A Snapshot of CAPAi

The American University of Kurdistan (AUK) promotes the entrepreneurial spirit associated with the “American dream” from its campus in the heart of the Middle East. Its Center for Academic and Professional Advancement (CAPA) regularly engages in outreach and uplift activities for the local community, and CAPA’s latest initiative, the CAPAi Design Thinking Tech Bootcamp, assembles bright young people with demonstrated entrepreneurial potential for two weeks of learning about business that will culminate in business proposals of their own. The young entrepreneurs (only a few of whom are current AUK students) are, at the moment of this writing, in the middle of their two-week bootcamp, benefiting from the support of visiting speakers; coaches; CAPA Director Loucine Hayes; select members of her CAPA staff; and veteran tech bootcamp leader Raffi Simonian, from UCLA. What follows is an account of the proceedings of the third day of the CAPAi Design Thinking Tech Bootcamp, Tuesday, July 18.

It would not be quite accurate to say that the day opened with a presentation on SDLG (sustainable development through improved local governance) by Diyar Sadeq Saeed of VNG International. While Mr. Saeed was still setting up and settling in, the bootcamp participants, seated according to membership in one of three thematic teams (civic tech, educational tech, or health tech), got right down to brass tacks, talking in their teams about how best to solve some problem with a new product or business idea. Once Mr. Saeed was ready to speak, he immediately gave credit to his backers from afar, disclosing his funding by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and signposted the local focus of his presentation, titled “Sustainable Development – Improving Medical Waste Management in Duhok and Sumel.” This is hardly a topic one would expect to be funny, but Mr. Saeed frequently had the audience in hysterics as he described bureaucratic frustrations experienced by all living in Kurdistan. The serious lessons to be derived from his talk were the need for specific medical waste legislation, the expansion of medical waste data and sharing, more conscientious waste segregation to limit the inadvertent creation of infectious waste, and, most positively, convincing people to regard the 85% of waste that is non-hazardous as a potential boon rather than a pure burden. How much the listeners enjoyed his talk (and perhaps saw in it some business opportunities) was evidenced by their continuing to ask him questions several minutes after the originally planned cessation of the Q & A session, voluntarily cutting into the scheduled break.

After lunch, the second presenter, Dr. Bayar Shahab, Managing Director of Wedo, talked about project management, in a manner skewed toward fintech on account of his personal experiences. His presentation followed a highly logical sequence, opening with the definition of “project management”: “the use of specific knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to deliver something of value to people.” He went over four project management models: “waterfall,” “agile/scrum,” “hybrid,” and “P3.express.” The presentation became more interactive when he looked to the audience for assistance in analyzing the merits and the demerits of the various models. He spoke frankly on some lessons learned from setbacks in his own business career, highlighting three factors that will, undoubtedly, be essential for the participants as they aim to complete their projects on a tight schedule: teamwork, coaching, and time management. Dr. Shahab followed with an overview of the project management stages the three CAPAi teams will quickly have to move through: “initiation”; “planning”; “execution”; “monitoring & control”; and “closure.” The end of his presentation saw a return to a more interactive style, with participants and even Raffi Simonian jumping in freely. The consensus they reached: Hard skills are easier to learn and more perishable; soft skills are harder to learn, more lasting, and ultimately more important for success in business.

Next, the three teams went to separate areas of the Library Learning Center, where it would be impossible for a member of one team to determine what another team was working on or its progress thereto. The teams’ business proposals are to be carefully concealed secrets until the “mock demo day” at the conclusion of the bootcamp – for the integrity of the competition only one of them can win. Another consideration for ensuring competitive integrity is granting equal access to resources to each of the teams, and the bootcamp’s organizers had this covered. All the teams had large whiteboards they were filling with outlines, diagrams, concept maps, and the like. They all had boardroom-style long tables, at which they could “talk turkey” as if they were already chief executives. They all had coaches of their own, with Fatima Ahmed of Lelav advising health tech, Herish Badal of AUK’s College of Engineering steering civic tech, and Gulan Ahmed of the AUK Library directing educational tech. Raffi Simonian, Loucine Hayes, and Dr. Bayar Shahab floated from team to team, giving them all pointers. The three teams of participants, then, were divided by topic and physical barriers, but they remained connected by their devotion to getting the job done and their access to materials and expertise.

The day closed with a confidential confab among the three coaches, Raffi Simonian, and Loucine Hayes. The five interlocutors were sequestered in a classroom on a separate floor, far removed from the eyes and ears of bootcamp contestants. It does not contravene any confidentiality restrictions to reveal that they talked about what during that day’s bootcamp worked, what did not work as well as intended, and how to make adjustments for the good of participants. This is yet another way in which the bootcamp experience mirrors the world of work: The best executives and the best employees commit themselves to continuous improvement.

After just three days, the participants in the CAPAi Design Thinking Tech Bootcamp had embryonic business proposals they were hard at work on, already continuously improving them. By the end of the bootcamp’s second week, all three teams may have proposals offering immediate improvement (however incremental) to Kurdish society.