Truly out of the shell (Beyond your localhost) - ICA IMSU

Ingressive Campus Ambassadors meet-up IMSU

Yes, events come and go but impressions remain, as the saying goes, teach me how to fish don’t give me fish. If one should read the true meaning of the theme “Living beyond your localhost”, which was the theme of our first Ingressive Campus Ambassador IMSU meet-up, one will see that it goes beyond the contextual meaning.

We all love to do what is most comfortable to us, but what is most comfortable may be short of global standards. This was the big issue that myself and other ambassadors brainstormed on, what type of approach will make maximum impact on the attendees of the event? At the peak of all these came the nationwide ASUU strike and we had to sit down and weigh things out, are we to hold on till the strike is called off, should we just forget everything, or should we just continue?

At some point in one’s life, you will get to see yourself in situations where you are left with many choices that feel so comfortable to the point your natural senses refuse to think outside the box (localhost). But we had to take time to reason with the fact that a productive student’s mind won’t see this strike as an opportunity to enjoy, flex life, and travel but as an opportunity to be productive, creative, and invest in himself/herself. Such students will be looking for opportunities and things to leverage in order to achieve the goal of being productive. The fact that these people have this mindset shows that they are not comfortable with the status quo, they need change, they want change, and they wish change. And us knowing this was our push and enabling factor to still host the event.

The event was to give a proper understanding of website development flow and the skills needed to stay in the flow. UI/UX designers, Front-end developers, and Back-end developers all belong to the web development flow. So participants got to learn about UI/UX design and front-end and Back-end development from persons already working with these skills. We also talked about leveraging communities to scale as both developers and designers. There was also a talk on content development and blogging as our students had an interest in that.

Now fast forward, all things set. 44 persons took time to register online while about 20 came without registering making it a total of 64 and it happened that we projected for 100 persons. But the funny part is that not all that registered attended the event, and not all that attended stayed through for the event. I was able to meet one of the deflectors right before he left and I asked him why he was leaving when the event was still ongoing, he told me he thought the event was non-technical. And I asked him if he wouldn’t like to have a technical skill, he said no!. This is to tell you how hard it is to leave our comfort zone; we humans naturally are drawn to repetition. The event came and is gone but the impact remains as our participants testified to the impact the event had on them.

Break out session for networking and refreshments

I must say I learnt a lot from our various spokespersons. The small chops and swags and others were awesome, I must say that I have gained a lot from this Ingressive community meetup. I have been made to understand what GitHub is all about and i now have a developer network that I can benefit from.

“Obicheozo Lily Nkeiruka”

It’s actually my first time. I appreciate the initiative and the innovation, it was fun and educative as well. keep it up! Kudos!!

“Akaehielam Ikenna Ronald”

The feedback list goes on and on, this is to say that the approach you take when hosting an event or meetup matters, and your conceptual view and interpretation of what to offer and how to offer it goes a long way to determine how impactful your gathering is to your attendees.

Ingressive Campus Ambassadors meet-up IMSU

It’s a wrap, see you at the next meet-up.