Organizing and Speaking at a tech conference
My experience of hosting and speaking at a tech event
On October 19th 2019, I was supposed to give a talk on Building and Deploying Node.JS apps with Azure. Unfortunately, things took a turn and I had to slightly modify the scope of my session and diverge a little from the originally planned content. This was due to the lack of internet connectivity, the time frame of the session and whether the participants would grasp all the information we provided.
About the Conference
The event we organized was STUDENT DEVELOPER DAY and 4 of us were organizers. Diwash Shrestha, Binod Jung Bogati and Yunip Shrestha were the other 3 members of the organizing team. The content for the event was provided by Major League Hacking.
What does it feel like to organize and speak at a conference?
As an organizer, I mainly took on the responsibility of designing the banners and social media posts. Additionally, due to my network, I was able to negotiate and find a sponsor for the event.
Whenever I try to do something, I always think about the impact it might have. In terms of impact, this event was a huge success because I was able to teach what I know to about 30-40 people. Also, due to the feedback I got on the days that followed the event, I am overwhelmed by the appreciation of the people.
We were able to give something to the tech community of Nepal from the session and we aim to organize more events in the future.
The Networking Part
Whenever you organize or attend events, you're likely to meet new people. This event was not an exception. I got to meet with someone who has been programming since 1983, which was long before I was even born. Events also let you market yourself and your skills in the community. I believe it will also get me some more reach in the blogs I write. ๐ค๐ป
Learning from the failures
Whenever you organize events, you want it to go smoothly and be right in all aspects but the possibility of the event going right as expected is thin. You might ask why. Here are the reasons why.
Nepali Time is the synonym for unpunctuality in Nepal.
People might not care about events. I invited more than 15 people I know in the events but only 3 of them were present.
Getting the target audience is also tough most of the time because the content might be too basic for one group of audiences and too tough for the other.
The internet in Nepali colleges is so bad. I don't understand the purpose of internet service in colleges because it's so difficult to get connectivity.
You have to be prepared to tackle these things during events. You can solve some of them.
To solve the unpunctuality problem, you can host an event at 11 AM and tell students that the event is going to start at 9. This might solve the issue. ๐
Don't expect your friends to attend the events because they will not. The people close to you will have the least amount of appreciation for things that you're trying to do.
To solve the issue with the target audience, try to be in the middle ground. Also, you can study the target audience before the event and deliver content accordingly.
Next events
Sometime during November, the team that organized Student Developer Day is planning to do another event. Stay tuned to this blog and my social media to get notified of the announcement.