“If you keep a glass of wine in each hand, you can’t touch your face.”
The lockdown announced in mid-March dealt quite a blow to our plans for the academic year. And needless to say, we had to scrap any ideas of hosting excursions to companies. The biggest challenge to re-invent our entire timeline while not knowing what the future of the pandemic would look like. But with regular meetings and brainstorming sessions (which were online of course), we were able to chalk out a safe and reasonable action plan for the rest of the year.
It was through this process that we learnt how effective online events (if planned well) can be in enabling the connection of students, industry, and academia. Our primary focus shifted to hosting online lectures with companies that students expressed a genuine interest in. We were pleasantly surprised with how enthusiastic these companies were to collaborate with us, especially during these trying times!
The past year has been a crucial learning experience for each our board members, one which will most certainly help us organise better quality events for our students in the future.