This blog is written by Gaurav Lagad, Product Manager, The Apprentice Project

This was my second sprint with the Glific team where I was representing The Apprentice Project as an organization. As usual, the Glific sprint proved to be a space to learn for me. In this blog, I intend to get deeper into the learnings in this sprint and how the experience differed from the previous sprint.

This sprint was quite different from the first sprint due to differences in the agendas and the fact that it was my second sprint with Glific.

The first sprint (Kochi Sprint – Nov’23) was mainly focused on the usage of LLMs to solve problems. It attracted the attention of NGOs who were in the early stages of integrating LLMs into their technical architecture. The second sprint (Goa Sprint – Jan ’24) covered overall usage of Glific to solve social problems besides the usage of LLM. While the Kochi Sprint had LLM SME talks, the Goa Sprint exposed the participants to a lot of open talks where we brainstormed around common problems and helped each other to take them closer to their vision.

Having attended a sprint before, I tried preparing better for this sprint by going through the other NGOs’ flows, case studies to have better questions while interacting with the attendees. 

This sprint started off with a session from Glific about Auto-translation features. The next two days saw multiple different NGOs(including TAP) presenting their work, usage of tech & any updates since the last sprint. It was nice to see the NGOs that I saw last time and how they have grown in the last two months. At the same time, it was interesting to see the new NGOs and innovative ways in which they are solving problems using tech.

The sprint hosted a couple of open sessions, brainstorming sessions which really aided the learning mood that was set in by the sessions.

In one of the sessions, Glific crowdsourced the ideas from us which made all of us feel heard and we hope that some of the ideas turn to reality soon. One other session helped us compare different LLMs with one another to test out the common use-cases of the NGOs.

As we leave the sprint,I would like to suggest to the Glific team that they continue such collaborative spaces working online so that we come together, pitch in updates and brainstorm on each other’s problems.