Project Tech4dev team has been in continuous efforts to bring the diverse range of development sector organizations together and serve as the builders of the ecosystem for organizations leveraging data and technology for social impact. The latest edition of these offline, in-person meet-ups took place from 19th – 25th Jan in Goa. About 30 NGOs using various tech products created by Project Tech4dev came together to learn from each other, share challenges, work together with the team and of course have fun along the way. 

This blog captures the takeaways from the sprint organized for the NGOs using Glific (Project Tech4dev’s WhatsApp chatbot platform) 

Overview

1. 15 NGOs joined for 2 full days of in person Glific sprint. 
2. About two-thirds of the joinees were experiencing the Glific sprint for the first time. 
3. Common expectations from the folks who joined were to
   1. Learn from other orgs who are using the platform 
   2. Learn about new developments related to LLMs, new features
   3. Work with Glific team on specific challenges, strategy as well as roadmap on future of respective tech products.

To cater to these expectations, the Glific sprint had the following main features baked into the design and planning 

1. Facilitated spaces for the organizations to share challenges and learn from each other on non-technical aspects such as engagement, onboarding, scaling, team processes as well as technical aspects such as understanding data and data features etc. Here NGOs formed into smaller groups, and discussed at great lengths and depths about the challenges being faced, solutions that can be tried from their own experiences and experiments.

2. Showcases for upcoming Glific features, like “Auto translations”, a feature that emerged from the need of NGOs for communicating in multiple indic languages with their communities. The beta version was rolled out to the NGOs present and is currently being used by 15 orgs.

3. NGO talks from Udhyam, TAP, INREM, Bandhu and Civis, to showcase the exceptional and innovative work being done using the Glific platform.

4. Open time to co-work with each other, and with the Glific team. 

What the sprinters had to say

1. The semi-structured peer learning spaces, i.e. spaces where NGO folks could chat with each other directly in small groups, during the problem solving sessions, over meals and walks etc. were the most beneficial.
2. Folks shared feeling like having found a community of like minded people who face similar challenges and can be reached out when in need of creative ideas, expanding the imagination and to think outside the box. 
3. Working directly with the Glific team, getting to know the new developments as well as sharing challenges faced directly with the team as a group was the second most appreciated aspect. About 80+ sticky notes containing ideas, challenges and feedback was shared as a group on all aspects of the product. This ranged from the features, support documentation, as well as community building inputs. 
4. Having experienced the creativity and productivity from working together as a group, the folks from NGOs belonging to the city of Mumbai decided to continue to meet-up and work together as a group without the Glific team having to facilitate or even organize.
5. “LLM vs LLM” session facilitated by the Glific team had the NGOs get hands on experience of prompt-ing the top LLM models for development sector specific use-cases then debate and rate the responses. This helped them to get a side by side comparison for responses from Llama2, GPT3.5, GPT4, Gemini Pro and many more, and elevated knowledge in prompt engineering and finances to consider for leveraging LLMs.
6. Participants walked away wanting more time for co-working, having sessions for hands on learning of the platform, as well as having more time together in general as the 2 days was not enough time to learn and interact with all to their satisfaction 
7. The overall rating for the sprint was given 8 on 10 by 19 sprinters combined

Takeaways for the Glific team

Having 15 orgs join the sprint, the team leveraged this opportunity to get as much feedback as possible. On the product features, on ideas to take up next, on the sprints and everything else associated with the product. But here are some of the major inputs, after collating all the feedback on the product 

1. The top 5 problems/ features that orgs would like us to focus on in the coming half year:
   1. Fixing the issues with the whatsapp simulator in the flow editor
   2. Resuming the current flow after a help/language changing flow is triggered by the user
   3. A solution to deal with users clicking interactive buttons in the chat history
   4. Introducing GPT node, a way to call GPT model as a step in the flow editor to perform simple tasks on the inputs of the user or creating output for the user (as the case maybe) 
   5. Metrics being shown on the present dashboards, a way to simplify and iterate on for better understanding and usage by the NGO staff
2. Being able to leverage the community of NGOs, especially the new joining as well as for those NGOs on their learning journey will be of utmost importance. Doing this well can amplify the support available to the NGOs. 

Lastly 

While 2 days was not enough, having such offline sprints, does lead to a boost in energy as well as help to expand the imagination of the NGOs and the team alike. To get out of the tunnel vision of personal goals and start thinking and doing more as an ecosystem for social impact.

Here is to many more fruitful gatherings of like-minded tech enthusiasts, and here is to hoping that this keeps the fire in their hearts fuelled to carry on with respective missions. These folks hard at work everyday to leave this place in a better place than they found it. In their own creative and diverse ways impacting education, health-care, climate action, mental health and so much more.

Blogs from other participants

1. Gaurav Lagad from TAP: https://glific.org/community-connections-the-apprentice-projects-experience-of-glific-sprint/