Index

To achieve the MVP of the Chair

Let’s review what happened in the different areas of the Chair during the month of July to achieve the PMV.

Integral development of technological logistics

The aim is to articulate the back office of the chair with the know-how of Sagitaz as a necessary partner. The chair is equipped with the SaaS services provided by Zoho: Contact Center, CRM, Instant Messaging, etc…

Thanks to this technological support, it will be possible to automate all the processes necessary for the proper day-to-day running of the Chair.

Really, for me, coming from the management of university products, it was a surprise to discover that for the management of a service such as a chair, it is possible to have a technology that ensures the scalability of the services provided.

In a way, the work done on this topic is about following the vision that has been defined for the Chair from the very beginning; to be different, to be efficient, to scale and to attract talent. To do so, having the best possible tools is necessary and a huge advantage.

The project managers, as well as the collaborators and volunteers, have all the necessary technological tools to implement the ideas and initiatives that are being defined.

It is the old idea of bringing technology from the private sector to the university made reality. What in the case of the chair and for the month of July-21 the following applications have been made to work properly:

  • Zoho Cliq for internal communication.
  • Zoho Sheet for provisional database of the Chair’s contacts and connection between vision and actions.
  • Mindmeister for mind maps and visualization of situations.
  • Zoho Mail for interaction with the Chair’s stakeholders.
  • VoIP PBX with telephone number: +34 961 154 221.
  • Zoho Creator to create customized applications.
  • Zoho Desk as an omnichannel contact center.
  • Zoho Meeting for meetings and webinars.
  • Zoho WorkDrive to manage online files for the different work teams.

The functional results of the application allow us to confirm that the MVP has been reached in July as planned. We would like to thank the Sagitaz team that has collaborated to make the Zoho system operational within the established deadlines.

Web Development

A modern, agile, multilingual and intuitive website has been developed to meet the objectives of the CBC-UV Chair. It can be found at the following url:

https://cbcuv.com/es/inicio

In this way, students, professionals, organizations and people not belonging to the previous categories (stakeholders) who wish to get involved in the world of chatbots, find all the information they need in an orderly manner and are offered options for action.

And if none of the existing proposals fits what a professional wants to do with chatbots, the bases are established to study the “tailor-made” cases and the communication channels to request them.

Undoubtedly, an original and disruptive-provocative approach so that any initiative has, at least, a first path to start walking. In addition, it clearly conveys the vision established from the outset to differentiate itself from other projects-chairs of the university.

Let’s see which are the sections of the Web to highlight.

Internships in companies and organizations

The website offers an option for internships in companies and organizations for students in their final years for recent graduates.

All types of companies and organizations that sign agreements with the chair will have this platform available for students to get to know them. In turn, students linked in some way to the chair will have the option of applying for internship offers from the companies and organizations that open their positions.

The only requirement is that the subject matter of the internship to be related to the subject matter of the Chair. During the month of July, the first 2 internships have been obtained for the Law Firm ECIJA in Valencia (Spain).

In my opinion, this is a remarkable achievement because it certifies that we have succeeded in achieving the MPV in this area, as planned.

Blog

Likewise, a Blog has been activated to collect the articles and opinions of the Chair’s collaborators. Specifically in the month of July the following articles have been published:

And the plan is to expand the catalog of articles to impart knowledge of the chair and all the projects that will be carried out.

Events

You can also find a Panel with the future events that the chair has scheduled. If you search a little, you can also find past events.

During the month of July the following events have taken place:

  • July 27-2021: Online workshop: how to publish a chatbot in 30 min. (WhatsApp, Fb and web)

Volunteers

In addition, there is the possibility of becoming a Chair Volunteer, one of the great collaborative options of the Chair.

The website indicates why you should volunteer and how to do it through a simple form. Once completed and submitted, the Volunteering Department will contact you to explore the best options for collaboration.

A section of Frequently Asked Questions has been prepared to provide you with the information you need as soon as possible.

Web functionalities

Special mention should be made of the efforts made to ensure that the Chair reaches the remotest corners of the planet.

The MVP has been set up with the following 4 languages: Spanish, English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. And the social networks of Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram have been established.

The realization of this website has been a milestone for the extended team of the chair. To do the viable MVP in one month was ambitious and the results cannot leave us indifferent.

With the Web, the Chair project has taken a giant step forward. Until this point, it was difficult for the collaborators of the Chair to explain why this was a different Chair from the existing ones.

Now I understand that it was a very mature idea in the minds of José and Jesús that was difficult to transmit to the rest of the collaborators.

It was not intended that the website should only explain what it did, it should explain the value it brought to the stakeholders. Thus, from the very beginning, a chair was conceived to provide value to the different socio-economic agents of the environment.

Now, with the Web already operational, all of this is easy to see and understand. Jesus-José have spent hours and hours of work to make themselves understood.

We would like to thank the Agile Marketing Studio team for their collaboration in making the website meet the MVP in the established time.

Developing the first chatbot

A web support chatbot called CBC-Bot has been developed to answer the most frequently asked questions about the Chair.

It responds in both Spanish and English and soon, it will respond to the other languages of the Chair.

This has been another challenge achieved, as the Woztell-Sanuker team has been able to create the CBC-Bot in 30′. As indicated in the workshops. Of course, only the Spanish version.

It is a level 1 chatbot but it is fully functional and answers the most frequent questions that a user of the chair may have.

Workshop

One of the main challenges for the month of July has been to design a basic workshop on How to learn to publish a chatbot in 30′. (WhatsApp, Fb and web).

This workshop has been prepared initially in Spanish and later will be taught in the 4 languages of the Chair. Finally, on July 27th, the event took place and 75 people registered and 45 attended.

It should be noted that this is the first event of the Chair. It has been really difficult; to follow a path that has not been traveled before is always difficult. But in this case, the most complicated thing was that it had to be told so that the attendees could enter the world of chatbots in a safe way.

I have seen firsthand the stress and the unhappiness of José Pérez and José Miguel Espinar who were responsible of creating a workshop…. Wow, and they succeeded.

The attendees came away doped with the potential of chatbots and having discovered a new world that is in an emerging phase.

Thank you, thank you both for your enthusiasm and passion in the presentation and the exquisite choice of slides. Personally, I visualized a world that is new in knowledge and suitable to face it from research.

Protocol of agreements

As we indicated in the previous post, the different elements of the puzzle would only fit together if there was a Protocol that would facilitate agreements in a simple way. ECIJA Law Firm provided us with the formula: the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU-MOU) between the Chair and all types of organizations and individuals.

This will simplify the systems for activating cooperation and joint activities with a wide range of institutions and individuals.

A copy of the Memorandum of Understanding is provided in the annex to this document and is sent to potential interested parties for their study before being digitally signed.

This protocol is essential for the proper development of the Chair’s activity, as it will allow the maximum possible number of organizations and individuals to be added as “friends of the Chair“. These agreements are the basis for the development of joint activities.

We thank the ECIJA team for their support in the development of the Memorandum of Understanding.

Partners and Events Department

For the dissemination of the Memorandum and the signing with the first organizations, the Partners and Events Department has been created with the mission of contacting organizations and individuals to involve them in the dynamics of the Chair.

This Department is nourished by Volunteers and its main task is to contact Valencian institutions and companies. This is the first step, to move later to Spain and in a third phase to LATAM.

Throughout the month of July it has been proposed to generate about 150 impacts and about 10 firms are expected to get their MVP.

In the following table we recall the goals of the Chair for the remainder of 2021 and the achievements made in the month of July.

Concept Goal – 2021 Achievement July % /21

Chatbots Training

1000

44

2,22

On-site Events

3

0

0

Online Events

25

1

2,5

Business Internships

10

2

20,0

TFM

3

0

0

TFG

5

1

20,0

MdE

100

11

11

In short, getting the project off the ground with the MVP has allowed us to start seeing the first results of the Chair’s actions at the end of July.

Personal assessment

Throughout the month of July I have seen how each line of work was taking shape until the MVP was achieved in every one of them.

An excellent synchronization work carried out, again by the project leader José Pérez, but this month his dynamic was up-down-up.

That is, he focused on one of the lines of action and went up and down to the first line incessantly until the team understood the vision and focused on another line while the first one advanced to the MVP.

At that point, the results were rechecked. The results are there for all to see, all the Departments in which the project “launching the Chair” has been structured have fulfilled their objectives and have achieved the MVP. The assessment could not be more positive.

During this month, two crucial things have happened:

  1. The MVP objectives of all the departments of the chair have been achieved: allowing us to operate at low intensity but meeting all the challenges posed within 3-4 days. In the current context, these are considered reasonable deadlines.
  2. The different teams have created their own dynamics: of self-propulsion that in a short time will be independent and will not need an intense leadership. They will have clear objectives and how to achieve them and each team will focus on its task, thus becoming much more efficient.

In addition, the different teams are learning to work in a coordinated manner on the same project.

All in all, a productive month of July has left the chair fully operational. There have been dysfunctions that will be addressed in the following month.

Lessons learnt

1. The main lesson learned from July is that a team that obtains results in the short term becomes self-motivated, and this self-motivation generates self-propulsion and intense leadership becomes less and less intense.

In this dynamic, a process of invaluable self-learning and recognition of the values contributed by the external teams is generated, which improves respect among the participating teams as a whole.

2. The second was to check the effectiveness of the communication system based on the creation of a specific channel for each main line of the project in which the interested parties can express their doubts about the progress of the project. The resolution is practically in real time. The Cliq tool has proved to be very useful in this respect.

3. The third has been to discover that if some basic concepts are clear, everything flows better. In this case, two concepts form the backbone of the Chair project: attracting talent and generating processes that can scale results. And they will continue to be the reference pivots for the landing of the Chair.

4. We will still incorporate a fourth lesson learned, the need for project members to use the same common jargon and periodically remind each other of team and sub-team objectives.

It is very easy to fall into the temptation of dispersion. Our colleague Elena, whom I thank for her virtual advice in this regard, is perfectly clear about what to do always.