Experiences over Possessions | First DSC ASIET Meeting 2019–20

Forming the core team

I announced that I got selected by Developer Student Club India as the Lead for my campus during 2019–2020 by posting a poster on Facebook and posting it as a status on WhatsApp. The club was formed 2 years back but it hasn’t been really active. So people who saw the poster started asking me about the club and expressed their interest to join. While some fellow leads conducted interviews to form the core team, I just took the few students who showed real interest in the club as my core team. I haven’t yet given them specific roles to do. But I am sure I want all of them with me for my whole term as the DSC Lead.

The challenge

DSC put forward 3 main goals for the DSC Leads

1. Provide students with the opportunity to grow their knowledge of developer technologies and more through peer to peer workshops and events.
2. Provide students with the opportunity to gain relevant industry experience by solving problems for local organizations with technology-based solutions.
3. Provide students with the opportunity to showcase their prototypes and solutions to their local community and industry leaders.

But here’s the problem, most students find it difficult to study new skills while simultaneously keeping up with what’s taught in classrooms. The only way to persuade most students to put in extra effort is by issuing certificates of accomplishment, which I’m not authorized to.

So the biggest problem the club faced was convincing students to learn new skills that are relevant to the industry while learning the subjects taught in their classrooms.

Well, I had come up with a few ideas on how that can be done. However, from experience, I have learned that it’s best to discuss your ideas with your team and get their feedback before setting them into action. So, I decided to conduct a meeting of the core members and have a discussion on how the club can achieve its goals.

The meeting begins — Introduction of the Lead

Most of the core members knew me really well, but there were some who didn’t. So, I had to address that first. At the beginning of the meeting, I talked to the members about my biggest ambitions and why I loved what DSC does.

I made the decision to become a software engineer in the 12th grade. Before that, I wanted to become a Physics teacher and researcher. I am passionate about teaching and I believed that teaching is one of the best things we can do as human beings because passing down information is the reason why human beings were able to evolve quickly. I also wanted to do research because I loved problem-solving. I chose Physics because that was my most favorite subject at the time. At that time, the only thing I was actually taught in Computer Science was that a Computer is a machine that takes an input, does a process and produces an output. I didn’t really find the subject fascinating.

However, in 11th grade, I was introduced to C++ programming. And soon I fell in love with programming and I also started learning web development. So now, I had to make a decision. I know I want to do something in Computer Science, but should I pursue teaching or pursue engineering. That’s when I actually researched the two professions in depth. I found out that if you love coding, software engineering is a good choice for you. However, if you have a passion or teaching, teaching isn’t really a good choice. Nowadays, teachers are given syllabuses and hard deadlines that they don’t have time to teach students properly. And more importantly, teachers didn’t have the opportunity to teach students more important things like how to be a good human being. So, I decided to pursue engineering. But I never abandoned my desire to teach. I continue to teach people in whatever way possible. I also do research on how we can improve the education system. And it’s my ambition to help establish a better education system that makes high-quality education accessible to everyone.

Hence, I really loved what DSC was trying to do. Educate students in the most relevant topics and more importantly in a peer-to-peer manner.

In the meeting, I also explained the relevance of experiences over certificates. In all my interviews, I was able to convince the interviewer(s) that I actually have all the skills that are mentioned in my resume is by sharing experiences I had where I had exhibited my skills. Sharing your experiences work better in interviews than listing your qualifications, certifications, and achievements. And I believe that is why DSC wants the clubs to train students without giving them certificates. It makes it clear to the students that certificates don’t matter.

Brainstorming

Once I finished introducing myself, I asked the core members if they had any ideas on how the club can achieve its goals despite the challenges. Here are some of the ideas they suggested.

• Show students how they can learn new skills on their own and let them learn on their own, at their own pace.
• Conduct workshops after classes.
• Conduct a hackathon to see what solutions the students can come up with on solving problems faced by the local community.
• Promote the group through events and collaboration with other organizations.
• Conduct study jams.

However, there were some challenges to these ideas as well.

• Students might lose interest in learning new skills when learning on their own.
• Most students are day scholars and won’t be willing to stay back after classes.
• We had no funds to conduct hackathons and other events.

The conclusion

From all the points presented during the brainstorming session, here’s what we concluded.

• The club is going to focus on improving the skills of the core team first. Since the core team is highly motivated and willing to learn new skills through any means, it would be easy to achieve this through a combination of study jams and self-learning.
• The core members are going to form teams and start working on ideas they are passionate about. Once the team members of each team are comfortable with each other, they can take part in Idea Fests and Hackathons that are conducted by other organizations. The achievements of the teams would send a motivate the less motivated students to join the club and start improving their skills. Also, the prizes won in the competitions could be used by the club to conduct events.
• The core members are going to ask students who want to learn new skills, to do so while working on projects in teams. Learning together in small teams is much better and working on the projects give them a reason to keep learning.
• The core members also decided to find ways to help the local business improve as well.

And with that, the meeting ended. I look forward to working with these wonderful people and I hope I’ll be able to lead them properly. I hope I’ll be able to strengthen their skills and give them good experiences. And most importantly I hope to inspire them to teach everything they know to those who are in need.

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