Yes we can, even with a can phone.
We see the first DrupalCamps pop up in Africa, before bigger events where limited to South Africa, now the first pop up in Western Africa, in this case Nigeria.
Although there has been some issues in the news on Nigeria in the past years, Lagos city is actually not so dangerous and growing in economy as well as Drupal Community. Most of the yellow countries in the map below are stable and growing steadily in economy as well as opportunity.
Source: https://safearound.com/africa/
After internet research and calling our Royal Dutch Airlines, it seemed that even operators, and managers are forced by the system to treat me as a tourist. So i needed to stay for at least 7 days, else the “computer” would charge double the money for an early return. Thus i booked the flight online, for even the employees can not provide a better offer then the website. Also i reserved a airBNB and applied digitally for the visa.
Then something amazingly auckward happened. Ten days before the event, the dates changed, to +1 month as well as venue. So now i had to cancel and rebook all, since my visa dates became incorrect and would never be valid.
I chose to fully reschedule, cancel the Nigeria plans, for now, and go for Drupal Camp Baltics in Vilinis next week.
Starting this adventure has taught me tree important lessons:
1) How we organise events in Europe is completely different then in Africa, so it requires more patience from my perspective.
2) Exchange of knowledge and open source technology can help to achieve better results everywhere.
3) Taste of culture and experience is in this case for me a missed opportunity, but i’ll be back later.
4) Yellow fever injections are not funny, but last for 30 years :)
I sincerely hope the Nigerian community keeps on growing, as well as all the local communities in the world, specifically in Africa so we can visit, enjoy the culture and speak there as well.
At DrupalCon Vienna we started the bridges initiative, this is not limited to chat but now also includes the technology to stream presentations between meet-up’s, camps and conferences.
Since we are all in the same timezone and the language of the software is Engish, we can do great things with Drupal and open source.
