Hi all, I am Daudi! I was delighted to have had the opportunity to have been General Secretary of the society last year, and I felt that I was not ready to end my contributions to the society.
Just a bit about me:
3rd Year Computer Science Student
I used to work as a professional full-stack developer, and I have experience ranging from web to cross-platform, desktop, AI, robotics, hardware, etc.
My favourite part of computer science is hardware! This year I designed a keyboard (That hopefully works, the parts arrive this week. Check #hardware when they arrive)
I know 10 programming languages, but could probably only do 7 or 8 on command at best. Test me!
I play games sometimes, but seemingly only ones I hate, ask me about them!
If you have a question about me or who I am, or my national insurance number and the last 3 digit s on my card, just DM me @DTheLegend#4457 or me@daudi.dev
Vision
My vision for the society takes a bit more of a turn from the societies traditional conventions. During my time helping to run the society and talking to members and former members, I have gained a deeper understanding of what it is that people love about HackSoc and what people want more of, but also what people don't like as much.
2+1 events a week -> 1+1 event a week: It's very clear that running the society is a huge task for any group, no matter the size. I feel that with more of our time and focus available, the society can hold better events with a higher quality and allows for more collaboration between the committee on the next upcoming event rather than being split multiple ways. I plan to keep weekly Programming Café's as although not the most popular event, they are a good opportunity for members to come in and interact in person and ask questions, talk about the society with the committee, and serve as a channel for transparency.
HackNotts in February -> HackNotts in November: HackNotts has always, and will always be our premier event. The last two years it has been very difficult for the committee to get an event ready for November, so much so that this year I had been a strong advocate for a February HackNotts, but my major concern is ensuring we can deliver the best possible event for our members. Sponsorship money has always been how we have funded HackNotts, and sponsors not only fund the event, but help attendees by networking, offering them opportunities to develop their career and educating them with helpful workshops. The best way to ensure that we can offer HackNotts as not only a fun event, but as a career building event, is by making sure we sit correctly in the technology hiring cycle. On a related note, I also want to strongly push for next year's HackNotts to be 1984 themed (As someone who used to educate people on old computers I think it would be a great fit [I like the name HackNotts'84]).
Alternating ability workshops: Much like Intel's architecture team, I think an easy ("Tick") workshop one week that encourages members of lower programming/technical abilities to come in, followed by a more "hardcore" ("Tock") workshop the next week would help encourage the society to grow by ensuring that members can rely on a consistent schedule of events flowing out. This means that we are always catering to all of our members, while not being too demanding such that members can attend an event that we hold at least once every two weeks and still ensuring that members can rely on a consistent schedule of events flowing out, knowing that the ones they attend will always be suitable for them. This experimental approach worked well for us at the beginning of this year, but I feel that we could implement it the whole year next year.
Collabs: Hack and Slash is a priority event and as such will continue at all costs. I will challenge the next Medieval Combat Society President to a duel should they refuse. Collaborations for HackSoc have proved very difficult: although we are a society that intersects numerous fields across a wide range of subjects and as such we could likely offer our members an event that intersects another society, it is much more difficult for us to also offer one that appeals to the other societies' members. Next year I want to try and be more experimental in this regard and try push against this notion, but also work with other societies in creative ways that might not involve a lot of programming/learning on the part of members, but may end up more fun (see next section)
More "experimental" events: This year I have been experimenting with some "weirder" events. They may not be very cool exciting to most, or have cool names (I suck at names), but I am quite happy to have done them and learned what works, what doesn't; What's too hard, or too easy. Next year I want to iterate and expand on these ideas in a very "move fast and break things" kind of way. Experimenting with events that end up being a double act of a learning event on one week and a fun event based on it in the next, and group activities that involve coding, maybe trying to interact more with the technology that is always around us, or just looking at cool PHD projects and poking through the other rooms and buildings that make up the computer science department. I'm not quite sure, but that's why it's called experimenting! Also prizes. More prizes more sooner. This may require the society to stock Blahaj at cost: if so, so be it.
Closer relations to CS: every year we have strived towards closer relations. This year, we have definitely made massive strides, but there is still further to go. It would be nice to have a more open continuous dialogue with CS that we can use to better the societies ability to offer cool new experiences to members.
Looking outside of CS: although CS is our major benefactor, other departments have clear ties to hacking culture and a student base who would be very much interested in what we have to offer. Other departments may hold the key to expanding our societies' reach, as well as providing a pool of members who can bring their experience in a foreign field into HackSoc's discussions and influence the learning we do, however the key to this has always been getting in early, starting with freshers, appearing at welcome week talks, etc.
More spending: Controversially I feel like the society has room to spend more on it's members and give back.
Marketing where they probably should expect it: The society has always had a tough time with marketing. Although I have a couple of approaches in mind that might help improve how we can market efficiently, ultimately this is a larger problem the society has to investigate and tackle in order to ensure that we can reach our members.
Last but not least, welfare improvements: Sometimes I think the society leans very hard into coding events all the time, but opportunities for a more relaxed environment where we can talk about computers in an open forum without having to code are nice. This is why we have our discord and our programming cafés, but I feel the opportunity is there to expand the type of events we do as a society to be more inclusive for students who otherwise feel like they can't attend HackSoc event's for lack of skill or knowledge.
Why me?
Over my time as a committee member I have grown very passionate about the direction of the society and I wish to be a part of driving it's future. Simple as.
Although good, that's obviously not enough and as such my technical qualifications are below:
More than the average Hackathon enjoyer: I have attended multiple hackathons over the years, collected some prizes in my time, and I have volunteered for hackathons in previous years, helped organise Hackathons for two years, and I have established a plethora of connections in the hackathon world, as well as in the recruitment sphere. At hackathons I have been an active pusher of hardware related hacks and this year's HackNotts absolutely blew me out of the water with the amount of hardware creativity on show. Next year I hope to provide RaspberryPis or something similar and maybe a bin full of electronics as we have previously mentioned wanting.
A polyglot of languages, frameworks, and oddities: one of my particular interests is languages and I have managed to gain experience across many different languages, frameworks, build systems, dev ops, etc. and being able to use and offer that experience and sharing it with members is valuable.
Professional experience & connections: I have worked in industry for 2 years before as a full-stack developer and as a freelance website designer. I understand the sort of skills we need to give to our members in this respect and the need to develop our events to match that. In addition, my time managing the societies' hackathon sponsors and interacting with recruiters outside of that has enabled me to grow the societies network and build relationships with industry.
Interest in Computing History: An interesting angle that often doesn't get spoken about is why the computers we use today are designed the way they are and what decisions led us to where we are today. I feel that computing history is important for developers to understand so that they can use the experience of the past to design the future.
Familiarity with the Society: I have been helping to run the society for 2 years now, and I have acquired an in depth knowledge of how we run our events, our current relationships and standings.
Educator Extraordinaire: I have been teaching children and adults about computing in a semi-professional capacity for 6 years now, with experience from teaching secondary school programmers in after-school clubs, to children and adults alike at the National Museum of Computing, to doing talks here at HackSoc. My long career in programming and development has never not included sharing that knowledge.
A Proponent for Free and Open Source Everything (Free as in Speech): not really a qualification, but worth mentioning.
Conclusion
$ sudo apt-get install motivation # Other package managers are available
$ git push leadership
$ chown daudi:hacksoc /srv/roles/presidency
$ echo $?
You decide!
P.S Thanks for reading through. I hope you consider me for president!
Name: Daudi Wampamba
President
Manifesto
Introduction
Hi all, I am Daudi! I was delighted to have had the opportunity to have been General Secretary of the society last year, and I felt that I was not ready to end my contributions to the society.
Just a bit about me:
If you have a question about me or who I am, or my national insurance number and the last 3 digit s on my card, just DM me @DTheLegend#4457 or me@daudi.dev
Vision
My vision for the society takes a bit more of a turn from the societies traditional conventions. During my time helping to run the society and talking to members and former members, I have gained a deeper understanding of what it is that people love about HackSoc and what people want more of, but also what people don't like as much.
2+1 events a week-> 1+1 event a week: It's very clear that running the society is a huge task for any group, no matter the size. I feel that with more of our time and focus available, the society can hold better events with a higher quality and allows for more collaboration between the committee on the next upcoming event rather than being split multiple ways. I plan to keep weekly Programming Café's as although not the most popular event, they are a good opportunity for members to come in and interact in person and ask questions, talk about the society with the committee, and serve as a channel for transparency.HackNotts in February-> HackNotts in November: HackNotts has always, and will always be our premier event. The last two years it has been very difficult for the committee to get an event ready for November, so much so that this year I had been a strong advocate for a February HackNotts, but my major concern is ensuring we can deliver the best possible event for our members. Sponsorship money has always been how we have funded HackNotts, and sponsors not only fund the event, but help attendees by networking, offering them opportunities to develop their career and educating them with helpful workshops. The best way to ensure that we can offer HackNotts as not only a fun event, but as a career building event, is by making sure we sit correctly in the technology hiring cycle. On a related note, I also want to strongly push for next year's HackNotts to be 1984 themed (As someone who used to educate people on old computers I think it would be a great fit [I like the name HackNotts'84]).Why me?
Over my time as a committee member I have grown very passionate about the direction of the society and I wish to be a part of driving it's future. Simple as.
Although good, that's obviously not enough and as such my technical qualifications are below:
Conclusion
P.S Thanks for reading through. I hope you consider me for president!