Women of DevC Lokoja IWD Celebration 2020

Mar 28, 2020

Developer Circles from Facebook is a program designed to create locally organized communities for developers. These communities are meant to educate and provide a forum for discussion and knowledge sharing around topics that are top-of-mind for developers in a particular market.

To build upon the United Nation’s official International Women’s Day theme in 2020 “#EachforEqual” We hosted an International Women’s Day event aimed at celebrating women in various roles in the tech space. The event was originally scheduled to hold physically, but due to the evolving public health concerns related to COVID-19, we decided to cancel the Women of DevC Lokoja - IWD Celebration physical event. Meanwhile, we hosted the event virtually via Zoom and Google Meets (a remote video conferencing app).

From the over 200k DevC members in our Circles worldwide, only 20% are female. We want to focus on increasing female membership and interest in tech not only during IWD’s month but year-round by starting conversations within the community to discuss these challenges that female members face. The focus of this event was to celebrate women in various roles in the tech space and help others not in the space see reasons why they should and how they can get started.

How did it go?

On 28th March 2020, we had our first virtual event at Facebook Developer Circle: Lokoja to celebrate the International Women’s Day 2020. We originally planned to record the entire event (which we did) and upload to YouTube but due to some disruptions we experienced on the call, the record audio and quality was disrupted hence we won’t be uploading to YouTube anymore :(. Meanwhile, some speakers pre-recorded their talk and we have attached them to this article alongside resources and slides from other speakers.

We had several talk sessions and Q/As which featured amazing speakers who shared their story, history and encouraged the attendees to get started with tech.

Talk One

Bolaji Ayodeji introduced the audience to Facebook Developer Circles and the amazing work they have been doing to support the community in Lokoja, Kogi State.

Talk Two

Angie Jones (Senior Developer Advocate at Applitools) gave her talk on “Computer Programming: Not Just a Man’s Sport” where she introduced the attendees to the basics of programming.

Talk Video

Talk Three

Eunice Emmanuel-Bagi (Co-founder Mentor-Box) gave her talk on “Leveraging on innovation to create ecosystems for technology to thrive in underserved communities” where she introduced the attendees to the new innovation hub and co-working space launched in Lokoja, Kogi State.

Talk Four

Gift Egwuenu (Frontend Engineer & Developer Evangelist at Datopian) gave her talk on “Personal Branding for Software Engineers” where she introduced the attendees to the benefits of personal branding and how they can build one.

Talk Video

Talk Five

Fatimat Gbajabiamila (Software Engineer at Apolitical) age her talk on “Building your career with the tech community” where she explained how she got started in tech with the help of the community and how the attendees can leverage on community-based programs and resources to learn.

%[https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/connecting-the-dots-a-story-of-learning-to-code-and-giving-back-c8867cdffcb1/]

Talk Six

Ada Nduka Oyom Founder She Code Africa gave her talk where she shared her story on how she got into tech and the amazing work she’s doing at She Code Africa.

%[https://townhall.hashnode.com/women-in-tech-ada-nduka-oyom-ck7vibrv701kkzis16sr037ca]

Talk Seven

Nenne Adaora Nwodo (Software Engineer at Microsoft) gave her talk on “Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly. Go From Newbie To Experienced Developer” where she gave a detailed guide on how to grow as a developer.

Speaker Slides

• Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly. Go From Newbie To Experienced Developer

%[https://speakerdeck.com/adoranwodo/crawl-walk-run-fly-go-from-newbie-to-experienced-developer]

Speakers Resources

• MentorBox - Co-working space in Lokoja, Kogi State.

%[https://mentorbox.ng/]

• The HNG Internship - A 3-month remote internship designed to find and develop the most talented software developers.

%[http://hng.tech/]

• DevCareer - A non-profit Tech organization to support the rising Tech Ecosystem in Africa.

%[https://devcareer.io/]

• Founders and Coders GitHub - Learning resources and curriculum.

%[https://github.com/foundersandcoders]

• Webmaker - A tool for practising HTML, CSS, and js offline.

%[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-maker/lkfkkhfhhdkiemehlpkgjeojomhpccnh?hl=en]

• FavCode54 - A tech initiative that aims to Teach, Mentor, & Build the next generation of African Software Developers.

%[https://favcode54.org/]

• She Code Africa - Celebrating and empowering Women in Tech across Africa.

%[https://www.shecodeafrica.org/]

• Personal Branding for Software Engineers

%[https://speakerdeck.com/lauragift21/personal-branding-for-software-engineers]

• Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly. Go From Newbie To Experienced Developer

%[https://adorahack.com/from-newbie-to-experienced-dev]

Highlights and Attendee Feedbacks

%[https://twitter.com/D_kingnelson/status/1243878261756694528]

%[https://twitter.com/TabithaKavyu/status/1244081238530568192]

%[https://twitter.com/TabithaKavyu/status/1244080899681128448]

%[https://twitter.com/iaonyango/status/1243884280222277632]

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Thanks to everyone who contributed to the success of this event: Facebook, our sponsors, our amazing speakers, our friends at DevC Uyo and everyone who attended the event.

Join Facebook Developer Circle: Lokoja today, to collaborate, learn, and code with other local developers today.