TechLabs 2020 in review
By: Marius Vennemann
Tags: Edtech, Year In Review, Learning To Code, Nonprofit

2020 was an interesting year. Covid-19 has changed the world and with that the role of digital education. Our mission had become even more important. Our responsibility grew and we accepted this challenge with open arms.

While we are still busy closing out the year, we wanted to share our year 2020 in a nutshell.

Adapting to change

Like every organization, TechLabs saw its world getting disrupted by Covid-19 in late February. While our internal processes were not affected at all due to our remote culture, our blended learning programs that relied on physical presence and community were put to a very tough test. We had set up our global expansion program with a working operating model that was made nearly obsolete — all while the expansion was in full motion. My thanks and deepest acknowledgment goes out to our journey teams around the world who made this transition to a fully remote learning journey happen.

We have seen locations collaborating around the world to find the best practices for setting up this remote learning program. These amazing teams have managed to maintain the high quality of our programs even in these tough times. And as many challenges do, this one essentially brought a lot of innovation into our product.

When the lock-down hit, a small group of the TechLabs team came up with the idea to build a remote learning program. They build a team, a program, the technical infrastructure, courses, and the participant acquisition strategy in less than a week. A week. With <10 volunteers.

#codeathome

And the magnitude of their work has been something we have not seen before. The pilot with the internal name “code-at-home-Bootcamp” was one of the biggest successes of this year, helping more than 1.000 learners across the globe to learn technology skills during the first lock-down. We had so much interest in this program that we, unfortunately, could not keep up with demand. The TechLabs Code-at-home-Bootcamp is now an essential part of TechLabs global.

Growing into a global organization

2020 was set out to be the year in which we truly embrace the global character of TechLabs. In 2019 we set out the groundwork to scale TechLabs internationally and we decided to split the location of Muenster into two separate units, one being TechLabs Muenster and one becoming TechLabs Global.

After a year of intense work, a lot of struggle, and adapting to new processes, we are finally there. We have set up a non-profit franchise structure that enables us to share the TechLabs spirit across the globe while maintaining a flexible and adaptable legal structure. We streamlined our communication into one global slack space, uniting all locations and global volunteers to work on a united mission. With scale, processes become increasingly important and so we focused a lot of our energy on setting them up in the right way.

We can now set up locations faster than ever before. All while maintaining the global spirit and communication structures. We collaborate on international projects, share best practices, AND can manage our day-to-day operations within our respective teams.

Increasing our scale

One of our core strategic goals at Techabs is “Learning at scale without boundaries”. We want to bring our offering to as many ambitious people as possible. In particular, to those who need it the most and/or create the most impact.

2020 has shown a lot of progress towards this goal. Scaling the organization was one of the most challenging (and scary) tasks until this day because we all know how fast things can break if you move too fast. That’s why we are even happier to see how well we have adjusted to this transition and tremendous growth. In 2020 we grew:

Volunteers from ± 60 to now over 250 (with 40% being female volunteers)

Locations from 3 to now 12

Learners from ±200 to 2.000+

TechLabs global community

This would not have been possible without the amazing work of our local and global teams. From the global side, this progress has been the result of great teamwork between all the different teams but what certainly helped a lot was the introduction of our global HR team and the tremendous work of our administration and finance teams. This work could not have been done without them.

Work where it truly matters

For us, digital education always has been a big part of our identity. It provides us with a toolset to achieve amazing things. Solve important challenges. And to create a better world for everyone. We dreamed of a world with no digital illiterates, a world where everyone can participate in this process.

However, we had the feeling that this was not enough. Being literate is not enough. We want to encourage people to shape the world. That’s why we changed our vision statement in 2020 to “dreaming of a world full of digital shapers”.

From day 1 it was our goal to create a world in which as many people as possible can use technology to solve the world’s most pressing problems. In 2020, we pushed heavily towards that goal. 2020 was the year, where we, even more, embraced the spirit of #tech4good and it’s finding its way into the TechLabs DNA.

We started with a journey strategy that defines, who digital shapers actually are. Essentially, we answered the question of which skills young individuals should acquire in our program.

A big strategic focus in the further development of our program — besides tech and methodical skills — were so-called shaper skills, which represent the core of TechLabs. Educating young individuals to use their newly-acquired technology skills to really have an impact by approaching the pressing challenges of our time.

We are now encouraging and measuring the share of our participants’ projects that are paying into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Goals). Recently, we held our first “TechLabs Talks”-Event featuring Anna Alex (Co-Founder Planetly) and Carla Reemtsma (spokeswoman of Fridays for Future) and we plan to bring many more events like this to our community. Finally, our business development team built a location evaluation model that now guides us through the future expansion process, finding the next best location to open to maximize the impact of TechLabs.

What’s in store for 2021

Our newly elected global board is currently discussing and building out the strategy for 2021 and beyond. With the addition of amazing talent in Jana Jeggle, Eric Grunenberg, and Rebecca Janßen, we are preparing for the greatest year in TechLabs' young history. Our responsibility grew and we are so ready to take on this task. Expect a lot of news around our product, our growing locations, and worldwide partnerships. We are already excited to share the news with you soon, so stay tuned.

To close, we wanted to thank everyone for supporting us on this journey. Thanks to our team members, our techies, our partners, sponsors, friends, and all the other supporters out there.

All the best,

Your TechLabs team