My Experience at She Loves Innovation Bootcamp
I participated in the just ended She Loves Innovation Bootcamp in Accra organized by Developers in Vogue . The purpose of the bootcamp was to women to pursue a career in tech by learning the fundamentals of web development with focus on Javascript and React.
This whole experience taught me a lot more than web development.
Luckily for me, there was an open opportunity to join the Bootcamp which I gladly did. After a while, I got to meet all the ladies and mentors. My first impression was ecstatic as there were all these ladies who were eager to gain knowledge even on zero background and the mentors who unselfishly wanted to share their knowledge in front-end web development.
During the Bootcamp, the courses were integrated with Mentorship sessions, Masterclasses, Inside Africa, iTeach, Mid-week troubleshooting, Ice-breakers, Time for walk, Hackathon/ Coding test and project work. This course integration was very helpful and well designed.
The mentorship sessions gave us the opportunity to meet great mentors in the Tech industry, who spoke about their journey into and in Tech. We also had the chance to ask several questions about how to be successful in the Tech industry.
Inside Africa and iTeach session were lead by the Bootcamp participants. We were paired and given a specific day to present our work. The Inside Africa session was basically to research on innovative inventions in Africa by Africans. The iTeach sessions involved teaching the whole class a given programming topic. My team had to opportunity teach the ladies how to build a calculator using Javascript.
Another significant session was the mid-week troubleshooting where could ask questions regarding the subject matter we went through the week and also had feedback on tackling some difficult tasks.
Apart from the sessions, we had a Slack group which was super organized and serves as our online community.
These sessions, as well as the other courses, were like a golden treasure because you get to learn a lot without realizing it. You however have to put in time to actually learn and also ask questions frequently. I noticed that quite a number of the ladies, including myself liked to ask questions but getting to the end of the course, I realized that “What I get from asking the question is far more valuable than what I get from not asking ”.
Getting to the final stage of the Bootcamp, we had to work in teams and make a project choosing 1 from 4 sectors, that is, Health, Oil and Gas, Transportation and Renewable Energy and put it on Github. My team focused on the transportation sector by building a webapp for an online booking of buses and other vehicles.
Saving the best for last, I am extremely grateful for this opportunity. This was not a paid Bootcamp; completely free and beneficial. Our society should embrace activities like this and we should all try to get involved as students and mentors. A big thank you to https://www.ge.com/africa/ for making the good initiative of Developers in Vogue a success.
Reasons why you should be part of the next Bootcamp.
- You will meet amazing people
- You will learn new things and get better at what you do
- You will have mentors who will guide and support you
- You will do yourself and your career a favor
- You will appreciate your time and the time of others more
- Your passion for learning will get even bigger
~ Lawrencia Asabea Osei
