First Meeting Experiences

Throughout the past month and a half, we have been to three meetings. Overall, I think that they all went well and the people we helped benefited greatly. We held two workshops at Summerfield Tigard and one workshop at Summerplace Gresham. Our first meeting was at Summerfield and I could tell that both of us were nervous. When we walked in, it felt like all eyes were on us, and we had to present well. It led to a great deal of nervousness. When we began presenting, we were stopped because we were too quiet and were not enunciating well. However, as the presentation went on, we overcame those jitters. This happened when we went to Summerplace as well. When I was helping people personally, I felt a lot of gratification because of how thankful the seniors were when I solved their problems. At Summerfield, I helped a few people with managing their photos and taking pictures; and at Summerplace, I helped numerous people with their passwords and management. They thought that I was some sort of genius even though to me, their issue had a simple fix. One thing I noticed however, was that many of them had personal problems that were not related to technology. There were instances where some of them wanted me to set up their fingerprint, but no matter how hard they tried, they could not due to their shaky hands. This also was the case when they were typing their passwords or looking things up. Oftentimes they were pressing wrong keys, and were not able to type in their passwords. This really stood out to me and made me feel helpless because this was a problem that I could not even attempt to solve. This stood out to me heavily because it further reinforced the problems of the digital divide, and what YourTechQ is striving to accomplish. Overall, these experiences were enjoyable and made me and the people I helped feel good, and I will most definitely help more people as time goes on.

- Shomik Sen