My first experience at SSA Community Summit
2018 has been a year full of surprises, good surprises, and being invited to the Sub-Saharan Africa Community Summit in Nairobi Kenya was one of them. This is article is to tell my experience of attending the event for the first time.
So what is the SSA Community Summit?
Each year many Google Developer Group organizers are in an African city to attend the regional community summit which is a chance to get together with other GDG organizers/ WTM leads to debrief on latest community strategy and updates, get meaningful training to improve your community leadership skills, and allow you to learn from each-other through group interactions.
Last year the Regional Community Summit was in Lagos and this year, is in Nairobi, Kenya.
6 months ago I wouldn’t imagine leaving the country any time soon especially to attend events hosted by Google. It was just in April when the Chapter for GDG Luanda was approved by Olaiwola Bolaji and up to this day we have hosted 4 events. When filling The 2018 SSA Community Summit Expression of Interest Form I wasn’t even expecting to be selected, not only was I invited but my co-organizer, Pedro Massango was also invited to the summit which is unusual.
Starting and maintaining an active community is not easy, but when you’re in a room full of like-minded people that are willing to share their experience and teach what they have learned along their path, everything is possible and that’s what the SSA Community Summit 2018 is here for.
Journey to Nairobi
Our journey started in early September 18 in Luanda, we had our 6 hour-long flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was scheduled in the afternoon. Since we arrived a bit earlier we had some time to write and discuss code at the airport.
It’s Pedro Massango’s first time traveling by plane and outside of the country so you can imagine how excited we were. Gladly, the seats were comfortable and the food was very good enough to get by until the second flight.
We arrived in Nairobi at about 2 am in the morning, got picked up at the airport and headed straight to the hotel (Crowne Plaza) as soon as we got there we went directly to our rooms and rest to be prepared for the day ahead of us.
Women Techmakers Summit
The GDG Summit was scheduled for the 20th of September but since we arrived a day earlier we decided why not attend the WTM Summit. And like Aniedi Udo-Obong said many times:
“Men are not invited but they are welcome”
So we participated anyways. I got to meet my Android hero Moyinoluwa Adeyemi and got to hear what these brave young women are doing for their communities. Talks that stood out to me for being somewhat relatable and inspiring stories were delivered by Georgia Rwechungura, Cleopatra Douglas and Marlene Mhangami. For example Georgia told the story about the girl who learned basic computer skills and now teaches other people:
“No skill is a small skills, just share it, you will never know how many lives you will change by the skills you just shared” — Georgia Rwechungura
And how Marlene is getting young women interested in tech by offering free foods at tech meetups.
Cleo shared a very powerful quote with us that goes something like this:
“…and, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it..” — Paulo Coelho
GDG Summit
GDG Summit was on a Friday, the event was a day full of awesome sessions and speakers who shared their experiences of building local GDG chapter. Osvaldo Maria talked about on “Building Stronger Partnerships”, Jochen Kirstätter’s session was about “From Idea to Inspiring IT Communities”, Charles Freeborn and the other had also some interesting things to share with us.
The event started in the morning and we went until almost 7 pm, learning, sharing, and connecting with each other. To summarize, it was a fun and memorable experience.
Bonus: DevFest18 Nairobi
Although not organized by Google nor part of the SSA Community Summit the day after the #GDGSummit, on the 22nd of September we headed to United States International University-Africa to attend GDG Nairobis’ DevFest18, organized by Ngesa Marvin and Roina Ochieng, also know as the Google I/O of Africa because of the huge number of attendees it gathers. This year’s there were about 1200 attendees. By the way the t-shirts from the swag bag was really pretty better than some I’d by at the store.
The night before, at the Summit, Dennis Riungu was really impressed by how passionately talked about Flutter so he invited me to join he’s session at the DevFest. We literally prepared for the session 30 minutes before it started, and so we delivered it:
Had a great time, learned a lot, connected with many new people I hope to be back again next year for the SSA Community Summit 2019.
