On the 18th day of August, 2020, I woke up to a congratulatory mail from the DSC team to lead the community on the campus of Kwara State University in promoting technological advancement and expose students to wide range opportunities available in the field. I will like to put a big thanks to Almighty Allah, the team, my vibrant program manager in person of Auwal Muhammad Samu, my co-leads and community members for making my period worthwhile.
How it started
Around May 2020, during the heavy outbreak of coronavirus, I got a message on our community plarform for opening of applications for new lead. I never turned up to this as I wasn't ready to pick up the position considering the workload but after series of thoughts and persuasions, I had to finally apply. This gave me two challenges, getting better at my technical and leadership skills. The application process has series of stages which includes making a 60secs video on what you should be a lead and what you want to achieve. This was followed by an interview and I will say this is the first and one of the best technical interviews I ever attended as the Interviewer made the process friendly and accomodating. Then I started anticipating the final response from the team If I got selected or not and as fate has it, I became the 3rd DSC Lead for my campus
Upon receiving my congratulatory mail, confirming my appointment, I decided to share this amazing win of mine to the present Lead then, my friends, community members and on social media.
I had to interact with the present Lead then about the state of things in the club and how we can make progress. The first task, which was tedious was selecting my co-leads. This period happened to be when the country was on lockdown due to the corona virus pandemic, forcing everyone to obey the stay at home directive, school was down so I couldn’t have physical interaction with the members to so easily aid my selection process.
I splitted my team into two; the technical and non-technical team. The technical leads were to handle the trainings and facilitating of events while the non-technical team were to handle the logistics and other affairs of the community
Technical
- Web team
- UI/UX team
- ML/AI team
- Mobile devt team
Non technical
- Logistics
- Media and publicity
I opened an application for my team and named them DSC STARS. This approach yielded a positive result although I made some mistakes which costed me not having Mobile devt and ML/AI leads as at the selection process time but was able to resolve it later.
The journey
The next task was meeting with my team on what we intend to achieve during our time and we itemized our plans for the period which includes
- Setting a plan/structure for the community
- Enhanced meetups and workshops
- Diversification and inclusiveness
After getting the STARS, we noticed we need more hands to volunteer in getting things done and I rolled out another form for volunteers and named them THE STARGAZERS, a name already coined by the previous Lead. Their function was to assist the co-leads in achieving their respective duties in their team.
Glory be to God we were able to achieve these to the best of our capacity. My first event was an info session which held on 26th of September 2020 with Opeyemi Adeniran (thauiguy) as the Guest Speaker. This is to be an introductory event for the new administration and on boarding new members to the club. Due to the pandemic, we went virtual and this didn’t helped much because of the cost of internet access for people. The publicity team tried their maximum best to broadcast the goals of the club far and wide the university campus.
Pains
It was a tradition to hold a summit for all leads in various regions and SSA was of no exception. This was one of the event I was looking forward to because it will enable me travel out of my country, for the first time and meet other intellects but the pandemic laid a setback again and we held this also virtually.
This constraints amongst others made us to be tagged the CORONA LEADS and to some extent made us special Leads because we have a lot of downsides. [winks]
The activities
Most of my event went fully virtual until January, 2021 when school resumed fully and gave us the edge to resume physical classes - a pain reliever. The resumption marks the beginning of a new academic session meaning we have new students on campus requiring us to hold another info session. This was a success as we had over 50 people in attendance. We were able to introduce them to what the community stands for, our aims and objective and the goals we tend to achieve as a community. As a means of familiarizing them with the club, we held a kahoot game and awarded the top 3 winners, earliest attendee and others prizes and swags.
We scheduled our meetups to Fridays between the time of 12pm and 4pm with an hour break between 1:30pm and 2:30pm for the Muslim faithfuls to observe their Jumat prayer. Training was held for 8 weeks during the semester as we introduced folks to tech at large. Our classes covered
- Web
- UI/UX
- Mobile
- ML/AI
During the course of the semester, as a means of expanding our reach and diversifying tech to Non-STEM related departments, we held a seminar on computational linguistics for Linguistics students to expose them to opportunities available for them in the field of tech.
At the end of the semester, we held our last activities which was like a wine and dine meetup and also we used this to receive feedbacks on what to proceed in the coming semester. We were also opportune to have the BARTER Ambassador, now Cowryrise Ambassador in my campus in our midst to speak with students on the benefits of using Flutterwave for payment transactions.
On resumption of the second semester, in the process of organizing the activities of the semester, I met with the President of the National Association of Computing Students (NACOS) for my campus, who happened to be our lead partner to plan a bootcamp session, the second of its kind. The bootcamp was designed to span 12 weeks and it is in its 6th week at the point of writing this and leaving office. I hope the bootcamp ends successfully and such event holds subsequently.
Challenges
There is no success path not faced with obstacles and I am of no exception to this. Among others, I was challenged with three main issues
- Workspace for classes
- Internet access
- Getting students to understand the values we are trying to imbibe
Despite getting support from NACOS, granting us access to the Computer Lab and some other classes, we still have the issue of getting classes for some other tracks and getting it equipped with the required materials - projectors, boards and others but we were able to shuffle with the limited resources we have.
The remote location of our university also served as hinderance as we find it difficult to enjoy reliable internet access. This costed us a lot as most students got discouraged since they couldn’t get access to resources and wide range opportunities available. We hope the school get to solve this soon but, although we have been trying to put some things in place.
Happy ending
On the 5th day of August, I got the Lead completion mail, accompanied with my certificate and once again, I will like to thank the GDSC team for giving me this great opportunity
Lessons Learnt
- Leadership positions requires perseverance and endurance. Most plans won’t fail in place and you have to find way to adapt and not get discouraged
- It is a community constituting of people from different backgrounds, hence different behaviors. You must learn to adapt by their doings so as to achieve success
- Never look down on anyone as those who you think have nothing to offer may be the one giving you the best hands
- Set goals and roadmaps to achieve them
- Nepotism and favoritism shouldn’t be practiced. Only the capable hands should be give opportunities to act
- In the quest of growing others, don’t be a failure to yourself
- As much success you have, so is failures. Learn to understands and share to get helps where necessary
- Your mental health is important; take good care of it
- Expose your community to opportunities as you give them trainings
Failures
- I was unable to achieve most of plan, tried my best but nature has its way
- We were unable to launch any project due to lack of manpower
- There was no strict follow up on our members we train
- My diversification call wasn’t achieved enough
- Social media outreach wasn’t fully utlized
Special thanks to all those who assisted in making my stay a worthy success
Jekayinoluwa Olabemiwo: The pioneer lead for the community. Always dropping words of advices and motivations to the community members.
Adedeji Stephen: The ancestor himself. He is the immediate lead before I took over. He was mentor who introduced me fully to tech and made my learning process easier. You support and assistance are really appreciated.
Biodun Azeez: My good friend. Always there to give advices when issues arises and his advices works so well in tackling those issues.
Olojo Caleb: Pa Seven, the one who I am handing the community to. Your mentorship and trainings to students are really inspiring and which you success in your administration. I believe I am handing over to the best hand.
Lawal Fimihan: Lawal is one of my most appreciated lead. Handling the UI/UX team with perfection is what I can’t underestimate. Your services to the community week in and out are top notch. I hope we get people like him more in the community.
Nnamdi Clement: 001 NACOS has been a supporting a leader. Shuffling between academics, department dealings and the community without hitches is what needs to be studied. I crave for your kind of energy Sir.
Adewole Kemisola: Assisted Lawal in training the UI/UX students. Thanks so much Kemi.
Mustapha Ameedat: Handled the logistics and finances of the clubs. I appreciate you Madam Treasurer.
Salako Oluwadolapo: Sir Dee was the Lead for ML/AI track. I appreciate all you do to make this track progressive despite the challenges we faced in terms of resources.
Ajijola Ademola: DemolaLagos handled the facilitating affairs of the community. Helping to source for speakers and opportunities for students. I cherish your inspiring words and some of them are working for me presently.
Obisesan Oluseye: Seye handles the mobile development team. Been the pioneer lead for that track, he has been trying his best to sustain the mobile track in the community and I hope all your efforts yield successful fruits.
My gratitude also goes to amazing folks who helped in cooking awesomeness in the community
Owoeye Samuel, Oyeyipo Opeyemi, Ajao Oluwatobiloba, Ogunshina Pelumi, Zakariyyah Abdulrafiu, Habs Creative, Umar Faruq, Abdulbasit, Bello Mubashir
You all are the real stars.
The journey finally ended and I pray the next set of Leads will achieve more success than we did.
Thanks for reading this far, I hope you enjoyed reading my experience story and I will be glad to hear reviews from you and don't forget to give a like.