2018, The Year I found Love
So it’s December already, how time flies… auditing/reviewing has always been a challenge for me. Let me eat that frog.
After the idea of dump2Fun at NYSC something big was coming. During my last few weeks in service a friend had posted a training at Lagos Business School on his status and usually i would feel i was not qualified enough to attend, but after dosing on some Tom Peters and Richard Branson series that mindset changed. So i met up with him at a wedding ceremony and told him i was interested and he gave me tips on how to go about the application ( if you want to succeed, always ask people that have done it before for guidance), the STAR approach. Prior to applying, i used to have this brainstorming sessions with my friends (Olalekan Sarafa and Tochukwu), where we play with ideas and tried to solve problems in the society. So in one of our sessions, Sharaf pushed an idea and we played with it tried to reform it and something popped, voila! mapkett ( which started as markIT).
The idea got me one-week training at the Lagos Business School courtesy Junior Achievement Nigeria. After the training I decided to go on with the idea and see what I can make out of it, I remembered “the secret to life is to have a task… something you bring everything to… And the most important thing is- it must be something you cannot easily do- Henry Moore. I reached out to 2 senior software developers to start the idea and they were so busy they didn’t have the time on one small project that might never be successful, i also spoke with a junior developer that started the project but later stopped, i guess my guy wanted to be a tech community builder and not a core developer so he also ditched me, sly!
At this point frustration had set in because I was at that point in my life where I had been equipped with so much information that I was confused as to what I wanted to do with my life and just when I thought I was making progress… I wanted to call it quit and say we learnt something and just go look for work then I called Imafidon Samuel who we attended the ViMP training together and he asked about the project and I told him I was planning on dropping the idea as I could not get people to work with and he asked me not to and to still search and if I couldn’t get he would force himself out of retirement and help me build the solution or better still I learn the skills and build it myself so…
I remember applying to anything and everything coding training I even started learning python on my own after series of searches online for the best programming language for beginners. I applied to Andela and was hoping to get in but after receiving the email response, wow I almost drowned. I also applied to CodeLagos and also nothing while my friend Sharaf got in. Then Joseph Okoroafor from ViMp training posted a training organized by Wave Academy and IBM on web development and business intelligence, the application process was tedious but I finally applied, I think this people make the application stressful to screen lazy candidates and give opportunity to those that are passionate about achieving something with their lives.
I remember the phone interview with the wave representative, I thought it was a scam and i gave the guy a tough time (Lol). I later received a text inviting me for the screening and i almost did not want to attend because I was on the phone with Tunji Eleso of Growth Capital who was supposed to introduce me to some startups in the domain of GIS/machine learning/artificial intelligence so who needs…
I will never forget the first day at IBM, i learnt the importance of a minute. I left my house at about 7:20am and did arrive the Churchgate towers at exactly 7:55am then I met a friend outside the building who was in Law school and we chatted for 3 minutes and by the time i got into the building, signed and used the lift it was 8:02am at i was at the glass entrance and could see Mrs. Misan and she was telling us the time we arrived, foolish me i was proud not knowing what was coming, OMG. We stood for close to 6 hours for coming late, despite the plea even from the powerful Madam Remi of IBM, we did our time and were lucky we closed by 1pm that day. The next day was magical, about 95% of us arrived before 8:00am. After 4 weeks training some of us realized we needed to go back and learn coding basics and with the encouragement of some of the dev guys (Sadiq , Ephraim et al) amidst us, four of us applied for the Booust training again i was not picked and then I applied to ALC 3.0 and I was picked! Our Mantra during the IBM training was ‘Together we can do it’.
The ALC 3.0 was a turning moment, the learning was so intense I remember being frustrated as I could not get adequate internet data and constant power supply, we searched and talked till my code/ idea buddy Sharaf told me about the Onikan Youth Center Facility, I hustled for the registration fee, paid and started the next day. While I was coding ALC my guys (Sharaf and Ibrahim Gana Gana) were rounding off with CodeLagos to come join me full time for ALC 3.0, boy we coded and studied like our lives depended on it. We were stuck, we got unblocked, attended meetups together. We finished the ALC challenge but did not get the Nano Degree but we did not care. We had told ourselves earlier that we were going to keep learning no matter what NanoDegree or not.
Afterwards, they both applied to facilitate at codeLagos and were picked, I did not because I was still struggling with my confidence because I was more self-taught than them, so I continued my learning on freeCodeCamp that I had abandoned like a year or two ago due to frustration, now I breezed through the HTML & CSS basics like a boss. I completed the first 2 projects on responsive web designs on codepen and out of the blues Sadiq called and told me a company needed a front-end developer and he feels I can do it though he’d pre-informed the CTO that I was still in training, I would have said NO WAY but I remembered what he said “… I know you can do it” so I took up the challenge, contacted the CTO and he asked of links to the projects that I’ve worked on. I’m dead! Let me remind you that the freecode camp first 2 projects are a survey form and a Tribute page (these projects took out the life in me while I was working on them, I remember asking how to center elements on the survey form on Udacity Scholar group, Sadiq, Ephraim and Onyinye). Well since my projects passed the required tests I sent him the link and wished he never calls me again. And then I received his call asking me to report to the office by 9:00am the next day.
Long story short, I was charged with taking basic web development classes and also worked on some projects. I went to work on 2 days, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The experience was worth it. I remember my first project was to revamp a school’s gallery page. Trust me guys I killed the page like a pro, the only problem was that the entire website itself was outdated so my gallery page stood out but when I give people the link to the gallery page they end up checking other pages ( the site was not responsive so it made people doubt my claim as a developer), I don’t care though as I was very glad when I got pay I think 5k for the revamp, I mean come on just like a month or two into learning and I am already getting paid, it felt like…
During my learning I applied to the findworka 12-weeks boot camp, Data Science track (it was a weekend class) and got in. So I was a web dev by weekdays and a data scientist by weekends. I cannot appreciate the findworka crew enough from Dele Bakare to Wilfred and everybody, the data science class was a class of mad energy, so much energy that I was the class captain. I wrote my first medium post while I was at findworka, courtesy the dev community queen, Ada Nduka Oyom. I later moved on to AI Saturdays organized by Teju Afonja and her wonderful team due to the fact that our facilitator at findworka was also part of the AI Saturday team.
During my journey I also applied for the Ubuntu online boot camp training, a later dropped as I could not submit my assignment but that also made me realize I could learn anything. Imagine asking beginners to build a chrome extension, at first I thought this people did not know what they were doing, but then I tried to follow the resources that were provided and before I knew it I almost completed a chrome extension, yea right! I built a chrome extension now top that!
Did I mention also attending the Facebook Developers’ Circle (Lagos) React workshop, that was where I made a decision to finally learn git and version control and stop embarrassing myself, friends and family.
Moving on to November, I ended the web development class with my students writing their exams online and finishing the projects I gave them.
As I write this this review I am currently working on two sites, one is a football club which I volunteered to do for free ( I am practicing my git skills with my friend Sharaf, how it feels to work remotely and with other team mates on a project), the other is a company site on wordpress.
During this period, I attended almost every tech meetup I came across with my guys, we used to sleep on eventbrite and meetup. At least we get to meet people, eat small chops or jollof rice. My last meetup for the year was DevOps Nigeria Lagos meetup which was a blast, met fantastic people there too.
I just had to put this here, hailings to everybody on the Udacity Scholar whatsapp group from Auwwal MS to Lutfullahi, Abdullahi Cap (The Link), Cavdy and every other develop there. You guys have been wonderful.
It’s been a wonderful year I must say, at this point I’ve found my passion, Web development (Javascript) and technologies.
Going forward for me, I want to learn and work with more web technologies with best practices as a watchword, Shun mediocrity, go back to reading the way I used to before I started coding, find love and also buy Benz.
It was hard writing this, knowing what to include and what to remove but it is what it is. If I didn’t acknowledge you in this review I did not forget you but trust me your name is going to appear bold in the coming posts of 2019 God willing. I love you all!