APIE Camp 2026 marked my return to the program, this time not as a learner, but as a teaching assistant. Throughout the week-long camp in Surabaya, I mentored participants during hands-on laboratory sessions covering network deployment, virtualization with Proxmox, cybersecurity, DNS, IoT, and cloud computing. Beyond assisting with technical challenges, I helped prepare the laboratory infrastructure, configured networking equipment, and supported participants as they translated theoretical concepts into working systems. The experience allowed me to contribute to the learning environment while strengthening my own understanding through teaching and collaboration.
Returning to APIE felt strangely familiar. A year earlier, I had been the one asking questions, trying to understand why my configurations weren't working and hoping I hadn't broken anything. This time, I found myself standing on the other side of the room, answering those same questions and helping others through the very challenges I once faced. It was a reminder of how much I had grown in just a year.
Most of the participants were eager to learn, which made the experience incredibly rewarding. Whether we were deploying campus networks, configuring virtual machines, setting up DNS servers, or integrating ESP32 devices with AWS, there was always a sense of curiosity in the room. Some exercises went smoothly, while others required a bit of debugging and patience, but seeing everything finally come together made the effort worthwhile. I especially enjoyed the IoT and cloud sessions, where networking, embedded systems, and cloud services converged into a single project.
One of my favorite moments came on the final day, when we visited Telkom's data center in Kebalen, Surabaya. Seeing how enterprise infrastructure is operated and maintained in the real world was both fascinating and inspiring. It served as a reminder that the technologies we had been teaching throughout the week were not merely laboratory exercises, but the foundations of systems that millions of people rely on every day.
Looking back, the most meaningful part of the camp wasn't solving technical problems. It was watching participants gain confidence in themselves. Seeing someone who was initially hesitant successfully complete a configuration or finally understand a difficult concept was just as satisfying as solving the problem myself. Returning to APIE as a teaching assistant made me realize that learning doesn't end when you become capable of teaching. In many ways, that's when a different kind of learning begins.