World Summit Judges
Technovation Judges provide scores and feedback that is a critical pillar of learning for Technovation participants.
Technovation Girls judges support and motivate 20,000 girls from 60+ countries. Over 3,000 judges from around the world give each submission a score and personalized feedback! Feedback that girls will use to continue their learning in technology and entrepreneurship to be the leaders we need today!
The numeric scores and feedback that you provide as a World Summit Judge will directly impact the selection of the listed prizes for each division:
- Grand Prize Winner
- Technology Award
- Social Impact Award
As a Judge, you contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Quality Education and Gender Equality.
Before World Pitch
Girls submit more than a pitch to the Technovation Girls competition and World Pitch is a day full of meeting teams, other Judges, and members of the community. For Judges to get a stronger sense of the team’s project, World Summit Judges are asked to review the team’s submissions in advance of the Live Pitch.
Using the provided score sheet, input placeholder scores, preliminary feedback, and think of questions for the team. Your feedback and questions will likely change after hearing the team pitch, which is great! This preliminary work will better prepare you for what to expect with tailored and engaging questions for the team. The feedback will be shared with the teams after the Live Event, to further encourage their learning and growth.
What you will review depends on the division you are judging for. All submission requirements are listed below
Beginner Division
- Project Name & 100 word description
- Pitch Video and Technical Video
- Technovation Learning Journey
- Mobile App or AI Project
Junior Division
- Project Name & 100 word description
- Pitch Video and Technical Video
- Technovation Learning Journey
- Mobile App or AI Project
- User Adoption Plan
Senior Division
- Project Name & 100 word description
- Pitch Video and Technical Video
- Technovation Learning Journey
- Mobile App or AI Project
- Business Plan
Judge Action Item
World Summit Judges are asked to review the team's submissions in advance of the Live Pitch. Each Judge will get an individualized score sheet. Your score sheet will include a link to the projects to review, the rubric, space for leaving feedback and questions.
Click through the titles below will give you more insight into how to approach giving feedback to the teams.
Click through the 4 titles below to provide feedback that will be most impactful for Technovation Girls participants
Samples of Constructive Feedback
Below is constructive feedback given to a team by Judges. These are great examples of the type of feedback we hope you will give as a judge.
Feedback for the Project Description: I like very much your short description of the project. It depicts perfectly what you’re willing to achieve with your app and clearly states objectives, your mission and the techniques you used to make your application possible.
Feedback for the Learning Journey: This is a very strong section of the submission! I love how clearly you’ve laid out your wireframe, it really showed your design process. Thank you for including so many screenshots and design images. Your resourcefulness in troubleshooting how to iterate/improve your app by turning to the Thunkable community and YouTube are very relatable in a real-would environment. A very impressive submission for this division.
Feedback for the Pitch Video: The presentation was extremely well put together and clear. The issues being affected were clearly discussed such as the statistics on epilepsy. To improve there could have been more talk on what was changed depending on the findings
Feedback for the Technical video: This demonstrates the team has coded an app that works and has all the user features described in their pitch video which is excellent. The team could describe what features they intend to add to the app in the future to improve even more.
Feedback for the User Adoption Plan: The improvements based on feedback of the UI being too bright shows that your open and willing to listen to constructive to feedback and to adapt. The marketing and distribution section seems reasonable and realistic
Questions for the Teams
Asking questions to the teams is a learning opportunity for both the teams and the Judges. Teams can better explain their thought processes, learning journey, decision making and goals to Judges.
Things to keep in mind when thinking about your questions for the teams:
- Make sure your question is short and clear.
- Ask one question at a time, it’s difficult for speakers to remember more than 1 question. Some teams will have a translator with them, so making questions easy to translate in a responsible period of time is important.
- Might seem obvious, but make sure you ask a question that would have a “?” at the end if you wrote it down.
- Keep questions within the scope of the program and the team’s work and future goals.
- If you want to add a modifier regarding your knowledge before your question (e.g. “I am not familiar with concept X, …), that’s fine and can help the speaker to put your question into context and provide an answer with appropriate levels of detail. But it’s not strictly necessary, even if you ARE familiar with the subject, it’s ok to not know things or to seek clarification.
- Take into account the age of the team. Consider restricting the really challenging and critical questions to senior division teams.
Culturally Sustaining Practice
Before reviewing submissions and providing feedback to the teams, it’s important to take a moment to acknowledge any bias you may have. This includes thinking about your identity and how that gives you a unique perspective to share new ideas and insights to help the girls grow.
Girls come from different cultures and have different speaking styles and norms
- English is not the first language for many of our participants.
- You are not expected to be an expert on different communities and their cultures.
Participants access to materials vary
- Students will have different levels of awareness and access to resources.
- Submissions should not be penalized for their level of technology resource access.
This program is technology for beginners!
- Some participants probably know nothing about coding or AI prior to this program – it’s okay that they aren’t experts and that their ideas are not ready to go to market.
Providing Actionable Feedback using the BOOST Model
Balanced
Address both positive and developmental areas, it cannot be one or the other!
Question to keep in mind: What information can I share that is relevant, thoughtful, and will have an impact on future performance results?
Objective
Focus on behaviour and actions, rather than personality or personal preference
Question to keep in mind: What information can I share that is based on descriptions of actions and behaviours?
Observed
Focus on what you are seeing in the submission within the context of the team’s division and corresponding rubric
Question to keep in mind: What information can I share that is impartial and is a first hand account of witnessed performance (things you see or hear)?
Specific
Make observations and feedback clear, concise, and specific so teams know what you are looking for (Remember: they will not be able to ask follow up questions)
Question to keep in mind: What information can I share that is detailed enough to help the girls understand what was observed and how it impacted the score given?
Timely
Sharing feedback at their Live Pitch is a great way to provide timely feedback. Ensuring your feedback is filled out and ready to go out to teams within the week after the event will help us share feedback with teams in a timely manner.
Question to keep in mind: How can I make sure that I review submissions and give meaningful and actionable feedback?
Event Agenda
Judge Arrival
Event space walkthrough, introductions to other division Judges, and event overview
Technical Demo to Judges
Each panel of Judges will be a room, teams will cycle in and out to give their technical demos. There will be 5 technical demos per room that will about 10 minutes each. More details in the next section
Guest Arrival
This is when other members of your company in attendance will begin to arrive
Final Pitch
Keynote address, team pitches by division (order: Beginner, Junior, Senior)
Judge Deliberation
Judges will convene with their panel to make a decision about the Grand Prize, Technology Award, and Social Impact Award for their division. A Technovation staff member will be present to provide support.
Judge Action Item
It is recommended that you bring a device that you will be able to access your pre-assessment on for the day of the World Pitch.
Live Technical Demos
The team’s technical demo will be Private – only the team and the judges will be present.
This happens before the team’s public pitch and focuses solely on the technical aspects of their project. Here’s what teams will need to do:
- Show their project in working condition. Either:
- Their app functioning on a mobile device, OR
- Their AI Project set up and working
- Have a laptop or tablet displaying the code behind the app (the “backend”).
- Teams will walk the Judges through their project, demonstrating different screens and explaining key features. While they showcase the project, pointing out the corresponding code on their laptop/tablet.
- (Optional, but recommended) Discuss any technical challenges they faced while building their project or future features they’d like to add.
- Be prepared to answer general technical questions about their project.
- Important: Their project should remain technically the same as the original submission.
- Show their project in working condition. Either:
Judge Action Item
After the Technical Demo, take a couple of minutes to edit the score and feedback of the Technical section of your score sheet.
Live Pitch
Live Pitch will be hosted on, Thursday, October 17, 2024. The main event take place from 4:00 – 7:00 pm and will feature keynote address, team final pitches, judge deliberation, award announcement and celebration.
Judges are to arrive at 2:00pm to give sufficient time for introductions and technical demos with the teams before the main event.
For each pitch, the team will give their presentation, then Judge Panel have 1-2 minutes to share light feedback and ask questions. Questions that bring clarity to the team’s work should be prioritized in this time.
Judge Action Item
Think of 1-2 questions you can ask each team in your division about their project. Focus on learning more about their work, understanding future plans, and clarifying any unclear or missed aspects based on the rubric.
