PAI Day 2023💻 🤖 🌐

Did we just celebrate 3 long awaited international days? Absolutely! 🎉

Now here's a longer answer for that question:

On March 25th 2023, we celebrated a unique event (mashup of multiple international days) at Foka STEM Center, which we called PAI Day 2023; P: Processing Community Day, A: Arduino Day, and I: IoT Day. The goal of the event was to inspire our attendees enough to explore Processing, Arduino, and the Internet of Things on their own and to understand how each of these technologies, including their combination, can be implemented in the real world.

A Brief Overview

This event was designed to be engaging, entertaining and educational and consisted of an opening speech, three workshops, showcases, a tea talk/break, Q&A session & an award ceremony.

Opening Speech

Abel, lead organizer of the event & opening speaker for the PAI Day event, during which he gave a brief overview of the three topics that made up the day — Processing, Arduino, and IoT. He highlighted the importance of these technologies to solve real world problems. He went on to describe the events that were planned for the day, which included the 3 workshops, showcases, an exciting hackathon that regretfully couldn't happen because of lack of time, and a break/talk in between. This opening speech set the stage for an engaging, entertaining & educational afternoon ahead.

Workshop I: Game of Life

The first workshop of PAI Day was led by Dawit, who before starting the coding session gave an introduction to Conway's "Game of Life" with an amazing presentation. He went on to explain the rules governing the simulation, which is a cellular automaton that follows simple rules to create complex patterns. Dave then proceeded to code the simulation using Processing. He walked the participants through the different steps involved in developing the simulation, explaining each piece of code and how it related to the rules of the game. We were able to follow along and observe how the patterns evolved on the screen. This workshop showed that basic principles of programming can be used to easily create dynamic and complex visual effects with Processing. By the end of the workshop participants were encouraged to explore & tinker with Processing's visual arts capabilities on their own.

Workshop II: Processing for the Web (p5.js)

The second workshop of PAI Day was led by Yohannes, who introduced participants to the world of p5.js. He then explained how this javascript library can be used to create interactive websites and showed an easy to understand overview using p5's convenient online editor. He then proceeded to showcase a project that he had built with p5 which acted as a green screen. He demonstrated how this project could be used to capture an image of a person and then superimpose it onto a different background. Yewe then invited participants onto the stage to try it for themselves, giving them the opportunity to see themselves in front of a green screen and then change their background to a variety of different scenes. This workshop was a great opportunity to learn about the power of p5.js and how it can be used to create fun and interactive web applications.

p5.js bringing Processing to Web development

Workshop III: Breaking MonkeyType

The third & last workshop of our afternoon was led by Eyosias, who focused on the Internet of Things(IoT) using Processing. He showed how Processing can be connected to the internet using libraries like Selenium, which allows for web automation. To demonstrate this, Eyos set up a code-along with the aim of helping participants develop a Processing program that would break MonkeyType's wpm limit. We were successful in breaking the limit, showcasing how powerful Processing is for web automation and how it can be used to control devices and automate tasks, making it a valuable tool for any project involving IoT.

Showcases

The Showcase session of PAI Day was a much-anticipated part of the event, promising participants a chance to experience a variety of projects created with the Processing. From beautiful visualization projects like Heart Curves and Mandelbrot Sets to complex projects that combined colorful & beautiful graphics, smooth 👌 animations with logic to develop games that featured a sleek and modern design like Nexus (a typing game) and a remake of the famous game 2048. Abel's session was a great opportunity for us to see firsthand the versatility of Processing and the potential it has in various fields.

From data visualization to game development Processing has it all.

Tea break/Discussion

This session provided a much-needed break from the intensive workshop sessions, giving participants the chance to unwind, relax, and indulge in delicious snacks. It also provided a platform for a lively ("vivacious") and informative discussion about Arduino. Participants had the opportunity to learn, ask questions, and exchange ideas. A very special thank you for our generous sponsors Senay Authentic & Poco Things for making it possible.

A table with delicious snacks on it, and a lively discussion around it.

Thankfully no one mistook an Arduino sensor for a snack .

A robot built with Arduino that serves snacks? Project for the next Arduino Day? Maybe :)

Q&A session and the Award Ceremony

Due to a delayed start coupled with the workshops taking longer than expected, we unfortunately ran out of time for the planned hackathon.

Luckily, a certain organizer quickly came up with another event to keep the energy going — a Q&A session.

This unexpected session turned out to be just as, if not more, engaging and fun as the other parts of PAI Day. Participants eagerly raised their hands to answer questions related to a list of "new vocabulary words" from our book club. It was a great way to end the day and test everyone's memory 😏 in a fun way.

I bet they could memorize this in order in under 5 minutes

The word was "procrastinate", ironically it had the most number of active participants.

As the Q&A session came to a close, it was time for an award ceremony. Prizes were awarded in the form of to 6 participants who answered the most questions. It was our way of showing our appreciation for their enthusiasm and participation throughout the day.

The success of the awards ceremony and PAI Day as a whole wouldn't have been possible without our Senay Authentic & Poco Things. We are beyond grateful for their dedication in providing the books and delivering them to us, ensuring that our participants received a well-deserved reward.

Our Thank Yous 🙏

Last but not least we'd like to express our heartfelt thank yous to the individuals and companies without whom PAI Day wouldn't have happened.

Individuals: Abel Wondafrash, Abraham Wondafrash, Dawit Mengistu, Eyosias Tamirat, Kidist Mengistu, Mikiyas Gebi & Yohannes Legessu.

Companies/Organizations:

Foka STEM Center & STEM Power: for providing a venue and required materials.
Senay Authentic & Poco Things: purchase and delivery of required products for the event, particularly for the tea break and the awards sessions.

Thank you very much for making PAI Day possible!

A Special Announcement🤔?

Congrats!, you've made it this far. Well I hope you did, cause you don't want to miss this one.

Seeing PAI Day's great success, by "great success" we mean since we agreed to organize this event 2 days ago (March 23). We thought that this day would be a simple one not having more than 9-10 participants because of the very very short notice. Well *takes a deep breath* we were very wrong. And this "mistake" made us very ecstatic.

This was clearly a very long read and I don't wanna burden you with more because of my over dramatic nature, so long story short we're hoping to celebrate each international day separately next year. Meaning we're gonna have PCD (Processing Community Day), Arduino Day and IoT Day next year.

One last thing, please?

By this time next year we would've celebrated Arduino Day already. Hopefully it was a success, and I'd have posted a better blog ontime.