03 May SA Works Job Shadow Presentation Recap
Fiesta Week was full of reasons to celebrate and we were beyond excited to see the SA Works Job Shadow Project Presentations!
SA Works Job Shadow Day
SA Works partnered with CivTechSA, the City of San Antonio’s IT department (ITSD) and its Government and Public Affairs Office (GPA) for its annual Job Shadow Day in February.
ITSD and GPA invited students from Brackenridge High School (SAISD) an
d Southwest High School (SWISD) to come tour their office, meet the staff and help them identify ways the city website could be improved: www.sanantonio.gov.
The students jumped in with both feet: over the course of the morning, the students broke down the elements of the website that needed the most attention and generated a problem statement. By the afternoon, ITSD and GPA had roughly 20 ideas on improvement as well as commitment from the students to take the semester to work on how best to go about improving the site.
Everyone finished up the day touring Geekdom and listened to a presentation over pizza about Entrepreneurship and how to turn their ideas into sustainable businesses.
The Semester
Over the course of the Spring semester, the CivTechSA team made sure that the students had access to our CivTechSA Pitch Kit, information, and the City so that students had all the elements for success.
We also visited each school during the semester to help provide feedback on their presentations before they presented on April 25th.
The Big Reveal
What an amazing day! Brackenridge and Southwest students came to the Geekdom Event Center to pitch their solutions to ITSD, GPA, the Office of Innovation, and SA Works.
The schools broke into a total of 5 teams:
Brackenridge
The Six Pistols
iNavigate
Southwest
Southwest Technological, Inc.
Luxury IT (L-IT)
D.O.G.G.O.S.A.
Each team presented some insightful observations on how to improve the city’s website. They also provided concrete examples in mock-ups and color templates on what the new site could look like.
The panel of judges was made up of key members of the ITSD and GPA teams, 
including: Louise Craig (ITSD), Hakeem Miles (ITSD), John Quiroz (GPA), Mario Aguilar (ITSD), and Kate Kinnison from the Office of Innovation. Each of the judges spoke about which presentations were their favorite, provided critical feedback to the students about their approach and presentations, and were all impressed with the work the students provided.
What’s Next?
The students have been invited to create posters for the Demo Day Event at the end of August where the Resident Startups, Kinetech Cloud and Reckon Point, will present what they worked on during their Residency with the City, and will showcase part of our high school programming for the year.
Our next event is the College Ideathon in partnership with ITSD where college students will be presented with 10 ITSD challenges and collaborate on creative and achievable solutions. Registration is Free and Open to all San Antonio college students with a passion for business, technology, and entrepreneurship. First prize is a Paid Internship with ITSD, a dedicated mentor per student, and the chance to work on the winning idea.
We are working closely with Youth Code Jam and Techstars for our next Startup Weekend + Teacher Externship at Geekdom (June 22nd-24th). We are excited to see what the Externship will produce at the end of the Fall semester. This event is open to anyone in the city (age 16 and up) that have passionate ideas on how to solve Civic challenges in San Antonio.