How to build GDSC Community — Novi Sad Edition
Hello! I am Aleksa Komosar, and I will try to present to you our journey at GDSC University of Novi Sad. Our club has changed so much over the past months. As the Founder and Lead of the Club, immediately after I was elected to this position, I did as much as I could to make our community thrive… So let’s start:
For the first few days, the Club had only one member and that was me. :) I soon realized that I needed to find great people who would be there with me to co-organize this chapter. As someone who studies Information Systems Engineering at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, I learned that it is always welcome to look at any given situation, problem or information system from several angles. A developer’s approach would be different from that of a marketer, but both are valuable and necessary to make each piece of a project successful. Soon I was pleased to see the team grow — now we have several members of the core team of GDSC UNS, along with all the hard-working volunteers whose big days are yet to come. Some of the core team members are: Sara Kijanović, Dragana Slavić, Aljoša Križan and Maja Cetić.
Tips for choosing a core team:
You can compare putting together a core team to making a cake. Don’t worry, I’ll reveal the recipe, there will be no encapsulations and examples in this blog to just give a cake, but not a recipe. You need some basic ingredients, and in this case, it’s the technical aspect of the team. To connect all the ingredients of the cake, you need to have someone on the team who communicates well — kinda like a mixer or a blender we use to knead the dough. Visualization is very important, so it would also be good if there was a graphic designer, for example, who would make the icing. When each piece is in place, the cake is ready! And when the cake is ready, it would be good for everyone to hear about it, so make an effort to find someone who would make a marketing plan. If you were to sell your cake, it would be great if there was someone who would connect with external entities and advertise to make everyone want to buy your product!
Being a student and organizing big events can be very difficult at times, but at the end of the day, it is always rewarding. Students of the University of Novi Sad like to keep up with all the news in the IT industry. We often ask our audience which topics and technologies they would like to discuss and which companies they would want to learn more about. The right information at the right time means a lot and based on that feedback we proceed and organize our events. Thanks to that, while choosing a topic for a lecture or workshop, we can immediately guess who would be a great speaker. Then we determine the level of the planned event or training session (for beginners, advanced etc.) and decide whether some prior knowledge in a certain field is needed.
The first company we worked with was Devoteam Serbia. The chapter we wanted to open was to be focused on Google Cloud and fortunately, we had an opportunity to collaborate with Vanja Melnik who is responsible for Google Cloud Business Development Adriatic. Our GDSC also wanted to organize a big event around that. Luckly, a really great speaker, Oliver Frolovs, Senior Cloud Engineer from London, agreed to join us.
During our first big event, we realized that sometimes there may be things we can’t control. Our speaker, Oliver, got fever the day before the event and could not fly to Novi Sad to meet us in person. Fortunately, various technologies make our lives easier every day, and one of them is Google Meet. At the event called Keep your head in the Clouds, Oliver talked about what Google Cloud is, how we can use it and what are the benefits of implementing this technology. He explained the basics of cloud computing and advised the attendees on how to acquire knowledge in this field, because we have noticed that some students are struggling with learning about Cloud. Devoteam company offered us a venue to organize the event, and after the technical part, the students had the opportunity to get to know each other and network.
Tips for choosing the most engaging topics and organizing an interesting event:
There’s a saying: “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes”. That’s why we’re always trying to imagine how our audience would react to certain topics and issues. We’re trying to make it as useful as possible for an average student of information systems engineering or computer science to gain the audience’s interest and focus.
Before the event, it is necessary to determine the level of lectures or workshops, to make sure that everyone can attend. Making the sessions as specific as possible and giving examples makes students think. Most of them are somehow familiar with the technology, either using it already or learning how to do it. That’s why optimizing the level of workshops and sessions is the key to success.
And last but not least — stay positive that everything will go well, but at the same time try to be prepared for a worst-case scenario to overcome any possible obstacles and deal with the problems. Set a clear goal. If something goes wrong, stay calm, try to think outside of the box and find a solution to the problem. Take all the time necessary to develop the content, plan promotion, and organize the event. Learn from the people you work with. Observe.
Now that we have laid some foundations we can fly into the Clouds…
At the initiative of Devoteam Serbia, in cooperation with the Faculty of Technical Sciences and GDSC UNS, the first Google Academy is being organized. The students will have an opportunity to learn about Google Cloud while working with mentors from Serbia, Sweden, and Great Britain. One of the mentors, Miloš Karanović said “When nothing goes right, go left.” — Something to keep in mind in the face of adversity. Working with most recent technologies, we got projects to make you grow, and never get bored. All students who successfully finish the program will get two Google certificates, Digital Cloud Leader and Associate Cloud Engineer. During a three-month course with weekly consultations, students will gain, in addition to theoretical knowledge, practical insight thanks to working on an actual project. This academy is designed for final-year students. We hope they will find it really useful as they’ll be launching their professional careers soon. Stay tuned — after the graduation we’ll tell you all about the Academy and its participants!
This would be a summary of the GDSC University of Novi Sad chapter. Great things await us and we are looking forward to carrying out more exciting projects. This may all sound very idealistic, but we also realize that mistakes happen — we’ll face them all with a positive attitude and confidence. And if you want to be up to date with our upcoming events, you can find us on social networks — Instagram, LinkedIn, and the GDSC platform.
