Author: Giuseppina Schiavone
TechLabs is non-profit organization started in 2017 in Münster, Germany, and currently having multiple locations across the globe. TechLabs represents both a learning platform and a tech community, its objective is to fastening the acquisition of digital technology skills to stay creative and prepared in a job market where individuals could be soon displaced by automation. Its mission is to fill the digital skill gap created by a too fast technological development compared to the speed of supporting educational infrastructure. TechLabs does it by offering free education and using a blended approach of online and offline learning where mentors, experienced volunteer professionals, work as the machine engines to advice and train beginners in their learning path. TechLabs builds on a digital and entrepreneurial mindset, and within a 6-month Digital Shaper Program, across Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Web Development and User Experience Design tracks, the participants follow self&guided learning material and in the last 2 months they work in groups on real use cases sponsored and lead by commercial or academic partners. The learning program officially ends with a project pitch and an evaluation, in practice participants become part of a network through which they can volunteer as new mentors or navigate new career opportunities.
The collaboration with TechLabs Rotterdam started in May 2022 when Andreea Moga invited me as a jury member of the Data Science projects developed in the first edition of the Digital Shaper Program of 2022. I have, successively, joined the network of TechLabs’ mentors and I became project owner with SAAC as TechLabs’ business partner in the winter edition of Digital Shaper Program of 2022.
As mentor, I share my knowledge on
- the role of data analytics on sustainability, particularly in the highly polluting industries such as the fashion&textile and the logistics industries,
- the necessity to demonstrate transparency and accountability for compliance to legislations, competitiveness and economic leadership,
- the use of techniques for gathering, analyzing and valorizing publicly available data, from websites scraping to natural language processing, networks visualization and sentiment analysis.
Within the partnership, I have assigned a Data Science project, called Top Of Mind in Logistics, part of SAAC R&D activities.
The Top Of Mind in Logistics project aims at the development of a dashboard for comparison at glace of companies’ performance and their ESG-related impact as emerging from publicly available data. The dashboard addresses, and it is not limited to, small-to-medium businesses working in logistics and aims at increasing impact’s awareness, stimulating transparency and data sharing.
The project kickstarted on the 28th of November 2022 and 8 participants (of which 5 women) with highly diverse origins (Africa, US, Netherlands, Italy, Romania, Poland, Greece, Vietnam) and background (business management and administration, international relationships, biomedical engineering, architecture, telecom, hydro-informatics, forestry and ecology, logistics) joined the team.
Details about the project will be published in a separate post soon after the project pitch.
The project pitch will be held on the 26th of January 2023 at the CIC Rotterdam.
GET IN CONTACT if you are interested in joining the event, listening in and connecting!
The partnership with TechLabs Rotterdam contributes to SAAC SDGs’ specialties: SDG 4: Quality Education and SDG 8: Decent Work And Economic Growth.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to TechLabs Rotterdam marketing team for pictures and LinkedIn posts!