The years between 2010 and 2014 were a time of real personal growth. I started as a calm, introverted student and four years later, I walked out a completely different person.
In a mix of studies and parties, my personality was being shaped to an extroverted introvert, where I met so many new friends but at the same time I needed to be alone at home studying and playing games. I was lucky for being accepted as I was, it was an excellent feeling. It made me wipe many traumas from the past and started living more open minded towards others too.
The university had a unique way of welcoming newcomers, it was called Praxe. We had to play all orders from the veterans. Sometimes it was not pretty, but the true purpose was to bring everyone together and create unforgettable experiences and bonds with new friends.
My network grew exponentially and so did my desire to lead. In our class we started organising parties to raise money for our gala dinners and ceremonies. It was probably the first time I had to deal with over 20 people, and it taught me more than any textbook ever could: how to deal with different personalities and work for one purpose.
One day Fábio R. Coelho told me the association of students of our course was froze for around three years and I thought this could be a great way to leverage our students community and have fun and interesting activities for all. My mind started bursting with ideas for new dynamics and activities, which after all, were things I wished I had before.
The association is called NEMERUE - Núcleo de Engenharia Mecatrónica e Energias Renováveis da Universidade de Évora (not very active here on Linkedin) and it reunited two courses: mine (Mechatronics Engineering) and Renewable Energies Engineering. So twice more as other associations linked to the University of Évora courses. This was because we had many classes in common and the students were not too much compared to other courses.
To re-activate NEMERUE, first I had to summon people for the legal roles. President, vice-president and treasury and other six roles. I had to pitch a vision of the project to convince people to join and work for that vision.
Surprisingly I managed to gather more people than we needed, which was good as I needed manpower for the upcoming activities. After figuring out how bureaucracies work (I just had a folder with legal papers and a key to a room) I had access to a bank account of it, but it was empty so I didn't felt the power of responsibility. Basically we we're bankrupt 🥲
I won't be writing about all activities we did, but below were the most impactful under my presidency.
👇
Maker Faire Lisbon 2014
Good times...when there were large fairs where geeks and nerds get together to showcase their projects to the world. It was one of the experiences I had the biggest impact on my skills. I had to manage people, logistics and also make sure the projects we were showcasing worked with a good "nerd" level.
Right at the opening crowds of people started gathering nearby our booth and I had a very intense first day explaining to adults and kids what we where building. It was a nice feeling.
This faire had lots of exciting projects. From drones to robots and 3D printers, it was mind opening to see and talk to many hackers and makers and get their knowledge and experience. I felt like I really belonged to this community. We were speaking the same language...electronics, mechanics, programming.
This was the first Maker Faire in Lisbon. Who knew that I would participate in the next edition under another great project called Talking Chess. 👈
And it ended like this. Everyone together. A great community of hackers. Tag if you know someone :)
This was a great adventure, but not the only one as president of NEMERUE. A lot more crazy things have happened, so let's talk about another impactful activity.
The Rebel Bicho night party
At that time, there was a party "franchise" going on called Rebel Bingo, which was a bit crazy. The deal was: you buy a ticket and get a message of the secret place where the party will happen. At the entrance they give you coloured pens. I didn't know what to do with it. But as a walked by to the bar, people started writing in each others bodies, and after a couple of drinks we were writing of everyone's body parts 😂
And you wonder what this has to do with NEMERUE and leadership?
Well if you remember, we were broke and I wanted to organise new and more ambitious activities. So I had this crazy thought: "Why can't we do a similar concept party of our own to welcome new students? Cause basically it's just having beer and coloured pens for everyone to have fun..." - and that's how Rebel Bicho party was born. "Bicho" is the name we call first year students, and we decided to make the party happen at the time when first students were in Praxe.
I confess this was a easier "project" to convince people to help me because it involved alcohol 😅
Everyone got excited about the idea, and me too, mostly in the leadership and management part. Because again I got to lead and delegate tasks for everyone, knowing their profiles and motivations and see the dynamics unfold. It was a ride of problem solving, since getting the venue, organising the team, drinks, tickets, social media, posters, publicity and more.
We had DJ's, popular music, fire breathers, fireworks...well it was a hell of a party. The team stayed all night until cleaning of the space. Who knew alcohol gives super powers. Marvellous.
Rebel Bicho was one of the biggest party events I organised, where we got almost one thousand people and good money to use for next activities. And you might think this was just an excuse to party, but in reality it had a lot of components of leadership and management that gave me some sort of experience. But I'm sure this is one of the best ways to do networking!
Besides partying, I've also organised key partnerships with local institutions, namely professional training at multi-disciplinary areas still related to engineering.
Workshops
These were also key activities for our association. Getting into a university gives you a lot of knowledge baggage, but usually it misses the practical side. Luckily we had some practical classes, but the market needed more and was years ahead of the professors. It's normal. But I wanted to counter this by organising exclusive workshops for the association members. IEFP - Instituto do Emprego e Formação Profissional had this recipe of practical classes like soldering, electrical engineering, molding, and even German classes (life is too short to learn German btw).
The only catch was to get 16 students to open new classes. So there I was talking to everyone and trying to convince them this was a good thing for their future. But I was grateful many have applied and we got to learn a lot on extra-curricular classes, which made me and everyone better prepared for the market.
There were more activities and adventures maybe I'll write about in the future. But I have to say: writing this article while searching for photos in my external drive gave an enormous nostalgic feelings...it feels like it happened in another life. 😊
All these adventures wouldn't be possible without the help of all the team, especially board members like Ana Portada , João Amaral , Ana Lúcia Santos , Andreia Janeiro , Andreia Sola , João Ganchinho , Tatiana Leasco , and many others!
Here's one last video.
Thanks for reading.