Finding Strength in being A Jack of All Trades
Meet Advaith U, Friends of Figma Regional Lead| Fellow, Learning Initiatives, TinkerHub
“I’ve always been in environments where people who are experts in a skill thrive, while I am known as a “jack of all trades”. Joining communities and taking on leadership positions has turned things around for me. “
- Advaith U
At TinkerHub Foundation we’re passionate about community, and Advaith is someone who has contributed his own share to student communities and found growth through the same.
Read his inspiring story as he shares how communities helped him grow and find his space with the help of some amazing mentors.
Hello Advaith. Tell us about yourself?
Hi, I am Advaith U, from Trivandrum, Kerala. I am pursuing a B Tech in Computer Science engineering at MBCET, Trivandrum. I am a student developer and community builder. I am a people person and love being part of communities. I had the honor of being a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador and Google Developer Students Club Lead in my college.
I am always excited to talk about community building and technology. I spend my weekends attending meetups, sometimes hosting them as a mentor or as a speaker. I love to implement what I have learned and consider side projects and hackathons as the best way to do it.
Currently, I am the India Regional Lead of Friends of Figma communities, with an aim to improve the design ecosystem in India.
Check out some of Advaith’s side projects here:
Talk about your interest in self-learning, and how does that connect to working with student communities?
I wanted to build a good career path and therefore upskill myself. When I started to build my profile on LinkedIn, I came across students who were in second/third year and had already been part of a bunch of communities and volunteered in different roles. I wanted to know if there were people like that in our College. That’s when I came across Aravind Venugopal, who is my senior and mentor. He motivated me to focus more on Software Development.
Even though we were in the same college, I only connected with him much later when I wanted to know more about Google Developer technologies. Our College was starting GDSC at that point. He asked me if I wanted to be a part of the community and take up the role of Community Organizer. That’s how I started exploring communities. I learned a lot of new things like organizing an event, coordinating and managing people, taking sessions, etc. thanks to his mentorship.
I took my first session wherein I talked about a project I had done on Google Assistant. I realized I could face an audience and interact with a group of people. It helped me build my confidence and gradually become a people person.
Around that time I applied for Microsoft Student Learning Program. I, fortunately, got selected as Microsoft Student Ambassador. I got to learn the working structure of communities outside my campus, across India and outside India, how students benefit from these programs and how developed communities work in different parts. I also got to learn about the importance of inclusion and diversity within communities, especially through communities outside India, and learned about how much it can help.
What does your role as Google Developer Students Club lead entail?
An important milestone in my journey was when I joined as GDSC lead at my College. That’s when the Pandemic hit and everything shifted to an Online mode. It was during this time that I experienced major growth in my perspectives and learned new things. Up until then, I had limited myself to more of a Developer, but during my tenure as the lead, I realized I can manage people and wanted to venture into program/product management.
What would you say was the most challenging experience you faced as a GDSC lead?
While being the GDSC lead, it was a challenge initially to manage a team virtually, to make sure they interact with each other, have the same zest for the roles they joined throughout. I tackled it by conducting weekly meetings and we were able to create a space where everyone had the freedom to speak, share ideas and communicate in a much more free-flowing manner. We were able to break a lot of barriers, many people from my team were able to take up wonderful internship opportunities and diverse roles. I was able to mentor and share my learnings and that is a wonderful experience.
Even though there are challenges associated with conducting online events, there are a lot of perks too. Conducting an offline event requires giving serious considerations about length, duration, dates, and permissions. But with virtual events, we could set events at a more comfortable time frame for students, put in more thought, effort and ensure students had a take away from whatever we did. We were able to create a much more jovial atmosphere and that helped a lot.
How did you get involved with TinkerHub?
Even Though I was part of many communities, I was still widely unaware of the working ecosystem of communities centered in Kerala. That’s when I got introduced to TinkerHub by Rahul Janardhan. He helped me understand the community structure and environment in Kerala.
Rahul invited me to speak at Townhall about How to Build a Community Culture in College and Why it is important. Later, when my tenure as GDSC Lead was over, he informed me about an opportunity to be a Fellow at TinkerHub. I was glad that I could be a part of TinkerHub and joined as a Fellow of Learning Initiatives.
As the lead, I had to bring in more ideas to make technical learning more accessible. We began an initiative with the help of Mon School to help people learn Python. Mon School is an interactive platform that makes the process of coding more fun and interesting. We also did a Practical AI Bootcamp catered mainly towards final years to help them upskill. A long-term vision would be to run things in a way that people can parallelly learn, upskill and update themselves. TLF (TinkerHub Learning Facilitators program) is yet another program that was designed to provide mentorship to students and help them learn different stacks.
Can you talk about your experience at ICW?
I realized that, when we, as people from an Engineering background, try to analyze a problem, we are still limited to how much of an impact we can make. At this workshop, I got to meet and converse with students from a much more diverse backgrounds be it arts, soft science, etc. It provided me with a much wider perspective regarding more diverse problems and issues faced by students. There are a lot of solutions that we can offer to these problems that are out of our domain by making use of our technical skills.
We have the advantage of having a better digital skillset and it is up to us to share these skills and knowledge and help them in accessing it. The workshop also helped in nurturing a community culture and giving students much clarity regarding what they can do to achieve their solutions.
When did you start developing the idea for coffee and code?
Initially, I had a lot of apprehensions regarding what I can do and how much I can do. I am someone who is labeled as a “Jack of all Trades” and in today’s ecosystem, it is very hard for someone like that to excel, get recognized, and find their space. Most people are experts in a particular domain and recognized for that. This was a major struggle for me.
When I joined as GDSC lead at my College, I realized how being A Jack of All Trades could really be my strength. I could understand the different perspectives of my Technical Team, Design Team, Social Media Team, and I could really empathize with them and help them. It helped me understand and manage my team better.
When my tenure as the GDSC lead was getting over, I wanted to upskill myself and learn new things. My Design Team had an amazing bunch of talented folks and they inspired me to learn Design. That’s when I started Coffee and Code and curated some Content related to learning. I ventured into Blogging, Content Creation and wanted to curate content that would help my peers access resources easily.
Can you share your journey of landing your current role at Figma?
I had coordinated a Hackathon around the beginning of 2020. I was reaching out to companies for sponsors and connected with Figma eventually. Through LinkedIn, I came to know about their Design Conference and wanted to apply.
I knew about the Friends of Figma Community, Kochi and I went through their community works across India. I thought I could contribute some improvements and ideas and I sent an email to the team, stating what all new factors they could include, how they can tap into the community culture here, and how if given an opportunity I could contribute. Nadia Hussain of Friends of Figma then connected with me and asked me to join her in a call to discuss the points I had mentioned in the notion document. We discussed and towards the end of the meeting she mentioned to me about this role as Regional Lead.
My role majorly enables me to structure events, onboard teams, workaround and bring about changes and contribute new ideas. GDGs brought about a phenomenal change in the Developer ecosystem. I aspire to bring about such change and growth in the Design Ecosystem across India as well via Friends of Figma.
Would you like to mention some mentors who helped you in your journey?
My first mentor was Aravind Venugopal, my senior. He has been a constant guide and support in letting go of my inhibitions and trying out things. Besides this, my entire core team at GDSC has been a great inspiration for me to learn things like workflow automation, design, etc.
Rahul Janardhan, who is more of a friend than a mentor is someone who introduced me to TinkerHub. We share a lot of similar interests and he helped me in understanding how to build a more inclusive community. Mehar MP, Kurian Jacob, and Muhammed Shibin have also supported me in this journey.
What would be your advice to students who are still figuring out what they can do?
I would say make use of the 4 years you have at hand to learn and explore new things. The idea is to exempt yourself from being overwhelmed and consumed by the rat race but rather know well beforehand what you exactly are looking for. So experiment, find what you are most comfortable with, network, and try out new things.
Don’t simply rely on On-Campus placements but actually search out for Off-Campus opportunities because there might be more diverse opportunities out there that actually fit you. Mentorship plays a huge role in finding your space and believing in your abilities. It helps you to get various perspectives and think out of your bubble.
What’s next on your bucket list?
At present, I am interested in Program/Product management. I believe I can plan things pretty well and I enjoy the process of building things and ideas from scratch and contributing to an entirely new initiative. I want to explore my current role at Figma and continue with this for a while. Long term, I want to venture into Organizational Architecture and learn more about the role and explore how much I can offer in such a position.
We hope you had a great time reading Advaith’s story 😄
This TinkerHub story was brought to you by — Anupama Moncy Thomas and Fathima Nihla Latheef from the TinkerHub Team! If you loved reading this post, show your appreciation by clapping below! Stay tuned to us for more reads on learning, building, and collaborating.
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