MRWEBBS ONLINE: GDG DevFest Southern & Eastern Nigeria

GDG Members at the Event

The year 2017 is believed to be a very interesting year in Nigeria's technology space. It's up to you but I dey pray you say ‘I do’. As for me, coding na gbakam.

We have come a long way from flying in Googlers outside Africa to facilitate our events, to speaker sessions, and today we are using local speakers for even a more technical events across Africa.

The Nigerian technology community is waxing stronger through collaboration and community-powered initiatives. I base my submissions on DevFest 2016 Season experiences across Nigerian Google Developer Groups (GDGs).

Women Techmakers

GDG DevFests are large, community-run events that can offer speaker sessions across multiple product areas, all-day hackathons, code labs, and more. The official DevFest Season runs from September 1 through November 30.

Emem Brownson, Founder AfroPot facilitating Android Session

As a Country Mentor to Google Developer Groups in Nigeria, I worked with my co-Mentor Femi Taiwo, GDG Leads and the Developer Relations Team at Google Aniedi Udo-Obong and Charles Odili to plan and ensured a successful clustered #DevFest16 in Nigeria.

Participants

We came up with strategies to ensure a more technical event by raising the bar a notch higher in terms of technical contents, quality of speakers and presentations, code-labs, Branding and packaging. This landed us with 7 DevFests across Nigeria.

Host Chapters

DevFest16 was held in clusters across geo-political regions in Nigeria.

1. DevFest South West - Lagos
2. DevFest South West – EKSU, Ado-Ekiti
3. DevFest South South and South East – Port Harcourt
4. DevFest North East – Bauchi
5. DevFest North West – Kano
6. DevFest North Central – Abuja
7. DevFest Taraba - Jalingo

We had Delta State DevFest Roadshow, Asaba which was used to create awareness in the newly opened Delta State Innovation Hub.

Aniedi Udo-Obong (Googler), Prosper (GDE) and Hanson (Country Mentor)

Just like last year, we adopted the clustered approach where GDGs within a region came together to organize their own DevFest instead of everyone going to Lagos or having their own individual event in their single chapter. In a situation where a chapter will travel more than 4-5 hours to the hosting chapter, such chapter was encouraged to host their own event.

Participation

This year’s DevFest had 10% increase in women participation. Port Harcourt recorded 1000+ participants, Ekiti State University 600+, Lagos 350 and so on.

Speakers

We had Googlers within Nigeria, Google Developer Experts in Nigeria, Entrepreneurs, Software Engineers and Software Developers who handled various topics and code-labs on Firebase, Android, Progressive Web Apps, Android Studio, AppEngine, Machine Learning, Robotics and Becoming a World Class Developer. Developers and entrepreneurs also demoed their products and startups.

Hanson Johnson - GDG Nigeria Country Mentor

Prof. Nimi Briggs, Former VC UniPort
with Aniedi Udo-Obong, Programme Manager at Google

Segun Famisa, Android Developer at Konga

Jude Ben, Founder ShareCube facilitating Firebase Session on Android

Emem Akpanekpo, Founder/CEO Scholar demoing to Prof. Nimi Briggs

Alexander of SDN

Breakout Session

Benefits

People often ask me, how do you benefit from all this events you organize? My answer is always; I am a social entrepreneur, I pursue innovative ideas with the potential to solve a community problem. As long as the positive impact we are creating is felt, I am good. We also benefited from DevFest as follows:

• We had new GDG members.
• Newbies learned how to get started programming.
• People got associated with mentors
• Entrepreneurs met partners and co-founders
• The quality of our events and delivery got improved from feedback.
• Developers learned how to make their apps smarter with Machine Learning.
• Firebase and Progressive Web Apps were made simple.
• Fans of Android Development smiled home with tools to help them facilitate their learning process even when there is no internet.
• People had a platform to demo their products.
• We made new friends

What Next?

Many people indicated interest to get started programming while some wanted to join the community to have access to tools, right information and people to collaborate with. I will recommend the following in strengthening our local ecosystem:

Fireside Chat

Children of Priqueen International School

• We should come up with strategies to welcome and accommodate women. For instance, event topics should not be too techie to scare female participation.
• We should be more open in our dealings within the participating chapters.
• Inter-chapter collaborations should be encouraged.
• There is need for a national virtual community to accommodate developers, encourage collaboration and innovation.
• Each chapter should have a sustainable system that can welcome newbies and make them intermediates.
• Events should be planned to accommodate all categories of developers from Newbies, Intermediates to experts.
• Intermediates and Experts should not be ignored either as they are in critical stages of either getting jobs or bootstrapping their startups.
• What else am I suppose to recommend? Please add yours in the comment section.

I leave you with this reunion piece by PSquare because of my wish for you in 2017 tech year.