I’m sitting in my hotel room after leaving an after party at Dave and Busters and I’m a little out of it. I feel like the last thing I remember is going up an elevator at the Microsoft office in Times Square to get to our event. Next thing I know, I'm in my hotel room 10 hours later, tired and inspired. I remember some flashes of laughter - deep discussions about AI and internships, Diversity in tech and organizing your first hackathon. Lots of discussion and noise, the kind that isn't abrasive but exciting — the noise of collaboration and community. Looking back, it all rushed by so quickly that I can barely recall it all.
That was Field Day?
Oh yeah, THAT was Field Day. And I can't believe I get to be part of this community, let alone find a way to help it's already amazing members grow and learn together.
What is Field Day?
Field day is an un-conference created by GitHub Campus Experts. It's designed to be a place for students to gather and talk with their peers about technology; web development, app development, AI, internships, tech stacks, best practices, and (somehow) much much more. After an intro, keynote, and ice breaker, attendees grab post it notes and write down what they want to talk about and stick it up on a board. Then, the organizers group those into similar topics and create small group areas where those topics will be discussed by whomever wants to join. Imagine a meetup where the topic is chosen by the people attending rather than the organizers.
Oh cool! But, What are Campus Experts?
Another great question! You're good at asking these questions, Pj!
Campus Experts are students around the world who want to build communities around tech. These students are organizing hackathons, meetups, workshops, social events, and study sessions. We hold applications twice a year (February and August) and receive thousands of people wanting to become a Campus Expert. GitHub's role in this is supporting only — helping them with swag, funding, logistical support, and being a kind of guide in how to organize these events.
Most importantly, they are not GitHub ambassadors. We work in GitHub of course (using issues, discussions, actions, etc etc.) but we don't expect the students to go around and tell everyone only about GitHub. We only want them to organize events and become a community leader on their campus to other students interested in technology.
Great! Annnnddd... Who are you?
Oh yeah! I guess I didn’t do that earlier. I’m Pj Metz, Program Manager of Education Communities at GitHub, and I'm responsible for the Campus Experts program. I recently joined the education team (February 6th to be exact), so I'm definitely still learning how the program works. I had an 11 year career as a high school English teacher before switching to tech in 2021. I’m excited to be coming back to something related to my first passion of education while still working in my new career in tech.
Okay, back to the story.
Since I started in February, I wasn’t very active in planning this event. In fact, as you can see above, this event is not planned by GitHub staff. We only play a supporting role in it. This means we didn’t pick the location, the venue, the food, the events, the speakers… none of it. It was all in the capable hands of our Campus Experts. Now, as I mentioned, I was a high school teacher for over a decade, and have helped my fair share of student groups to organize events, and it was nearly always chaos. We’d have a few students who were really doing most of the work and planning, but a lot of it felt like herding cats.
So I truly didn’t know what to expect coming into this. I was so used to having to help students understand basic event organization stuff before, and I had not helped with this one at all. On top of that, I had only met around 10 campus experts on zoom before this moment. I didn’t know them as professionals or students yet. So while I didn’t fear the worst…
...I certainly wasn’t sure how things would go.
Well, how did things go
This was one of the best organized small events I have ever attended. I was stunned at how well it all went and how few things went “wrong” like they usually do.
Seamless transitions from activity to activity, quick thinking people proactively working to PREVENT issues from coming up before they happened, and a lively, excited, and all together fun environment seemed effortlessly generated by these students. I watched students lead discussions where they actively worked to not take over the discussion. They were moving between groups to encourage different points of view. They were working with the team at the venue to ensure they understood what was expected of them as guests, and they smiled the whole time. I witnessed so little stress compared to other events of similar size that I’ve been to.
As we wound down and our attendees started to head back home, arms full of stickers and umbrellas, I watched as the Campus Experts continued to work. Packing everything up, delegating roles to people as we cleaned, and in one particularly amazing instance, a Campus Expert contacted a local shelter to directly donate our leftover food and drinks to. It was a block away, and a team of nearly a dozen of us each carrying something walked there to make sure we weren’t wasting anything. This happened unprompted and was something they had already considered beforehand. I was proud to even be associated with these young folks.
Typing now after the event, I know exactly what it is that separated this event from others in my mind: they were PREPARED.
What does it mean to be prepared?
Preparation is thinking not only of what you want to happen and ensuring it can, it’s about considering what MIGHT happen and having a plan in place for it. We had plenty of food and drinks, activities ran on time, and attendees had ample opportunities to run the hallway track and chat with each other to build important connections and networks that will last throughout the rest of their careers. It was amazing to watch and I distinctly remember thinking, “This is FAR BETTER than it would have been if I had organized it.”
I was humbled by these Campus Experts dedication and hard work, and simultaneously immensely proud of what they had accomplished. This single Field Day, an event that I attended after working at GitHub for only 27 actual work days, was the perfect first GitHub education related event for me to attend.
The bar is now set far higher; not just for future Campus Expert events, but my bar is even higher now. Knowing what these students are doing out here is making me feel like I have to work even harder.
Admittedly, I’m more nervous about what I can do now that I've seen what these students are capable of; I need to work even harder than I originally thought. But, as many people who are attending Campus Expert led events around the world are finding out, there’s something inspiring about these students in red hoodies.
To learn more about Campus Experts: https://education.github.com/experts
To get your free Student Developer Pack: https://education.github.com/pack
To learn more about the organizers of Field Day North America 2024:
Joash Matthew
Kartik Patel
David Teather
Cecilia La Place
Javier Bracho
Leon Kipkoech
Vedant Bahel
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