It is a fresh beginning, and Yarl IT Hub decided to kick off the New Year by inspiring those with dreams. By now, the Yarl IT Hub is no longer a strange name. But in case you’re lost, the Yarl IT Hub is a non-profitable organization. Its mission is to make Jaffna the next Silicon Valley. Founded by a few like-minded IT professionals, the organization is now very well renowned in the industry. This due to its famous hackathon – the Yarl Geek Challenge, and its regular meetups.
When 2017 dawned on us, the Yarl IT Hub decided to kick off the New Year in style. The organization held its first meetup on the first week of the year itself. But this wasn’t the usual technical meetup it regularly holds. No, this was a meetup on leadership. As arranged the speakers of the meetup were Randhula De Silva – the SME Development Programs at GiZ, Professor Prema Arasu – Kansas State University and Jurgen Samuel – the CEO of iQuest.
The meetup began with Thusyanthan Arulsodhy, one of the members at Yarl IT Hub, welcomed the audience. He then shared with the audience four important characteristics of leadership. These four characteristics were: bravery, generosity, wisdom and persevering energy. Following his introduction, the audience were asked to introduce themselves. This was to help the speakers to make the sessions more interactive. Afterward, we saw Randhula De Silva take the stage.
No matter what position we hold in life, be that a workplace, universities or colleges, we all have a role of leadership in certain instances,” began Randhula De Silva, who was the first speaker of the event. She went on to share examples of great leaders through history. Randula then shared with everyone the one common factor that made them great leaders: communication.
“All the leaders we look up at in our times, be that your father, mother, your university Vice- Chancellor, or even your boss who inspires you. How do they motivate and inspire you? By their communication, “continued Randula on her topic for the day. To be a better leader, one has to communicate and communication is not easy as it seems to be. Her presentation focused on the voice and body language a speaker should have. Randula concluded her session with a few interactive games that helped the audience better understand how to be better communicators.
The stage was then taken by Prof. Prema Arasu who is a professor at Kansas State University. She began her presentation on Academic Leadership and the need for new paradigms in education. She shared her experiences on working with several students around the world and shared with the audience on how one could identify oneself. She also spoke of how they could be a leader during your academics, and what they needed to do to follow to be a leader.
Read the rest of Yathusha Ulakentheran‘s article at ReadMe
