We forayed into unknown territory from the get go this year.
Late April, we hosted our first ever event engaging our club members in-person this year in the large space at P1 Convention Centre in school. Titled An Enchanting Escapade by NYP AI, the aim was to educate students about AI concepts through games while promoting our club's awareness.
Time – the biggest enemy.
The event comes after the launch of our new Community Engagement (CE) Department within our EXCO, spearheaded by Shawn Goh (Year 2 in Diploma in Applied AI and Analytics). The lack of precedence, since an event of such a scale has never been done before by any Student Interest Group, made organising the event an especially challenging ordeal for the department and Shawn.
Within the timespan of 2 weeks, the team went from ideation to submitting the event proposal and co-ordinating with lecturers. The event was slated to have a maximum registration of 100 people, presenting another challenge that is the lack of manpower to manage said participants, since we are just an SIG.
"Hey, do you wanna help out for this one thing?"
Those kind friends of the NYP AI committee who answered yes to the above joined a makeshift event committee to help us out and mainly be Group Leaders (for each group of participants) at the event. Thanks to an intricate lineup of games, the committee was all hands on-deck to source and prepare logistics in order to ensure that the event ran smooth.
Most event organisers count their lucky stars to have half the actual RSVP during the event as registered on paper. We thought we would be most event organisers, turns out we weren't...
D-Day
The committee rolled in an hour early before event start on a rather warm afternoon. Luckily, we had the respite of the well air-conditioned P1 Convention Centre.
After fixing up slides, checking AV, and spreading out logistics, Shawn ran a dry run for the group leaders to ensure everyone was on the same page. With moments to go before doors opened, I (Prakhar), being the emcee, picked up the mic, blasted upbeat party tunes on the reverberating speakers of the hall and welcomed participants with a smile.
Eyes glued to the group layout on screen, an avalanche of students streamed in towards their respective group leaders and took a seat. To our pleasant surprise, 90 people were in attendance, ready for an action-packed afternoon.
Icebreakers
First up on the menu: some quintessential icebreakers. Groups were left on their own to play a few icebreakers like Name Splat, Enchanted Smackdown and Broken Telephone. Thanks to the exuberant energy of our Group Leaders, the ice melted like it was at Sahara and we were pleased to see lots of laughter and joy.
Some groups even combined to play icebreakers together and enjoyed even more ridiculous moments (one team went from flying to Zumba??).
Delectable snacks like chocolate eclairs were served afterwards for everyone. But, the best part is yet to be, of course.
AI Fundamentals
I introduced some fundamentals of AI to students. Although very high level, these elementary concepts would help de-mystify the AI buzz and give students the much needed tangible understanding of what AI actually is. And that's math.
Beginning with the age-old two types of Machine Learning – Supervised and Unsupervised Learning – I explained the purpose of different kinds of algorithms like decision trees and clustering before giving examples of where they can be used in real life as well. Moving on to the topic everyone's really excited about, I laid out the 101 on Generative AI and the popular tools available on the market people can use.
I encouraged participants to take special note of the brief content as they may need to apply it sooner than they think.
Mass Games
AI Sorcerer Showdown
We wanted to make participants engage with each other instead of staying in their silo group. So, we introduced AI Sorcerer Showdown.
In this mass game, participants were given sashes (strips of garbage bag – we were on budget) that they tug on to their pocket. When the 10-minute timer starts, they can start running around the hall to snatch the sashes of other players to secure a "kill" and thus a point for their group.
Upon being killed, players go to their Group Leader who will quiz them on something that was covered earlier in the AI Fundamentals section. If they answer correctly, they get a second life to get back in the game and try again! The group with the most number of sashes at the end wins!
After a briefing and some strategy time, we started the clock and watched some incredibly crafty footwork happen in the hall. Some teams stayed close in solidarity while others went out to get kills. Killed players that payed attention got back in the game and some stayed till the end as well. Once again, the room lit up with joy and we were pleased to see everyone having fun!
Doodle Dash
Then, everyone settled down and we moved on to the next mass game: Doodle Dash.
In their groups, one phone was passed around where each person had to as quickly and accurately as possible draw something they are told to draw so that an AI could recognise it. Sound familiar? That's right, the website is https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com
Group Leaders counted the number of drawings that got recognised within 5 minutes, adding to their group's points secured in the AI Sorcerer Showdown earlier.
Conclusion
After collating the group points, we announced Cheng Hock's (one of the group leaders) team as the winners! We took a quick photo with the team and their prize, a box of shiny Ferrero Rocher. After a series of QR codes on screen promoting NYP AI, we invited participants to give us feedback on the event.
New Leadership
Allow me to introduce our new EXCO and structure of AY24/25 with this opportune blog post:
- President: Wong Wen Bing (DAAA)
- Vice-President: Prakhar Trivedi (DIT)
- Club Secretary: Cheng Hock (DAAA)
- Head of Events Department: Sarah Zoe Sung (DAAA)
- Head of Community Engagement Department: Shawn Goh (DAAA)
- Head of Publicity Department: Faith Yeo (DAAA)
A huge thank you to the previous EXCO for your contributions to the club and for trusting us to pave the way for more exciting things we can do. Thank you to all the volunteers who helped us out in organising the event; your contributions are much appreciated.
The event was a huge success by any measure: we welcomed a lot of new members and promoted the club among freshmen. NYP AI is glad to have pioneered this first-of-a-kind event among SIGs and we are excited to see what other SIGs might organise with this event type. We hope the event encourages SIGs to step out of the traditional bounds of SIG activities like workshops and more to benefit the student body even more.
Get ready for more from us as well. There's a lot of exciting things we have lined up and we can't wait to see you there.
Photo credits: NYP Photography Club and NYP AI Publicity Department
