TKS Session 1: Kickoff
TKS has officially kicked off, and that also means that these weekly blog posts about TKS sessions are starting up again, too! This year, I am taking part in TKS’s second-year program, Activate. Last year, I was in the Innovate program, where we spent time exploring new tech and thinking beyond where we are today. Through different challenges and the focus process, we were encouraged to imagine what the world could be like and build new things. Now, in Activate, we focus on building something tangible that has impact. Through the challenges and program structure, each of us will have a personalized Activate experience, where one person’s end goal might be different from another’s. But we are all trying to build something real and have a real impact. The end goal of Activate is for you to reach your own goal, whatever that may be.
This first session was a global session where all the kids in the Activate program this year joined on one call, where we could start off the year as one big community. The following sessions will be in our designated cohorts, which we have already chosen.
We started the session by understanding what actually makes TKS so effective. People who go through the program go on to build crazy things and actually have an impact, but how? What makes TKS different compared to school or other programs? We know that the way we learn has changed so much in the past five years. Thanks to AI, the internet, and more use of coding and building online, there are three things that are now true:
You can learn anything: There are so many tools, courses, and information that is all accessible online. If you have an internet connection, you can realistically learn anything you want without having to go through traditional schooling or paying so much money.
You can build anything: Along with new resources to learn, there are also new tools and software to build whatever you want. And, we can even think beyond coding new apps. We can now genetically engineer, run simulations, and even design drugs right from our laptops. And, there are tools to turn our online designs into real things that we can work with in real life.
Everything is open source: If you want to know how an app works, there is most likely an open-source version of that app with all the code accessible. You can use open-source projects that already exist to break them down and re-engineer them to understand how they work, and then build your own.
Because we can learn in these three ways now, TKS acts as an accelerator that capitalizes on these things and guides us on how to use these tools in different challenges and projects to properly and effectively utilize these resources. Without any guides, too much access to information can become overwhelming, and you might be missing out on the relevant information. TKS helps guide and filter all that for you, so you know exactly what to focus on and can make the most progress in the shortest amount of time.
After looking at what makes TKS so effective, we looked at some of the “outlier achievements” you can have after Activate. The four main include:
Start a venture-backed company
Join an early-stage venture-backed company
Join an established, innovative company
Work at an established research lab
There is also a 5th achievement that is a little different from the first 4, and that’s:
5. Working on international impact initiatives
The point is that, after Activate, your goal can really be anything; you just have to think big. Whether your goal is to start a company or get into X University, you can use your time in Activate to make that happen for you.
Before getting into the program logistics, we did a few speed braindates where we were put into breakout rooms and had some really quick get-to-know-you sessions with 3 or 4 other people in the Activate session. We cycled through different breakout rooms about 3 times and got to know some of the other people in the Activate program this year.
We went over some of the main program goals for this year in Activate that everyone is trying to achieve, no matter what your personal end goal is. There are three big ones, and they are:
High standards demo day project (in Activate, instead of a showcase, we have a demo day at the end of the year, which emphasizes actually showing something real that you built at the end, not just talking about an idea). Ways that you can achieve this are through
Second focus
Personal project
PIE challenge
Earthshots
Develop meaningful relationships
Explore/focus squads
PIE teams
Earthshot teams
Community events
Think for yourself
Mindsets/skillsets
PIE challenge
Sessions
Projects
Some of the things I listed (like the PIE challenge and Earthshots) are some of the challenges that we will be doing in Activate this year, which contribute to some of the ways to achieve those main Activate program goals.
We talked about the main project we will be building for the next 3 months, which is our second focus/personal approved project. In the span of 3 months, you will complete a second focus in a different field that you will then showcase at the end of December. Because you’ve done the focus process once before in Innovate, it should be much faster to complete one in only 3 months. You also have the option to complete a personal approved project, which could be something expanding off of what you’ve already worked on in innovate, maybe a past focus that you’re really passionate about or a new project/company you want to go all in on. But you need to get approval to make sure this is the right project you should be working on. By October 20th, we should have figured out the lane of the project we want to do and start making progress.
A successful second focus has to follow this theme for Activate focuses: Project should focus on solving real-world problems. You need to find a specific problem that either has to do with your chosen area or can be solved by your chosen area. Activate is all about making an impact, and your focus needs to embody that.
We went over the mindset of the week (MotW), which is the Activator mindset. Our challenge for this week that embodies that mindset is: What is something that you can activate and finish this week? Something I am going to activate and finish this week is a lab protocol I need to send over to an advisor.
Our main activity for this session was to fill out the Activate Kickoff Workbook, a 3-part workbook where you write out your goal for the end of Activate and create a rough plan of how you’re going to achieve it.
We got into breakout rooms where we filled in the workbook and discussed it together. In part 1, we first answered what our goal was for the end of Activate, so what I wanted to be doing by the end of the summer. I wrote:
I want to be actively working on a validated project with a strong technical mentor supporting it, whether that be getting into a research lab or an early-stage startup related to my focus or project, or actually having full support on my own project or startup. Right now, I have been focusing on building out ClotGuard alongside my co-founders (we’ve been reaching out to labs) as well as building my own projects on the side. But the final thing is that I want to be working on something validated and real-world related to what I’m interested in, with strong support/mentorship.
Then we looked at as a group what failure in Activate can look like to each of us. We wrote down things like not making any progress on ideas that we came up with, being in the same place as we were when we started, and not having built anything real or tangible.
Part 2 was about creating the timeline. I had to figure out what my action items/enablers were going to be for me to achieve my goal. Some of my enablers included researching and reaching out to my top local labs in Calgary, working on things I’ve been researching and getting tours as a way to build the connections, making next steps in my ongoing projects, as well as milestones for those projects to keep track of.
Part 3 was about looking at what might be a barrier to those enablers I created in part 2. They can be from a personal standpoint or logical. A personal barrier would be something like time management, and a logical barrier would be something like having to create a simulation but not knowing how to code. Once you identify your possible barriers, you can create actions to overcome them. Some of my logical barriers included not getting lab space for prototype testing or not having the funding to conduct a complex research project I’m planning, and then I wrote down different ways to overcome them or pivot to keep making progress. A personal barrier I identified is how sometimes I struggle to label my priorities and then try to do everything at once, which can lead to some things not getting done or me being too overwhelmed. To combat that, I need to identify when I might have a very “packed” week, and then take some time to write down everything that needs to be done, and then make arrangements for what needs to be done, what can be moved, and what I can miss for that week.
After working on the workbook as a group, we then came back to the main call to go over some final program logistics. In Activate, even when you’re not in a session on Saturday, every day is an opportunity to utilize everything from the program and keep making progress. Each day during the week has a specific “theme” for what to focus your energy on. It looks like this:
Saturday - Sessions (cohorts)
Sunday - Activate it (project work)
Monday - Activate it
Tuesday - Main weekly announcements and coaching
Wednesday - Coaching
Thursday - Coaching
Friday - Activate it
We also went over what good coaching sessions look like with your directors. There are both 1-1 and group coaching sessions. But, some best practices for coaching sessions include:
Give specific context to your director and an agenda on exactly what you need help with
Ask specific questions
Use coaching time for projects/problems you are passionate about working on/solving, and show your director you care
We learned that group coaching sessions can actually be very useful because you get indirect coaching as well for problems you may not have at the moment, but will be equipped for if they come up later. You also get to see where everyone else is at and inspire yourself to come up with solutions or make progress.
And that was the end of our first session. It was really information-heavy, but next week we are going to jump right into all the awesome program stuff. I can’t wait for everything to really pick up, and I’m excited to see where this year will take me!
