2018 — The year it happened!
Welcome to my story. I am not a great writer. I definitely prefer talking but I got a few of my friends to put this together for me. I present to you my year in review.
I thought long and hard about a title for this before finally agreeing that things definitely happened for me last year. See how excited I am doing one of the things I love
Tech Exploits
When I say tech, I mean my exploits in the tech world. Tech also covers my work but I will be focusing majorly on my exploits in the tech world.
Last year was when I really started programming — programming in Java, with ALC, that is Andela Learning Community by Andela and Google but this year, we continued with the ALC program in January. By the time we started the new year, there was a new year challenge to complete the course to a certain point. Learning was on Udacity and I was doing Android Development. This was at the beginning of the year.
I was getting pretty good in Android, then two months later, I got into ALC with Microsoft. I was able to learn more about Angular, React and other frontend and JavaScript skills that are important these days. Down the line, by October, Andela mailed participants that were able to finish the ALC with Microsoft Challenge. There was the first challenge which I finished and there was the second challenge which was so tough to finish but those that finished were going to qualify to write Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) exams. I qualified to write the exams and we did a one-week bootcamp before finally writing the exams.
I was so scared on the day of my exam. I was literally scared that I was going to fail but eventually, I didn’t fail. I passed! Glory be to God! I passed the exam and that’s how I became a Microsoft Certified Professional.
During the year as well, I did more of WordPress. I did more of core WordPress stuffs and I made sure I engross myself in the communities of people that think alike like me so I don’t feel like an alien and I don’t feel alone which I’m going to still explain well in the community part of this 2018 year in review series.
I joined CodeLagos as a facilitator in Batch 4 of the program as an instructor and I have enjoyed every step of the journey in helping to teach one million Lagosians how to code.
I received this nice award from LAYE board this year. It made me see the scale of work I had done.
Sometime in the year, I joined AI Saturdays, Abeokuta Group to learn about AI and what I can do with it. I learnt about DialogFlow too, and how to create conversational experiences with Chatbots using DialogFlow and I also spoke on it at DevFest Ajah this year.
Community
In this part, let’s talk about community development. This year, one of the biggest things I did was that I started the year 2018 with no ideas of what I wanted to do for the community. I wasn’t part of any community per se except the ones I was part of on Facebook. I used to run a social media automation community on Facebook and I knew that for me to do the kind of scaling I wanted to do, I needed to make more money for myself.
When I started programming this year with Andela Learning Community (ALC), I met a lot of people both in the Google and Microsoft tracks, who I was able to work with. Subsequently, I joined Google Developers Group, Unilag. I began by learning with them. I learnt some skills there and later on, I became a mentor in GDG. GDG is now Developer Student Club (DSC) and I’m currently one of their mentors in DSC.
Earlier this year, I did something. After I joined the Google Developer Groups community, I didn’t know how to code but I really wanted to host something. So, I applied to Google to host a competition called HashCode 2018 and my hub was selected. Apparently, we were the only hub that hosted the event in Lagos because Andela and CCHub pulled out of hosting at the last minute. I was so proud to champion it. That was where I met Osaz Eyyh. Osaz was the guy that helped me secure the venue that was used. The event started late in the evening because it was an international event that went on late into the night. I also met Bakare Emmanuel, Hope, Ekene Ashinze, Victor and a couple of other folks who are Lords but didn’t really know that they were top coders that one should associate with.
Later in the year, I got accepted into GeneralKofo Leadership Program (GLP), I decided to choose my project as MushinCode, a project where I get to teach Mushin residents how to code for free. Due to time and resource constraints, I decided to make the program online. Our Program Managers MARY ABIODUN and Okeowo Abayomi have been phenomenal. We have been able to successfully train 25 people to code in Mushin for free. We are looking to scale this year because it is a 5-year vision.
After I spoke at WordCamp Lagos 2018, I decided that I wanted to also contribute and help run WordPress so I began to contribute on the Slack group and on the Whatsapp group. Over the year, I was able to help host at least 3 meetups. Right now, I’m also a co-organizer of the WordPress Lagos community and I host meetups for WordPress Lagos.
As part of community, I’m part of the volunteers that helped to pull off GDG DevFest Lagos. In addition, I joined the Smartest Under-20 folks in Lagos. There, I met a lot of people who are young, smart and doing crazy stuff.
I have once been a part of PageCarton bootcamp but this year renewed my interest in Page Carton and I was able to build my first PageCarton theme. I also wrote a PageCarton plugin. Ayoola Folola is doing a nice work in the community. I couldn’t make it to the PageCarton conference but I was really impressed with what they were able to pull off and the partnerships they were able to strike with the limited time and resources they have. In 2019, I’m definitely open to doing more with PageCarton and will be helping them grow the more.
I also got accepted into The Young Professional Bootcamp, YPB is a new initiative of The Platform Nigeria powered by Covenant Christian Centre. The amazing people I was able to network with and the experience is one I am forever going to treasure. And I also met my surname-sake: Akinjobi Balikis there.
And there is KwaraBuild — October 1st, 2018, we had the biggest conference ever in the North Central part of Nigeria. We were planning to use the Kwara State Banquet Hall which the Kwara State Government had already given us for use but on the D-day of the event, the government decided to use the hall for an event so it was hijacked from us. That morning of the event, we began to look for a hall to use. 1,300 people eventually came for the event. I am so glad that we were able to host the event because it has opened so many other doors for us. Under immense pressure, we pulled off KwaraBuild. You can read about it here.
Finance
I sincerely hope I haven’t bored you at this point. In this series, let’s talk about finance.
This part is definitely dominated by Piggybank. Piggybank is a very sweet tool I love and it can be used to save automatically from your normal bank account straight into your Piggybank account. Early in the year, I started making some money but because I like experimenting on things like servers, plugins, themes, I kept buying every one of them once I had the money and I didn’t have any amount of money to specifically save. Eventually, I met Piggybank and I began to save with Piggybank.
Within the year, I was able to save toward the goal of getting a MacBook of which I was able to raise the total money for it. I also used the money from Piggybank.ng to process my International Passport, process travel expenses of some trips I made within Nigeria in 2018 and to also buy some amazing gifts for my friends at the end of the year. I got a laptop for my friend from my savings. I was also able to gift courses to newbies that wanted to get into tech. All with my savings!
One of the things I also started in 2018 is that I started saving for the future. This is because I have always wanted to travel abroad after my undergraduate studies so I began saving for it on Piggybank. It’s called Save For Future (SFF).
From there, I began to see possibilities of what my money can do for me right now!
Going Forward
For this year, I have just one goal in mind. To lift others.
And I know that for me to lift others, I have to be on top of my game so I can drag them up. So, I will do all my best to climb up the ladder so I can take others with me. So help me God.
See you on the other side.
