Why I think neACM is the new great thing for tech students at FEUP

March 14, 2023 | acmfeup

Table of Contents

  • Our history at FEUP
  • What we noticed
  • The neACM’s Community
  • Our focus
  • Communication
  • For companies
  • Conclusion

After some time offline, the ACM Student Chapter at FEUP is finally getting some light! Some friends and I are rebuilding the whole chapter to make something really cool for students, teachers and computer scientists working at Porto!

And, I have been receiving a lot of traction from so many people that I believe that the neACM@FEUP is going to be the new great thing for tech students at FEUP! Just as an example, we opened our form to build the community three weeks ago and we already have more than a hundred submissions!

Btw, note that this article may be a little bit biased as I’m the head of the Department of Marketing.. 😅

Our history at FEUP

Even though we are building a lot of things from scratch, our student chapter has been around for a lot of time! And, we have always had a lot of energy to do things bigger and differently!

Even two decades ago, our previous members had already been involved in the use of disruptive technologies. As an example, they were involved in the creation of the mirrors.fe.up.pt and developed many projects, such as the acmPath and the FEUP Blogs.

Just for the sake of remembering old things here are some screenshots from our website in the past:

ScreenShots of the old website

ScreenShots of the old website

However, after some time with no one maintaining this chapter, some friends and I are re-starting it! And, it’s a project that I’m extremely excited about!

But, many other student groups exist at FEUP! And, all of them with a specific audience and main interests. So, what are we doing differently? Let me explain that in the most objective way!

What we noticed

Across the numerous student groups at FEUP, I have noticed that they all face difficulty to find members that go through the painful process of recruitment.

However, computer science students at FEUP are amongst the best students in Portugal. We are students that love to learn and discover new things!

However, most can’t commit to work as they have busy schedules. So, we decided to build something that could fit those people as well!

Additionally, our surveys showed that about 30% of students didn’t join other student groups due to the lack of a feeling of community in those groups.

So, that’s exactly what we built!

The neACM’s Community

One of the ideas that I strongly believe in is that everyone loves to be with people that have similar interests! I had seen that in the past and I read about it a lot!

So, I was extremely happy when our team agreed that we should build a community! But, it won’t be just a community… These are some things that we are doing differently:

  • We are joining people with similar interests in groups monitored by a member of our staff;
  • We are making the inscription process the simplest possible, using a custom-built solution that will make all processes simpler and accessible in the same place (more on this topic in a future blog post)! Check it out in this gif:

Gif of the signup process

  • We are working to guarantee that students don’t get on a filter bubble, making sure to put them in contact with other areas of informatics and developing their interpersonal skills! On this level, we are following what big companies do, such as Intel!
  • We are working with inclusivity and diversity in mind from the start! We are guaranteeing that people of any sex, race and age can have exactly the same opportunities.
  • We are working on a basis of peer-to-peer learning: we want to empower our members with the gift of teaching what they know (whatever that is) to the rest of the community.

But, what can the community wait for from us?

Our focus

Since the start, we decided that we wanted to be specific, but, at the same time, be broad enough to reach the interests of all our members.

This way, we thrive to organize activities about programming, algorithms, databases, networks, cybersecurity, cloud computing, IoT and AI, among others.

One of the biggest areas of focus to our student chapter is competitive programming! The department of competitive programming is working really hard to organize lessons every week to develop the skills that our members will need if they decide to join the team that will compete in competitions in this area! Additionally, we are also working hard to expand to develop teams for other types of tournaments!

But, apart from computing, we also want to develop the entrepreneurship side of our members. (As a side note, we have already made a connection that will make a course on entrepreneurship available to our members!)

This way, our members will have the opportunity to develop their soft skills while learning about emerging technologies. This gets them ready for their future jobs.

Communication

With such a diverse and inclusive community, we, at the Department of Marketing, face a severe difficulty. How can we be where our members (and future members) are in a scalable way?

To do that, we had to do some guesses. We thought that all of our members have a mobile phone and a computer, most will have social media accounts, some will be avid users of discord and a small part will prefer the professionalism of a personalized email.

And, as sometimes we need to guarantee the transmission of information in real-time, we prioritized channels where our message could come across rapidly.

Having that in mind, we divided our communication strategy through six channels:

  • Social media (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter)
  • Push notifications
  • Discord
  • Email through newsletters and generic email
  • Website
  • Flyers and posters

(This is how our website looks like at the moment…) The current Website

For companies

One of the things we have been working on a lot lately is at developing strong connections with future partners. We have many features that make us extremely appealing!

Firstly, our community is made up of innovative students that are eager to learn a little bit more! Furthermore, they will be getting experience with emerging areas of technology which makes them professionals with a broader view of the world!

This makes them the ideal candidate for companies working with us and guarantees that they will get the professionals they are looking for.

Moreover, we have a great relationship with our members, meaning that any information about a partnering company will land in their inboxes and be read.

Additionally, our events will join people that are as excited about computer science as our partners, which will make them a perfect spot to connect ambitious students with companies looking for talent!

Finally, our contact list extends beyond students at FEUP and reaches many individuals interested in computer science from Porto and even abroad!

Conclusion

Having said all of this, I just want to finish by saying that at our team we are all extremely excited with this student chapter and believe that it will have a huge positive impact on the computer science community at FEUP!

If you are a student at FEUP, we hope that you join us and enjoy our vibrant community!

BTW, we don’t like to work alone! We are setting the basis for great relationships with the other student groups at FEUP that are dedicated to the same field. If you represent a student group or a company that would like to talk with us, get in touch with [email protected]!

If you want to talk with me, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or schedule something with me.


Profile picture of Filipe Correia

Written by Filipe Correia

Filipe Correia is a student of Informatics and Computing Engineering at the University of Porto. Additionally, he is also a writer, a photographer and a speaker. His interests range from technology, psychology and philosophy to the environment.


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