No Talk, All Action: Lessons Learned from Startup Weekend: Library Edition
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Talk delivered with Stephanie Quail and Meg Ecclestone at TRY Confence, May 6, 2014. Provides perspectives of two of the event's organizers and one participant.
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No Talk, All Action: Lessons Learned from Startup Weekend: Library Edition
- 1. NO TALK, ALL ACTION: LESSONS LEARNED FROM STARTUP WEEKEND Stephanie Quail, Helen Kula, & Meg Ecclestone ! TRY Conference, Toronto, Ontario! May 6, 2014!
- 2. INTRODUCTIONS STARTUP WEEKEND Meg Ecclestone! @mjecclestone! ! Librarian! Scott Research & Collections, ! York University Libraries! ! Helen Kula! @helenkula! ! Librarian! Institute for Management & Innovation, ! University of Toronto Mississauga! ! Stephanie Quail! @stephaniequail! ! Business Librarian! Rotman School of ! Management, ! University of Toronto! !
- 3. ! • Overview of Startup Weekend! ! • Startup Weekend Toronto EDU: Library Edition! • Organizers’ Perspectives ! • A Participant’s Experience of Startup Weekend! • Key Learnings and Takeaways for Academic Librarians! • Q&A! AGENDA STARTUP WEEKEND
- 4. OVERVIEW STARTUP WEEKEND 1,000+ events! 500+ cities! 100,000+ participants! 500+ cities! 1,000+ events! 100,000+ participants! Industry Professionals (like us!)! Designers! Developers! Business Development Types! Startup Weekend!
- 5. • SW Toronto launched in 2010! • 6 Startup Weekends held to date! ! • SWEDU is SW’s education vertical! • 1st SW Toronto EDU held in 2013! • SWTOLib the first of its kind ! OVERVIEW STARTUP WEEKEND
- 6. Typical Startup Weekend Template! Friday Night! Saturday! Sunday! Registration, dinner! The work continues…! • Customer validation! • Business case development! • Coders code; designers design! • Work winds down! • Pitch prep begins! • Prototypes are (hopefully) ready and working! Initial 1-minute pitches! Mentors and observers coach and provide guidance! Judges arrive and meet ‘n greet with teams! Voting and team formation! 5 minute pitches take place! Q&A with judges! Teams get to work!! Judges convene and announce the winners! ! OVERVIEW STARTUP WEEKEND
- 7. M.J. D’Elia, Librarian! University of Guelph! Helen Kula, Librarian! University of Toronto! M.J’s ‘Startup Library’ workshops! Helen’s experience at MaRS! ORGANIZING #SWTOLib STARTUP WEEKEND
- 8. And then there were five…. Helen Kula Meg Ecclestone June Avila Emily Porta M.J. D’Elia ORGANIZING #SWTOLib STARTUP WEEKEND
- 9. • Offer new kind of experiential learning opportunity for the library community ! ! • Expose library community to ‘startup thinking’ and tools, e.g.! • Customer development - ‘get outside the building’! • Minimum viable product (MVP)! ! • Build relationships between startup + library communities! ! • Empower library communities to build their own solutions! ! • Seed community of library professionals who are committed to hands-on innovation! ! #SWTOLib OBJECTIVES STARTUP WEEKEND
- 10. ! Photo curtsey of http://www.getyourbotoncom/ ! ! Date:! March 28-30!! ! ! Location:! Mozilla Community Space! ! ! THE EVENT STARTUP WEEKEND
- 11. 35 LIS professionals 28 Developers 20 Mentors & Observers THE EVENT STARTUP WEEKEND 10 Designers 5 Judges 1 Facilitator
- 12. BrookList! First Place!! HUB allows public libraries to include local community resources in their library catalog, alongside traditional library materials like books. ! ! Second Place!! SpaceValet helps students find study space on campus. The mobile app allows students to select a library or learning space on campus and determine the availability of student study space. ! ! Third Place!! Raisin Readers is an app for parents to track reading by their children aged 0-5, to celebrate reading milestones and to better connect parents with their local library. ! ! Organizers’ Choice!! BrookList embodied the spirit of startup weekend. They focused improving the holds system in libraries. The team had some early setbacks and lost a few team members, but they still presented a polished pitch on Sunday.! TEAM PROFILES STARTUP WEEKEND
- 14. EVENT FEEDBACK: THE GOOD STARTUP WEEKEND 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 14 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 5 4 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 How likely are you to recommend Startup Weekend to your friends or colleagues? (0 unlikely, 10 likely) How would you rate the overall quality of the Organizing team?
- 15. Librarians enjoyed! ! • Hands-on, experiential learning! ! • DIY ethos: use what you got! ! • Customer validation process! ! • Team-based nature of the work! • Focus on producing a MVP instead of perfection! ! • Pivoting and iterative, fluid nature of design process! EVENT FEEDBACK: THE GOOD STARTUP WEEKEND
- 16. Great outcomes, such as! ! • Connections formed between library community and the startup community! ! • Librarians learned how much they could accomplish in 54 hours! ! • At least 3 teams from the weekend continue to work on their products! • Developers and designers ‘connected’ with library problems! EVENT FEEDBACK: THE GOOD STARTUP WEEKEND
- 17. Issues for the organizers! ! • Limited diversity of library types! • No school or special/corporate library participants! ! • Application of for-profit template to non-profit library context! • Monetization? Revenue streams?! ! • Pitches! • Over-time, not quite ‘on target’! ! • More design/UX participants needed! ! • Sustaining momentum after the weekend: where do we go?! EVENT FEEDBACK: THE CHALLENGES STARTUP WEEKEND
- 18. ? ! • Interested in Startup Weekend movement! ! • Passion for creating digital library services! ! ...and I had my own idea I wanted to pitch! ! A PARTICIPANT’S PERSPECTIVE STARTUP WEEKEND
- 19. My event expectations! ! • Create a product that solves a library- specific problem! ! • Be part of an iterative design process! ! • Meet other librarians, developers, and designers ! ! • Have a fun time and…! • Be exhausted by the end of the weekend!! A PARTICIPANT’S PERSPECTIVE STARTUP WEEKEND
- 20. My pitch idea! ! • The Library Sandbox! • Didn’t make it past the voting stage! ! Pitch problems! ! • Not a convincing elevator speech! • Didn’t resonate with designers and developers! ! Learning outcomes?! ! • Practice your pitch!! • Sell your ideas! • Make it relatable! #SWTOLib – DAY 1 STARTUP WEEKEND
- 21. Second round of pitches! ! • Give winning pitches a chance to expand on their ideas! ! Forming teams! ! • Organic process! • Attempted to form groups with designers, developers, and librarians! #SWTOLib – DAY 1 STARTUP WEEKEND
- 22. ! • Early literacy app ! • Connect parents with reading lists and children’s librarians! • Gamify reading experience! ! ! Team composition! 3 public librarians & ! 2 academic/media librarians! 2 developers! 1 designer! #SWTOLib – DAY 1 STARTUP WEEKEND
- 23. Setting our agenda! Librarians validate ! hypotheses & generate content! Developers & designers develop use cases and create wireframes! #SWTOLib – DAY 2 STARTUP WEEKEND
- 24. Customer validation! ! • 100 completed surveys by end of Saturday; 170 completed surveys by end of Sunday! Outcomes?! ! • Validated many hypotheses, but not all! Next step! ! • Wo(man) on the street validation! #SWTOLib – DAY 2 STARTUP WEEKEND
- 25. After refueling with coffee ! and dinner…! • Developers & designers demoed their working prototype! • Began working with librarians to refine use cases and information architecture! • Librarians refined information architecture! • Continued generating content ! • Started developing business model ! #SWTOLib – DAY 2 STARTUP WEEKEND
- 26. Analysis of survey results! Finalize business model! Competitor research! Further development ! of MVP! Happening simultaneously ! #SWTOLib – DAY 3 STARTUP WEEKEND
- 27. Final pitch prep! ! Challenge: present market research, customer validation, business model and do a prototype demo in 5 minutes!! Outcome?! ! • Overtime! • Judges had to ask us about our revenue model during the Q&A! • We still won 3rd place!! #SWTOLib – DAY 3 STARTUP WEEKEND
- 28. My original event expectations! ! • Create a product that solves a library-specific problem! • Be part of an iterative design process! • Meet other librarians, developers, and designers! • ! • Have a fun time and…! • Be exhausted by the end of the weekend!! þ þ þ þ þ EXPECTATIONS MET? STARTUP WEEKEND
- 29. Problems my team faced! ! • Monetization of our product! ! • Inability to validate all of our hypotheses! ! • Difficulties creating working prototype! ! • Lack of check-in with different team members! ! CHALLENGES STARTUP WEEKEND
- 30. During the weekend, mentors provided our team with invaluable advice on:! ! • Pricing our product! ! • Tech help! ! • Recommendations for customer validation! ! • Helping us validate our hypotheses by telling us stories about reading to their own children! FINDING MENTORS STARTUP WEEKEND Mentors are an important part of the Startup Weekend model!
- 31. • Project management! ! • Customer validation ! • Embracing iterative design process! • ‘Getting things done’; not necessarily being perfect ! • The importance of working with experts from other fields! KEY LEARNINGS STARTUP WEEKEND
- 32. Startup Weekend Learnings! Academic Libraries! Embrace project management! • Planning by committee can b cumbersome! • Select a ‘project manager’ that balances results and consensus building! Customer validation is king! • Library services and products need to get feedback at all stages of development! Iterative design process! • The first iteration of a service shouldn’t be its last! • Learn to be nimble and change elements of your projects ! ‘Getting things done’! • Being perfect rarely occurs; it’s better to work quickly and make prototypes to generate as much feedback as possible! Outsider perspective! • Embrace and seek out feedback from outsiders! • Use different language when discussing your solutions to library problems! #SWTOLib & ACADEMIC LIBRARIES STARTUP WEEKEND
- 34. Q: Does this event resonate with you? Would you attend? If not, why not?! ! Q: Does ‘Startup Weekend’s focus on venture creation align with ‘library values’? If a conflict exists, does it decrease the learning value of this event?! ! Q: How should we keep the momentum going? How can projects started be sustained and/or adopted by others?! ! Q: Would this model work for solving problems specific to just your institution?! ! Q: Are there alternatives to Startup Weekend for solving library problems?! OUR QUESTIONS STARTUP WEEKEND