Technical Evangelism: The Journey So Far With Intel Hub FUTA

Technical Evangelism: The Journey So Far With Intel Hub FUTA

Learning product development skills has been awesome, in my day-in-day-out activities, am also well connected to Engineers through technical evangelism. In my little world, I train people on technology – web development, mobile app development, and Internet of Things (I’m an IoT enthusiast though) and actively engaged in student tech communities in my University.

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In late 2015, Intel launched the Student Partner program in 3 Universities in Nigeria. The goal, through on-campus ambassadors, is to help the budding developers acquire knowledge about Intel technologies; leveraging this technology to solve problems around them.

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In partnership with CcHUB, over 1,000 candidates had their applications reviewed. Shortlisted candidates had a face to face interviews at the university campus to select student ambassadors. Behold, I was among the 5 selected student ambassadors in Nigeria. With Intel and CcHUB support, I started connecting the dots between technology and people on a large scale in my university with the establishment of Intel Hub FUTA.

We are a community of developers, makers, thinkers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and hobbyists. We believe technological opportunities and possibilities come to those who chase their dreams. We actively engage ourselves with technical training on Intel technologies (Intel XDK, Intel Galileo, Intel Edison) through meet-ups, boot camps, and hackathons.

Our slogan goes thus:

At Intel Hub FUTA, extraordinary things happen here.

The journey has not been easy especially combining academics, personal development, and community service together, of course, I didn’t expect it to be easy, but with the help of my talented partner Evi Uwede, we’ve been making the impossible possible!

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The hub members are passionate individuals that work through the night to achieve their dreams, they leverage existing technologies to solve hyper-local problems and share among themselves through technical presentations.

Impact of Intel Hub at the Federal University of Technology Akure

I’m bold to say that at least 70% of developers at the Federal University of Technology Akure are affiliated with Intel Hub FUTA. In a blog post by techpoint, FUTA was ranked among the top 3 Nigerian universities with the most influential tech communities. This further strengthens the fact that Intel Hub FUTA contributes to the Nigeria tech ecosystem.

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We’ve organized a series of meet-ups, seminars, hackathons, and workshops ranging from Hyper-Local Hack FUTA (HLH_FUTA’16) to Ultimate Code Ninja (UCN_FUTA).

Listed below are the brief details of some solutions that were developed at our hackathons using Intel XDK cross-platform mobile app development IDE as the prototyping tool.

TEAM PHOENIX: PROJECT ZELDA

ZELDA: The idea of Zelda was conceived from the legend of “ZELDA, The Moonlight Merchant”. While purchasing items are easy during the day, this ease doesn’t extend to when students decide to stay back in school through the night usually referred to as “night class”. Zelda creates a platform where buyers can place orders at night and get their orders delivered to their location within the hour.

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TEAM CENTIPED: PROJECT FUTALOFT

FUTALOFT: Getting accommodation could be a real hassle, especially when the session begins. FUTALOFT is a platform for those seeking accommodation, both on-campus and off-campus, it locates vacant apartments and links potential hostel seekers or tenants with the apartment owners. It also tracks the allocations to FUTA Hostel, spaces are given out, and remaining spaces.

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TEAM DRAGONS: PROJECT FUTLAS

FUTLAS: Derived from the base words, FUTA and ATLAS, There are so many buildings in FUTA, and locating the ones you’ve not been to could be troublesome. FUTLAS is a platform where you search for a building, depending on your current position directs you to the building, and provides brief information about the building and the operations carried out in the building.

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TEAM FERRETS: PROJECT Eat ‘n’ Chill

EAT N CHILL: Making decisions could be strenuous even when it comes to deciding what and where to eat. Eat ‘n’ chill is an application containing locations of all restaurants in and around the FUTA campus. It also contains ratings of these restaurants to help users make better decisions.

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TEAM LEOPARD: PROJECT FUTASCORES

FUTASCORES: Sports publicity in FUTA is not exactly at its peak, FUTAScores is a platform that gives information about all past, ongoing, and upcoming sports events including league tables, cup drawings, fixtures, results, and winners.

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TEAM SALAMANDERS: PROJECT LIBRERIA

Libreria: Libreria is Italian for the bookshop. It is a platform on which materials including textbooks, scripts, past questions, etc. which are useful to all courses are uploaded by lecturers, class representatives, and others who might have relevant materials. These materials are then made accessible to students

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TEAM WASPS: PROJECT FUTAMedicals

FUTA Medicals: Medical registrations in FUTA Health center are usually very strenuous at the beginning of the sessions, as in very strenuous. Considering this, FUTA MEDICALS is a mobile platform where students can fill in their bio details, this data is sent to the FUTA health center and students only need to go to the center to submit biosamples. This would greatly reduce the hassle and stress of medical registrations.

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TEAM TIGERS: PROJECT FUTAjamz

FUTAJAMZ: FUTA is full of highly talented artists, however, due to the lack of a centralized community, these artists are not in the spotlight. FUTAJAMZ provides a platform for 100% FUTA Entertainment and helps improve the quality of entertainment in FUTA.

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We also have FUTA eMarket, WhiteKnight, iVote, etc.

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The hub appreciates the contribution of Dr. S.A Oyetunji who is the former Head of Department, Electrical Electronics Engineering, Mayowa Olunuga, Dunsin Fatuase, Emmanuel Odunlade, and our executive team members; Bello Luqman, Emmanuel Afolabi, Onwusah Chidinma, Oluwatemilorun Isaac, and everyone that have assisted in running the hub activities seamlessly.

Our plan for the coming year

The hub plan to extend her tentacles to more non-technical and technical students at the Federal University of Technology Akure to have a balanced ecosystem, focus on Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Mobile and Web development and take most of our solutions to pass the prototype stage to actual products leveraging on existing technology. We also plan to have our own maker space (fully equipped) dedicated to the members of FUTA tech communities to carry out research on various projects.

We really thank everyone for their continued support. If you are excited about our activities and willing to help us achieve our next plan, kindly get in touch. Sharing this article is also a way to support Intel Hub FUTA.