Here's the letter from Gregorio – the initiator and main organiser of the party, where he explains where the idea came from:

"Hi everyone, I’m Gregorio Palamà a student of this last Udacity’s Scholarship!

I’ve just finished my Nanodegree a few days ago and I can loudly say that I’m still very excited about it. I’ve learned so much, I’ve met so many good people, I became friends with many of them, and above all, through this Scholarship I’ve learned that everything is #bettertogether!

It is better together because the real strength of Udacity’s Scholarships lays on the community and time students spend together in learning and supporting each other. The classes’ contents are great, but what makes me feel even happier about the opportunity that Udacity and Google gave us with this Scholarship is the community behind, starting from the Community Managers, to the Mentors, the Teachers, the Reviewers and finally us, the Students Community.

If this Udacity machine is working, it’s because of us all, because of all the effort we put in learning, and all the challenges we have faced to finish our Nanodegrees. All of this can’t end silently, right? We have to celebrate, loudly, and, more importantly, TOGETHER!

How it all begun

Back in February, when the second phase of the Scholarship started, I came up with an idea: buy a scrapbook, organize meetups, meet other students, take pictures to stick in the scrapbook, and send the scrapbook over to other students. The main goal was to encourage students all around the EMEA area to meet and share their knowledge, experiences, and thoughts. Udacity has been awesome at teaching us how to be Android developers, FrontEnd developers, Mobile Web Specialists, but knowledge is nothing without sharing our experiences with other people. Since April, when I bought the scrapbook, it has traveled a lot already: Turin, London, Sheffield, Dublin! Its final step will be Berlin, and here I am going to explain how.

The Graduation Party

As I said above, the scrapbook is going to end its journey with our Graduation Party Meetup, so sign the date: September the 8th, 2018, in Berlin. Be’Kech Anticafé will host us and it will be the right moment to meet each others, after 9 months of virtual community. Some of us have already met during the Scholarship, but this will be the first international meetup, opened to all the students from all the Scholarship’s tracks. The scrapbook will end its journey there. We will add pics, signs, thoughts, and donate it to Udacity, that will take good care of it and use it as a witness for future Scholarships. Oh, did I mention that our Community Managers, Magda and Joanna, will be there as well?

How will it be

Awesome! Oh wait, that’s my idea of it, but I really hope it will be great for everybody. The main goal of the event will be to discuss what comes after the Nanodegree. Udacity taught us a lot of technical stuff. Moreover, Udacity has taught us that doing something together is way better than doing it alone. After the Nanodegree, what will we be doing? How will we keep this great community alive? What are we going to do for ourselves, for our careers? We will talk about all of this, together!

Denny Casabianca and Nynke de Boer, both students of this Scholarship, are helping me organizing everything, from finding the venue for this event, to defining the Agenda and getting everything ready on time.

We are going to be very lucky, because someone so valuable and skilled like Jose Nieto has offered to be at the Party and give us a speech on “career change”. From a point of view of someone that started like us, with a Scholarship, I bet this will be very inspiring for many of us.

As fresh graduated students, it is pretty common to be afraid of everything, and we may experience fear quite often: fear of being rejected, fear of facing interviewers, fear of speaking in public. Henna Singh, another student from this Scholarship, will talk about how to overcome these fears, and she will soon get in touch with the community to get about our shared fears and create the most suitable talk for us, so stay tuned on this.

Last but not least, since we started by saying #bettertogether, I will be ending the day by hosting a co-creation space that will help us all in understanding more deeply how strong is the power of teamwork and how far we can go if we feed our relationship and keep our connections even after these last 9 months together.

Is it all?

Not at all! There will be surprises as well, but also a lot to celebrate, a lot to discuss, a lot of time to get to party and know each others. Please, feel free to bring your cameras, your Polaroids, everything you think that could make this experience better!"