10/09/2020

IMPA PhD student has channel awarded in competition.

Foto: Reprodução YouTube “Programação Dinâmica”

Luiza Barata

What do you usually watch on YouTube? Movies, cooking recipes, and fitness tips are among the top searches on the platform. But Hallison Paz, a doctoral student at Visgraf ( IMPA's Computer Graphics Laboratory) , and data scientist Kizzy Terra have been venturing into other avenues. Running the channel "Programação Dinâmica" (Dynamic Programming) , the couple presents videos to demystify areas like programming and artificial intelligence. A combination that has proven successful. Last week, Hallison and Kizzy won two competitions: the Creators Pitch at Youpix Summit , the largest influencer event in the country, and the Magalu Brand Challenge, from Magazine Luiza, promoted by the same festival.

“We need to showcase our content project as something beyond just a YouTube channel, just as the other participants also needed to demonstrate that they were more than just an Instagram or TikTok profile, for example. The competitors needed to see themselves as a business model,” Hallison points out.

Preparation for winning the two awards began in June, starting with the registration of "Programação Dinâmica" in the digital content acceleration program developed by Youpix, Creators Boost. From there, weeks of intense training and online presentations followed , with the participation of leaders from 400 projects across different platforms.

Foto: Reprodução YouTube

In a second phase, only 15 initiatives were selected. “That's when we participated in the brand challenges. The goal was to develop projects aligned with the community we already have on YouTube, that would meet the needs of companies selling products, making deliveries, and streaming services who want to promote and attract viewers.” They eventually reached the brand challenge, with four competitors.

“The project we developed for the Magalu Brand Challenge presented online commerce from the perspective of app developers, highlighting the categories the company wanted to promote, based on the app's usability features . But in our campaign, we reinforced that every programmer is, first and foremost, a human being. Just as we demystified the concept of programming on the channel, we demystified the idea people have about programmers as beings from a world apart. We also read books, watch beauty tips, and play sports, like anyone else. I think that was our differentiating factor in securing first place,” reflects the doctoral candidate.

This same trend was repeated in the Creators' Pitch. In parallel to the Brands Challenge, Hallison and Kizzy presented a summary of their YouTube work to Youpix judges and won. In addition to connecting with companies, the two competitions resulted in commercial contracts worth over R$20,000 and retail shopping credits for the couple.

With over 40,000 subscribers on YouTube, Hallison and Kizzy have already reached more than half a million views. And they intend to go even further. “In the beginning, I created 'Python Café', a channel that I managed and Kizzy edited the videos. What motivated me most was producing content about programming in Portuguese. This was almost non-existent in 2016.”

Thanks to the success of the past year, the motivation to continue with "Dynamic Programming" has gained even more momentum. "Now, we want more people to have access to quality educational content. We seek to develop people's autonomy so that they develop critical thinking. We don't want to post tutorials. People need to feel challenged about the reasons behind things. And we also want to promote greater access to education in the field of technology as a mechanism for inclusion and social mobility," explains Hallison.