The Beginning
Five years ago in July 2014, during a semester break, I bumped into Ahmad Bature while he was hunting for a venue to host what was the first GDG Lafia meetup. We got into talking about tech, then he told me about the event he was planning for the coming weekend and I got interested in helping him sort out the venue issue as well as help in organising subsequent events. We concluded the planning and hosted an event with a little above 20 enthusiasts (who were mostly friends). This is the beginning of my relationship with the community and journey.
I got formally onboarded as a co-organizer for the group afterwards. We started organising meetups/training afterwards and we now have over 280 members on our meetup page and many ghost members who only show up at our meetups and events 🙁.
More Communities
While in school, I often attend GDG Bingham University events hosted by Mfawa Alfred Onen and Barka T. Fori which was just an hour away from my school. At one of their events, I found out about the Google Student Ambassador program with Michael Obi serving as the Ambassador for their campus and got interested in bringing it down to my school but alas it was impossible because I will be in my final year by the next application phase. So, I opted to introduce the program to someone else but when the application window reopened bureaucracy couldn’t let him secure a recommendation letter from his department to complete the application, so we missed, then Google discontinued the program.
Months went by and I continued my journey of self-development and knowledge sharing. I also got the opportunity to help organise/manage dev communities outside the Google Ecosystem where I offered a hand in organising communities such as We Code, Codepyramid, Forloop Abuja and the Atlassian Communities. The fun part is that my love for the community took me places and met people I wouldn’t have met or converse with very easily.
As the journey continued, I got to meet people, including Chizoba Ogbonna and Ajah M. David who invited me to join the team managing Andela Learning Community which was my biggest challenge knowing that we are supposed to lead 3000 Google African scholars who were interested in developing their skills in Web and Android Development. Well, I was happy considering I have experience in both fields and can contribute. As at then, Nigeria was going to the second iteration of the program while Kenya was being onboarded. This was a team that boast the likes of Chimdindu Aneke, Awosupin Olalere Solomon as program managers and Chioma James, Cheruto Mercy, Nsikak Thompson, SAM ESIDEM, Anthony Kiplimo, Abraham Ogol, Barclay Koin, Kanyinsola Oyindamola Fapohunda as regional program assistants.
A few months later, after the success of ALC 2.0, we got new Project Managers and the team grew larger as we got more countries on board and Rahma Halane and Lorna Maria A joined the team. The team opted to have a Lead Program Assistant and I got selected for this role. We lead the 15k+ scholars from over 16 countries in Africa for the Google African Scholarship Program AKA Andela Learning Community 3.0 in Partnership with Udacity and returned over 60% Nanodegree completion from the final 500 selected Scholars. That was a proud moment for members of my team but particularly for me seeing that I have now moved from leading my local community to heading a team of community managers overseeing a program that spans across different cities and multiple timezones and still got the bandwidth to participate and earn the Mobile Web Specialist Nanodegree myself 🤓.
In April 2019, we launched the Google African Certification Scholarship AKA Andela Learning Community 4.0, another partnership between Google, Andela and Pluralsight where we now have over 33K+ unique scholars enjoying 37k+ scholarships in Mobile Web, Android Development as well as Google Cloud Technology. And yes, more amazing individuals joined the team as Program Assistants and we are doing super great.
Opportunities and Networking
On a humble morning, I was contacted about an open Program/Community Manager role within Google Developers Ecosystem Team. After taking a few moments, highly inspired by Odili Charles Opute’s work in a similar role, I decided to explore the opportunity.
Discussions with members of the team followed, contract signed and today I resume my new role as Developer Ecosystem Program/Community Manager for the Developers Student Club program in SubSaharan Africa.
Over the next couple of months, my task will be to make available contents that will improve the technical skillsets of student developers in the Web, Mobile, Cloud and Machine Learning with support from different product teams at Google.
My Sincere appreciation to Aniedi Udo-Obong, Ahmad Bature, and everyone who helped me in the journey so far especially past and present members of the ALC Team, my GDG Family. To all those who honoured my invitation to speak or attend my event, You are the real MVP. We sure are not there yet but we are moving towards the destination one step at a time.
Now wish me luck in my new challenge.
Thank you | Nagode.
