workspace on our campus, photo by: Carina König
Making your call for panelists more appealing to women is a great first step, so let’s keep the momentum going for another step: giving support to female founders while they’re founding their company. Looking at CODE’s student body, women are in the minority, and the entrepreneurship and startup world reflects that imbalance.
Underrepresentation will keep happening over and over until we find the real reason why there aren’t women in that space.
However, CODE Calalyst’s research found that the best time to found a startup is while studying. Even further, “When we did studies in the CODE community, we realized that the average female student already is entrepreneurial by nature because this is one of the values of CODE. Instead of having 2-3% of the founders women, we wanted to support more women starting their journey to get all the support that they need. That’s why we try to fill in all the gaps that are posing issues for women of CODE.”
Every founder has gaps to fill and hurdles to overcome, but the thing is: the gaps and hurdles facing female founders are unique and gender-based all too often. “In the business world, women are held at such higher standards. Because there is much less female representation, the few of us who make it are always watched. Because they represent the whole group, they’re not able to fail as much: the failure of one represents the failure of many.”
Are there other factors that play into women being nudged away from founding? Unfortunately, yes. And some of it has to do with the way we understand what entrepreneurship asks of us. “We have so many people who still believe in ‘gender roles’. The way entreprepreneurship is sold to us is that you can’t start a company, to bring this baby – this company – to life, when you are ‘actually’ supposed to bring real babies to this world.
Catalyst space on our campus, photo by: Carina König
“It’s sold to us like it’s something you have to do every hour of every day, which is wrong: you can of course do it part time, beside your life. We’re told we have the jobs we can never quit, which is our care job, our home job. Even if we are career women, we can’t be flexible.” Then let’s all take Aya’s lead and forget everything we thought we knew about entrepreneurship! We hear you though, it’s easier said than done, and it’s a process that takes time and includes mistakes. That’s ok.
In the business world, women are held at such higher standards. Because there is much less female representation, the few of us who make it are always watched.
So let’s get started taking that time and making those mistakes! What do you do if you have an idea for a company, you’re ready to take the first step, but you don’t know where to place your feet? “Believe in yourself first and don’t be afraid of what would happen ‘if’. Don’t think about the ‘future us’ who failed and how she is dealing with her failure, with the crowd. I really believe if you never try, you will regret way more than if you tried and failed.” CODE sees learning as productive failing, so even as we realize this is an oversimplification…founding your startup is a win-win!
