Here is what I did through last month #1 | September release
Welcome to my September newsletter, adventurer! Yeah, the fall has arrived 🍂
Do you like the fall? Such a beautiful season, isn’t it? Oh, in any case, let’s not get away from the topic. In this newsletter, I'll talk about interesting events and things, as well as my experiences in Turkey and at TKS. Let’s take a look at what has happened since September 🚀
My name is Huseyn, and I'm a 16-year-old entrepreneur and game developer who is really passionate about innovation and creating new and complex stuff. Since I was twelve years old, I have been interested in programming and have created a number of startups and projects. I currently work as the community manager at GamePons, as a young member at The New York Academy of Sciences, and as a member of TKS's Cohort '24. Aside from that, I enjoy working on low-level projects like graphics programming and assisting others to advance in their careers. I'll be sharing interesting things that happened throughout my journey and my monthly experiences with you through these emails. You can get more information about me via my personal website. I hope you have fun!
Main events 📅
(let's start big, yeah?)
Member at The Knowledge Society 💡
Last month, I attended my first session at TKS; that was a whole new and amazing experience for me! In case you don’t know, The Knowledge Society is the world's top global accelerator for teens, which is committed to developing the mindsets of high schoolers and assisting them to be successful individuals. Interacting with like-minded peers, talking and getting feedback from different coaches, and participating in events and contests are the best features that make TKS unique.
In TKS, we have an important quote: “Unconventional paths lead to unconventional success." When I first heard it, I was like, “That’s exactly my life motto." I have always been the supporter of this statement, and I’m trying to reflect this in my life. Since that time, I have attended several sessions and learned lots of new topics. These sessions are greatly developing my mindset day by day and help me to think about things differently. Besides these, by attending one-on-one coaching meetings and braindates, I’m also enhancing my knowledge and getting to know new perspectives ⚡
Business trip to Turkey 🇹🇷
I've been in Ankara, Turkey, for 5 days, and I can say just one thing about it: an awesome and beautiful place to see and tour! The people there are highly cultural and also intellectual! Also, Ankara is one of the safest places in Turkey. During my time there, I got to know the startup ecosystem of there, met different successful startup founders and mentors, and saw amazing places with the help of Viveka, one of the most prominent strategic innovation consultancy companies in Turkey.
Firstly, we visited some of the most advanced innovation hubs like Bilkent Cyberpark, METU, and Ankara Tekmer. Besides these, I also had a great chance to meet with founders from successful startups from Meta3D Company (Bilgihan Söylev), Onlock (Çağrı Mehmet Çalış), StartUp Deal (Haydar Külekçi), Actimoo, and Basil. I gained invaluable insights and feedback from them, which greatly enhanced my knowledge in this field. Also, I have participated in the workshops held by Viveka and tried to solve several types of problems startups face in specific situations, like difficulties in supply chain, marketing, and so on. Can you imagine how hard it is? Yeah, it's a bit difficult, but of course there are infinite solutions to infinite problems. When I was working on these problems, I really appreciated the power of doing some in-depth research, analyzing different competitors and alternatives, and making decisions via these analyses.
A huge thanks to the Viveka team and all the ecosystem players who supported this amazing visit! Highly recommended ✅
Other activities 🏅
(doing some hobbies is also essential)
Programming 🖥️
Developing and innovating new and complex things are some of my most interesting and enjoyable hobbies. My game engine, Ferx Engine, had additional development and feature additions last month. I admit that dealing with such a low-level project can be hard sometimes, but it’s fun and enjoyable!
As of right now, I had implemented basic features like rendering some graphics, importing shaders, utilizing camera for movement and rotation, and manipulating objects using UI. To achieve these results, I have used a bunch of libraries for window creation (GLFW), modern OpenGL functions (GLAD), solving complex math equations (GLM), and creating a GUI (ImGUI). You can freely move and rotate in the viewport using keyboard and mouse, change transform and color of the objects in the Inspector window, and even add your own unique objects (as Tony Robbins said, the only limit is your imagination)!
My current goal is to develop the engine to the point that people can make games using it. To achieve this, I’ll add and implement new features like lightning, project and file management, ECS architecture, and many more. Pretty cool, right?
Here is a link for the GitHub repo and some frames from it:
Management and organization 🗃️
Doing strong activities and hobbies is perfect, but so is managing your time and organizing tasks!
For time management, I often use my favorite tool, Habitica. It’s awesome software that gamifies the process and makes it a lot more engaging. The trick is like that; you can gain experience, fill your mana, and level up if you do the tasks that you assigned, but you will lose health if you don’t. So, you need to be careful about that, because you can only fill your health if you level up, and leveling up becomes harder as you advance. Like in life, the more you improve, the less tolerant you are to the mistakes.
For organizing my notes and saving helpful resources, I love to use Notion. It has very great options and features to control everything. I often use the toggle list feature to keep my notes clean and well-organized. You can also use different templates to achieve what you want to do and see. And that’s not all! Notion announced it’s specific AI, which is awesome to chat and get assistance about your writings.
Have you ever used any of these softwares before? Let me know about your thoughts.
That’s all?
That’s it for today, but it’s not the end; I’ll post about my experiences and the interesting things I’ve faced every month. So, let’s continue this journey together, adventurer!
You can check out my personal website for more information 👤