Still remember the mini-buzz about the “Do you use the Internet” tagline?

By the end of December 2014, Shelly proposed having an event around the theme. Right after new year she got into the preps and all, and managed in organizing an awesome event. She announced the same in the MIU mailing list and the event was RSVP-only. So, you couldn’t barge into without having confirmed your participation prior to the deadline.

The event happened yesterday at Ebène Accelerator and we thank Arnaud and Poonum for arranging the same.

Shelly opened the event by welcoming everyone, thanking all those who helped her, explaining the aim of the event and showing a video made by Zuber. The video started with a musical compilation of the selfies we’d posted during the “hello gorgeous” campaign and then he interviewed a couple of students on the University of Mauritius campus. Students briefly said what they use the Internet for. Some of the comments were hilarious. ^^ Well, thumbs up Zuber, it was a nice video.

We then in-turn quickly introduced ourselves and the rule was to mention at least one hobby which had nothing to do with coding, computer stuffs, Internet and all. Duh! That was difficult but it turned out to be fun. When a geek says he cooks in his free time, indeed the room fills with laughter.

Out of the 16 people who confirmed their participation, 9 showed up (excluding Shelly, Neha, Arnaud and SM). Arnaud joined in later and he was most welcomed. He helped us get a venue after all. Thanks buddy ^^

The list of participants was as follows:

Afterwards Neha did a nice “education session”. She went through a quick presentation since the time of arrival of computers in Mauritian homes, with dial-up connections, instant messaging, the debut of social networks with Skyrock and Hi5 and then landed to the actual era.

Random cards were then distributed to participants. The cards contained a topic and three questions that helped the person express his/her opinion on the same. Irshaad and Sadhveer got to talk about Skype vs Viber, Alex talked about Facebook & Twitter, Nirvan and Nadim got the topic of online payment facilities and Paypal, Pritvi talked about Wikipedia and Search Engines, Mousaffar gave his opinion on Torrents, Aslam talked about Behance & Linkedin, Tiz gave some nice stats about Whatsapp & Snapchat, while I quickly talked about Phishing & hacked accounts.

It was cool to get 4 mins quick-info about the various topics. Shelly timed it well so as no once crosses their 4 mins allocated. We then had a break and followed a Question & Answer session. It was an interactive moment where we shared our views and questions we had on the topics that were presented.

SM then made a summary of the event and highlighted some important points that came up during the discussions.

The event ended at 12h30. Everybody thanked Shelly for the awesome preps. Some of us went home, while a little group went for lunch.