Learning the art of collaboration — ICA FULafia
Having a tech community in tertiary institutions of learning, is not only a way of growing the tech ecosystem on campus, but also an opportunity to be part of like-minded individuals that one can always have access to (being in same institution).
I have always wanted to be part of / form a tech community in my campus where members will not only be exposed to trends in technology but also have practical hands-on sessions on what they are taught in class, hence, my applying for the Ingressive Campus Ambassadors’ (ICA) program.
Not to bore you with too much details, ICA, Federal University, Lafia maiden event was held on 15th December, 2018 with about 40 participants in attendance. The theme of the event was “Learning the Art of Collaboration”. The event was initially planned to hold in the school premises, but due to the ongoing strike action by the ASUU, all efforts towards getting a venue proved futile and we had to move to a venue outside campus. This affected the initial budget for the event but we still went ahead to ensure it came to fruition, considering the unparalleled benefits of the event to interested members of the university community.
The event began at 10am with a keynote address delivered by Tasiu Kwaplong (ICA FULafia) who introduced Ingressive, her partners, and who the Ingressive Campus Ambassadors are, noting also, why students should embrace the program. The speech lasted for about 25 minutes with 5 minutes allocated to the question and answer session.
After the speech, I introduced the next speaker in person of Aliyu Kasimu (A blogger and 400L student of Mechanical Engineering at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria). He talked on the topic “Which Programming Language should I Learn first as a Newbie?”. It sure got the attention of the audience as most of them were either newbies in programming or wanted to start. He was awesome as he did justice to the topic and tried to avoid giving preference to any programming language but rather suggested languages that will suite a person’s choice of platform and serve as soft landing for beginners. He got asked questions which he answered. ICA FULafia will love to have him on future meetups.
The next speaker was in person of Usman Idris (Lead GDG Keffi and Lafia Twitter Developer Community). He goes by many titles but the two aforementioned would suffice for this write up 😊. He spoke on the topic “Flutter at a Glance”. Flutter is a tool recently developed by Google to help mobile app developers create flexible and native user interfaces for both android and IOS devices from same codebase and in record time. He spoke on the theoretical build up of the SDK and also on how beneficial it is for both those who are into mobile app development and those wanting to go into it. He didn’t just stop there, he used the medium also to advice students to go into tech and those already into it, to be optimistic as the journey is never an easy one. This guy is just good.
Josiah Yahaya (CTO Valuebeam Makurdi, Creator of PHPConsole, Founder PHP Arewa) was the next speaker. I always respect and adore this guy for his unending efforts to see that he “preached the tech gospel” (as he always says). All the way from Makurdi, he came down to Lafia purposely for the event. He spoke on a key topic for the event “Github for Modern Developers”. He spoke on what VCS (Version Control System) was, it’s advantages and tools needed to get started. He didn’t just stop there, he went further and had a code lab session where he created a repo on Github, pushed a file to it, cloned and also merged a change he made to the file. He received a loud applause and questions were also asked which he tried his best in answering them.
I called on to Bide Chijioke (Welfare Director NACOSS) to speak next. He is a graduate of Nasarawa State Polytechnic where he read Computer Science. He spoke on the topic “The Prospects of IoT” where he talked on what IoT (Internet of Things) is and also demystified misconceptions surrounding it. With the help of his well-documented slides, he spoke and gave examples on what IoT is and some of its applications.
The last speaker was the Co-lead, Women Tech Makers, Lafia (run under GDG Lafia) and also the Lead, Women in Tech for StartUp Nasarawa in person of Ruth Samuel. She gave a talk on “Why Attend Tech Meetups” where she pointed out reasons why one should always attend tech meetups, the benefits, and how to join a tech community.
After her speech, we had group photographs and ate jollof rice with bottled water to go with it.
The event was successful and all thanks goes to the awesome speakers, ICA FULafia, Ingressive and her partners (Github and Figma) and also also the coordinator of the program Ace_kyd for his support and guidance. Thanks to you all.
Here’s the link to the photographs and you can also search on twitter and facebook for ICA FULafia activities using the hash tag #ICAFULafia
