Week three of Future Now

25 February 2021

From industry led training sessions to learning how to build a great mindset by therapy motivation sessions, the Future Now group have had the chance to really connect and understand their peers and chosen industry.

Our programme officers, Tyra Alexander , Lucy Carasco and Beth Kahn talk us through how the week went below.

• FUTURE STARTUP FOUNDER NOW

• It’s been a busy and creative week for the Founders group his week. The cohort started to hone their storytelling skills with a Pitch workshop from Zaisha Smith, who shared some expert tips on understanding your ‘why’ and communicating this to your audience in an emotionally engaging way. I loved seeing the group share their ‘whys’, highlighting the amazing range of ideas and talents in the cohorts.

  

  We started thinking about how to get the word out about our ventures, with a great session on branding from Marius Bogdanas, and rundown of some key marketing principles from Raquel Soares.

  The group have been challenged to go away and develop their business’s brand and user personas to present back to the lecturers in their next sessions. We also uncovered some hidden creative talents in the group with a Zoom portrait session where the cohort drew each other with some impressive results!

  

  Coming up next week…

  We’ll be getting into the nitty gritty of some legal and financial essentials of running a business, as well as negotiations skills.

  Andy Ayim also will be joining us for a session on UX and user interviews.

  Written by Programme Officer Beth Kahn (leading Future Startup Founder Now)

• FUTURE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER NOW

This week was great for feedback and reflection! The Future Software Developer Now cohort completed their first briefs of the programme and took part in a really informative feedback session hosted by HERO.

We also took a deep dive into Git and Github, with practical and interactive examples given by 10X Banking, had a Core Technologies with Brandwatch and received our second and final brief of the programme.

Throughout this week, the main objective was to provide the cohort with some real life examples of what to expect from a career in Software Development.

Based on the first brief responses we received, we’re confident that those objectives were met.

The highlight for this week was seeing all of the different groups submit their first briefs. It was really impressive to see what the 7 teams could achieve so quickly.

We really benefited from hearing the feedback from industry professionals. The cohort also really enjoyed a super engaging presentation delivered by 10X on Git and Github, as it included polls, interactive exercises and a really informative Q&A.

Many of our cohort members had used Git/Github for solo projects but it was great to see it applied to working collaboratively, reflective of how a team functions in the workplace.

We loved hearing from the Software Development team at Hero and getting real time feedback on their brief.

The cohort also really enjoyed getting to know exactly how the software development team at Brandwatch works. What was great about that session was that they really provided context for how the role of Software Developer fits in with the wider team.

On such a tech heavy programme it’s great to experience some interactivity. By providing some pre-session material, 10X was able to fill their live workshop with some really engaging content. During this week’s 1-1 check in meetings, multiple cohort members highlighted this as a standout session on the programme.

Coming up next week…

Next week we will be hearing about a day in the life of a software developer at 10X Banking, and getting cracking with the final brief we received from Brandwatch.

The cohort is super excited about starting this one. The brief is to build a Game of Thrones web application which allows users to view a list of characters, houses or books using An Api of Ice and Fire.

We will also be hearing about coding to an industry standard, brushing up on our interviewing skills, and hearing from Google Digital Garage on how to create videos with Youtube. We’re really excited!

Written by Programme Officer Tyra Alexander from YSYS (leading Future Software Developer Now)

FUTURE CREATIVE CONTENT NOW

This week the group are in full swing responding to the brief in their teams, Epic Games also stopped by for a mid-point check in to answer some questions, offer feedback and make sure everyone is on track.

The cohort began their Adobe Audition and Premier Pro workshops with Sound Engineer/lecturer Phill Brown and DOP Rosie Taylor. Additionally, there was some great talks on Pitching, Copywriting and Dyslexia.

In the third instalment of their storytelling through sound workshop Axel set the group a task to portray an emotion through sounds, some of the responses included Love, Calm, Betrayal, Fear, Contentment, Possession and Sadness.

For Georgia’s piece titled ‘What Love Sounds Like – Food’ she asked the group to shut their eyes and listen.

Derick’s beautiful piece named ‘Betrayal and Bitterness’ focused on themes of shame in Great Britain and the Windrush Generation.

Jayshree Viswanathan led an engaging copywriting and pitching workshop, she set the group a mini brief to ‘Get potential paint-buyers to choose Valspar paint instead of competitors like Dulux or Lick’, this was met with some very creative responses which went beyond just writing the copy.

One response flipped the common phrase ‘watching paint dry’ on its head and other played on seeing your ‘true colours’ – with a sneaky bit of Phil Collins. A key takeaway from the session was with any creative project, brief etc “you have to start” however messy it seems at the beginning.

Strategist and co-founder of Commercial Break James Hillhouse gave his inspiring talk ‘The Future Is Sideways’ on the future of advertising being dyslexic. He demonstrated his new platform Leo designed to make texts more accessible through reformatting/audio/video, in response to this Tarnjeet commented

“I love this, I sometimes find it difficult to concentrate when reading and this would really help as well as having the function to listen.”

Coming up next week...

Next week the group will be continuing their audition and premier pro training with Phill Brown and Rosie Taylor.

Part four of Naana Orleans-Amissah and Axel Kacoutie’s storytelling workshops will cover the different elements of storytelling (purpose, craft, format), augmented reality and magic realism. There will also be a session “Developing, Casting & Shooting Short-form docs with True Stories” with Jon Eastman of Barcroft Media and the group will be joined once again by Epic Games for a Virtual Production workshop.

Written by Programme Officer Lucy Carasco (leading Future Creative Content Now)