MDX University x Front-end Coders Mauritius

The biggest meetup we've organized so far happened at the Middlesex University of Mauritius on the 20th of May 2023. Following the great reception of last month's meetup of non-technical subjects geared towards the tech industry, we continued along the same line and picked topics that were relevant to people who are interested or just getting started in tech/frontend.

This meetup was also very well-supported by our sponsors:

IEEE Mauritius who helped with the organization and venue
Red & Yellow – Creative School of Business – Lunch for attendees
Bolt Talent Solutions – Lunch and Goodies for attendees

We got to use an actual lecture theater with great screen, seats, and sound. It was awesome. As usual, I started the meetup by introducing who are the frontend coders, how people can contribute back to the community before introducing our speakers and sponsors for the day.

Speakers

Saamiyah Peerun – Git Going: Starting your Version Control Journey with Git
Michaël Jules – Stand -Stand out from the crowd – Tips to improve your CV
Ish Sookun - Career Path in the IT industry
Sandeep Ramgolam – How to get started with Frontend Dev

Saamiyah Peerun – Git Going: Starting your Version Control Journey with Git

Saamiyah went for the first presentation and spoke about using Git and how it is one of the most common tools any software engineers use daily. She gave examples of common commands and pitfalls. For those who use git, it's hard to imagine our industry without this tool, and for those who are not using it yet, well you should be !

She also spoke about GitHub and how they're both related. To finish her session, she made a PR to the frontendmu website live on stage, which was then approved and merged on the spot !

Michaël Jules – Stand out from the crowd – Tips to improve your CV

I asked Mike to do a re-run of his session of the previous month because it was filled with excellent advice. He tailored it for a younger local audience, and it was a very fun and lively presentation. He received a lot of questions from the audience who wanted advice on specific ways to level up career-wise.

Ish Sookun - Career Path in the IT industry

We're grateful to Ish for being in the lineup and sharing his vast experience in the local tech industry with the young minds present. He shed light on the difficulties that can arise in this job and how to persevere, or even pivot fields, within tech.

He is always fantastic at delivering his talks with minimum slides required, and it was very well received by the audience.

Lunch and Photoshoot

We broke for lunch, and we're so grateful to both our sponsors for helping order pizzas for around 80 attendees. It was the biggest budget yet and everything went super smoothly. Special thanks to Asma Dinat and her team at Bolt Talent Solutions, and Javed Jaumally and his team at Honoris for making this possible at all.

Right before we got back, we gathered all the attendees for a photoshoot on the campus with my drone. It does look freaking cool ! :D

Sandeep Ramgolam – How to get started with Frontend Dev

When we got back in the lecture theater, I gave the final presentation about how to get started with frontend development. The TLDR; is to simply avoid all the noisy frameworks and start with the basics. Then build stuff. This will get you started, and you will naturally level up without skipping the foundation.

Mr Vadimir Jiji- My cat - Featured on my first slide

I noticed the biggest problem frontend developers have with modern tooling is that it works until it doesn't, and they have no idea how to fix something when it breaks at the framework level instead of the app level.

This is because they haven't learned the basics properly and end up hating the state of frontend.

Quiz

As usual, we ran a Kahoot Quiz to end things in a lively way while still educating the audience. We had amazing prizes up for grabs.

1st Prize – A catamaran trip for 2 generously sponsored by Bolt Talent Ltd
2nd Prize – JetBrains License for 1 year

We ran a kahoot with more than 40 participants, and it was a lot of fun! Congrats to Danshil and Sevagen for coming out victorious, with Nikhil coming in at a close 3rd place.

Thanks & Credits

Kushul Soomaree - Organization and Behind the scenes tasks
Mahima Ramgolam - Event RSVP Management
Dereck & Noorani - From IEEE MDX who helped with the Venue

Photos from the event

Follow the trail

Dereck addressing the audience

Attentive audience

Once upon a time pizza's lived here

Asma speaking about Bolt Talent to the audience