The first sprint of the year in Mahabalipuram started with long walks along the beach for me and good South Indian food. I was ready to start the sprint at 2pm on Monday, but travel brought in everyone later in the evening, than expected. The “half day travel and work right after” didn’t really jive with anyone in team. Lesson learnt for future sprints. Though thanks to Amisha and Krishna, the kick off activity boosted everyone’s spirits with positive thoughts from team members.

The first two days had internal Glific team discussions lined up. We started the very first day after the team reached Mahabalipuram, with a “Future of Glific” brainstorming session. I was part of the Dev group, and we focused on operational excellence. We do need to continue this discussion into Platform Ux excellence post sprint. The product team focused on how we could measure Glific’s impact and Biz dev group looked at scaling, this session continued the next day, and we were able to prioritize initiatives we would pick up in 2025 for biz dev and those we pushed to the graveyard. This session needed more time than planned, and was not timed well since it was the day everyone arrived. Another lesson learnt.

The next day we started early morning for a team outing of Mahabalipuram’s amazing monolith sculptures. A 2-hour long walking tour took us back into 600AD; thoroughly mesmerizing! I loved the Arjun’s Penance sculpture, it had such detail, that I could spend an hour there and not finish seeing everything. The whole day after breakfast was full of discussions with different verticals in Glific. It was quite fulfilling for me with sessions on current churn on Glific and what we could do about it, Glific Consulting direction, Accelerator Biz Dev and Marketing kick off and Dev Tech Debt deep dive. By nightfall I was ready to relax my mouth and hit the sack. Next day NGOs arrive starting 4am, something we didn’t expect and the team worked promptly to make them feel comfortable, since rooms would not be allocated until afternoon tomorrow.

It was a good NGO sprint all in all, with over 20 Glific organizations attending various tracks. I can certainly count more highlights than misses. We had AI, Data and Refresh tracks for the NGOs to choose from. Prep-work prior to the sprint ensured that the NGOs and their PoCs in each track were aware of what they wanted to achieve at the sprint in 2 days. This was our first of its kind “Maker’s Gathering” where 60-65% of the time was allocated to designing and building using the Glific platform for the AI and Data tracks. The Refresh track had a few more sessions, since the NGOs in this track were beginner users. They had either onboarded Glific recently or had not been leveraging it to its fullest. Krishna led this track along with Sangeeta and Akansha. The NGOs in this track were extremely happy at the end of the sprint, to have gained hands-on learning and support from the team. The AI and Data tracks were for all purposes the same group, though their focus for their prototypes was different. Tejas led the AI track along with Anandu and Priyesh and Gautam led the Data track with Amisha.

I got to talk to several NGOs during the two days. Waste warriors joined us from Uttrakhand. Their work on Climate Action has been inspiring for me. Their bot is used to spread awareness of their work, and they were looking at how to draw some insights from the bot onto a dashboard. Their energy and enthusiasm was contagious. They also invited the Glific team to come volunteer with them in cleaning up our beautiful mountains. Another NGO, Vipla Foundation joined us from Mumbai. They were struggling to use the bot due to bandwidth and right skillset support. We asked them to join the Refresh track, and in talking with them at lunch I realized how thrilled they were to join at the Sprint, in spite of personal challenges at home. They picked a few learnings at the sprint, and I hope they continue to join our webinars to take these learnings forward. Another NGO eVidyaloka, has been around for 14 years in the sector of engaging volunteers to teach in public schools, they built their bot for the first time, though they have been with us since 4 months. The learning in the sprint pushed them to design and create in a way that they thought would not have been possible on their own. Some of the AI track NGOs, also leveraged the prompt engineering session by Tejas, to build their bot using the new LLM UI in Glific platform. LAHI was one such NGO. They also had a need to feedback some of the information from the bot to the document repo, which Glific doesn’t support today (Looking at AI platform team!). All these NGOs had one thing in common, they had the drive to create and demonstrate their prototype. The exhibition-style demo on the last day was like a busy market, with everyone curious about what others have created. We only had 1 hour, so not all NGOs could be visited by each of the participants or Glific team members.

After the sprint, Akhilesh, Sangeeta, Aishwarya and I had late departures on Saturday, so we indulged in the local food, Dakshina Chitra Heritage Museum and Silk Saree Shopping (Akhilesh and I were spectators here). Dakshina Chitra is worth a visit if you are interested in history and art. There were handicrafts by artist across India, and we ended by buying beautiful carvings on palmtree leaves called Patta Chitra. We also saw glass work artist who gave us a demo of making animals out of a rod of glass. Extremely impressive.

Highlights

• Conversations with NGOs and internal team. Learnt some inspiring and heartening stories and had some candid conversations with people that boosted my humility and trust in the values Tech4Dev and I share.
• Conversations with some team members led me to believe we can aim even higher keeping our users in mind – “Get new customers to start using Glific in 2 hours instead of 2 weeks”. It’s won’t be easy, and needs problem solving in biz dev, support, tech and product, but I think the team is ready to take this challenge on. 
• Tejas’ experiment for makers gathering had a lot of positive feedback. It also allowed the entire team to interact with all NGOs at the same level, and didn’t put undue burden of sessions and sprint mgmt on just a handful. 
• The venue allowed us to enjoy the beach along with good conversations. I thoroughly enjoyed the Mahabalipuram’s history and monolith sculptures of Mahabharata and Ramayana. Though turned vegetarian 5 years ago, this time I had decided to try some seafood. Definitely enjoyed it, but it affirmed my decision to stay vegetarian. 😊
• AI sharing sessions by DG (unfortunately I couldn’t attend all) was very interesting. Took me back to pure tech experimentation in my previous life. 
• Internal discussions that were prepped well led to good debates and outcomes, like the Customer Retention deep dive driven by Krishna, Biz dev brainstorming & accelerator kickoff for marketing and biz dev by Sneha, and dev ops deep dive by Anandu. 
• Our partners Social Bytes and 10xImpact joining us made the partnership stronger in my mind. They learnt from others and were able to come closer to the Glific NGOs work. 
• Lastly I’m amazed at how much the entire team has grown in their own role and as a group. Stepping in for others instead of watching uncomfortably. Not just a handful, but everyone is now wearing the armor of confidence (in spite of certain self-doubt brewing in within them). Some first timers that made me proud – Aishwarya was able to take several video interviews though its new to her (blog and case studies follow shortly), Sangeeta held a session on Google sheets integration with a smile and confidence. Amisha’s talk on Big query and SQL was appreciated by all NGOs. Akansha pushed herself to personally talk with everyone and learn about their thoughts on Glific platform (summary coming up soon)  and Priyesh (with support from Gautam) handled hotel logistics with finesse I could learn from. 

We obviously had some misses, in terms of certain internal and external sessions that could have been planned and executed better, sprint schedule plan and hotel logistics. But overall seeing the team, I’m content and energized to aim for ambitious goals in 2025 and meet them! I do though always miss seeing the entire Tech4Dev team when we do Glific-only sprints. Looking forward to seeing the entire team at the April Sprint.