Maleeha, Now that you know how it works, next year, maybe a leadership role?
Computer Science Co-op Student @ TMU | Prev. Developer Intern @ Atlantic Packaging | VP Externals @ PACS | VP Community @WiCS | Seeking CS Summer 2025 Internships
Better late than never, but on July 21-24, I got an exciting opportunity to volunteer at CppNorth, The Canadian C++ Conference this year at none other than the Microsoft Office 🤩 This conference was nothing short of a wonderful experience. Of course the food was great, but I’d say volunteering was even more spectacular ✨ As a volunteer, I was assisting in providing timing cues to conference speakers and helped manage microphone distribution among attendees. Aside from my volunteer shifts, I still continued to network with many attendees, each one with different backgrounds and tech experiences. I was also very passionate in attending various insightful talks 📢 One talk that I was eagerly looking forward to was Sohaila Ali’s talk on “Uplifting Your Career as a Youth in Tech”. Seeing her up there passionately talking about her journey through the tech industry as a young female, truly reminded me once again of how hardworking and capable women can be in order to make their mark in tech 🎀 . In just one hour, she covered her whole high school career journey highlighting her accomplishments, challenges, and everything in between. Although I already met her a couple of times before this conference, her presentation alone allowed me to see her in a different light. When her talk ended, I saw her as not only a woman that accomplished so much at a young age, but also someone that dedicated herself to uplifting and supporting those around her 🤝. I would have never went outside my comfort zone and attended tech events, if it weren’t for her genuine support and the event links she still continues to send me 😂 Another engaging speaker took the stage and I was excited to discover that it was Eric Wastl, the FOUNDER of Advent of Code. In his presentation, I was surprised to hear how he alone creates the puzzles on the platform 🧩. Additionally, hearing his perspective on the different types of solutions that people all over the globe come up with, was pretty interesting. He spoke about how these people would even go so far to use spreadsheets and spend days modifying them to solve these puzzles 🔐. He also shared how he had to scale the platform to accommodate thousands of users when it became more and more popular during the pandemic. Overall, I'm grateful to have heard the behind-the-scenes stories of Advent of Code, as it taught me that success isn’t achieved overnight 💪 A special shoutout to Michael Daum for hosting an amazing CppNorth conference this year. He and our volunteer coordinator Yazan Armoush supported us volunteers when we were in need and made the volunteer experience unforgettable 🤗! Also, thank you to my friends Katherine and Suboohi for being volunteers by my side alongside this huge experience! I already can’t wait to volunteer again next year 💝