My experience at Campus Mobile 2020

At the beginning of this year, I had the opportunity to participate in Campus Mobile, an innovation event/app contest promoted by Claro Institute. It was an excellent opportunity to learn more about new trends, technologies, and how to create outstanding apps. The event took place in São Paulo, and it was my first time at the Brazilian economic capital.

Campus Mobile is a contest of ideas and solutions, where the selected participants receive guidance from innovation specialists to enhance their projects. The competition happens once every year, and the committee selects projects from 6 different categories to participate, from Smart Farms to Education and Diversity.

I competed in the Health category with Graphi, an app created to facilitate the communication between pediatricians, their small patients, and their patients’ parents. For that, the app generates easy-to-understand graphs and illustrations so that everyone can sense the child’s health situation. Therefore, in this blog post, I’ll share a piece of this remarkable one-week experience.

I’m in São Paulo, OMG!

I always get excited when visiting a new city, and it was not different when I arrived in São Paulo. I arrived on a Sunday, and Paulista Avenue was an open-sky festival, with attractions from dance competitions to kids playing songs from The Beatles. Believe it or not, it happens every week.

One of the most amazing places in the city: The Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP).

We all know that no happiness lasts forever, and it was not different this time. From the next day, when the event’s activities started, to the end of the week, I worked like never before. Don’t get me wrong. It was awesome. I had never learned so much in such a few days, but this week was like a full-week hackathon. When I wasn’t making Graphi better and working on the pitch, I was attending talks about how to make better apps and pitches. And it all took place at one of the best Brazilians universities, Universidade de São Paulo (USP).

Connect and support 

The whole event was about connections, great ideas, and support. Even though it was a contest, I felt that no one was engaged in competing with each other. The teams did a great job helping one another, and I realized that supporting people in achieving their goals feels just as enjoyable as achieving my ones.

Empathize and make it accessible 

An enormous part of the projects, in many categories, was about accessibility, and I got excited with the perspective of making life easier for everyone through technology. What I realized, though, was that even with so many solutions being built, there are still many problems we have no idea about. Actually, the only way to make part of the solution is getting in touch with different people and cultures, for they’ve got difficulties we will never be aware of if we don’t get to know each other and empathize.

I’ve failed. Now what?

No one likes to lose, especially when we know we gave the best of ourselves. However, there is always something we can learn about our mistakes. Our app didn’t pass to the next competition stage, and, of course, it was frustrating. Although more important than winning is learning with our mistakes. After some feedbacks and moments of reflection, we, as a team, figured out where we had failed and where we had performed well.

Claro Brasil headquarters, where we did the final pitch.

And finally

Claro Institute sponsored the whole event, and all the speakers were terrific. The week was tiring, but it was worth it. Of course, I extended the trip to the weekend, so I could enjoy part of all the culture and entertainment São Paulo offers.

Finally, if you want to know more about the program, you can find some information here. It was an extraordinary experience, and I can’t wait to participate again next year!

Featured Image by Sergio Souza on Unsplash

About the author

Rodrigo Giglio is a Mobile Engineer Intern at Poatek.