I had been judging student apps for Technovation. The next season, I joined the mentors at Wayzata Central Middle School.
The girls formed teams around problems they wanted to solve. Their work included looking at existing apps, drawing screens, writing code, and preparing a pitch. The school’s organizer ran the meetings and kept the different parts moving. We helped with the coding.
I moved between three or four teams. The other mentors rotated too; we were supporting the whole group. The teams did not ask for much. What I remember helping with was keeping an app’s screens and the data behind them in step: the sandbox they built in bundled both, and connecting the two was still the hard part. By May, the teams had submitted their competition requirements and were polishing presentations for Appapalooza.
In the middle of that, the program’s organizers noticed I was still registered as a judge. I had never been linked to an individual team on the platform, but I was helping several of them make their apps. I had overlooked the conflict and asked to come off the judging list.
After Appapalooza, the organizer sent me photographs of a card. Across the front, in big multicolored letters: “Thank You C Anthony.” Inside were little notes from the girls.