The Southampton University Electronics and Computer Science Society (ECSS) is a student ran society for all ~2,000 students studying in the department of Electronics and Computer Science. The society runs a wide variety of events for it’s members ranging from social events, industry talks with the society’s sponsors, and competitions such as programming competitions and hackathons.
I joined the ECSS committee in April 2016 and throughout my year term as Secretary I was responsible for organising committee meetings, assisting in social media communications, and working alongside other committee members to ensure the smooth running of the society’s various events. I was also responsible for taking minutes during meetings, assigning tasks to the rest of the committee, and keeping track of the society’s progress. By acting as the “glue” connecting the committee together, I made the committee work efficiently as a team.
In April 2017 I took the role of President which involved maintaining relationships with the faculty, sponsors and other external sources, as well as chairing meetings within the society. During my term, I implemented and oversaw a vast amount of improvements to the society:
- Increased attendances at all events, in particular the industry events with society sponsors had a twofold increase in average attendance.
- Encouraged a wider variety of social events for the society's members, ranging from bar nights and dessert parlour trips to events such as film nights and quizzes.
- Directed the running of the society's first hackathon, titled Campus Hack. 38 participants took part in a 24 hour coding challenge to produce an application to improve life on campus. This was organised in collaboration with the society sponsors J. P. Morgan and talent.io, and required months of preparation.
- Oversaw the overhaul of the society's website, which involved adding new pages and content to better reflect the range of activities and achievements within the society.
- Increased MSc engagement through the running of a high level talk on biometrics by a local lecturer, with plans in place to follow up on this in the next academic year.
- Organised and ran the department's induction week of events for 500 first year undergraduates, titled Jumpstart. This ranged from delivering introductory talks and Q&A sessions, managing admin and laboratory inductions, running an all day City Challenge to introduce the new students to Southampton, and running evening socials.
- Introduced and maintained an event performance spreadsheet, to collect data on all of the society's events. This will help determine if progress is being made from year to year.
- Created various reports on the society's largest events, handover documents, and a five year growth plan for the society.
ECSS President 2018/2019
