Simi’s Tech Adventures #1: 2017 in review
I started 2017 with a couple of ideas in mind. Not thoroughly planned, but I knew roughly what I wanted to achieve. Now 12 months later, I’m already planning for next year’s activities.
However, I’ve decided to start my 2018 planning a bit differently. I’ve decided to reflect on 2017 first. I reflect best when I write things down so I figured I blog about my (Tech related) wins in 2017.
2017 in… Hackathons
In February, I participated in the African healthcare challenge, a 3 day hackathon run by the Kopfadeyemi fellowship. I finally got to use Twilio, a voice and messaging API in the app I built with my team and we came 3rd!
In July, I went to the codeathon organised by ABI.London. The goal of the day was to use the Google Actions Assistant APIs in a prototype app. It’s the shortest hackathon I’ve been to so far(just a few hours). I had so much fun playing around with the API and meeting other software engineers.
2017 in… Travels
In May, I was in Berlin for a weekend at a workshop for Tech startups run by Griffinworx. I’ve read a lot about turning your idea into a revenue generating business, but it was an amazing feeling being in a Tech incubator learning practical skills with other founders and VCs.
In August, I was invited to SRECon in Dublin and I had the time of my life. It was a 3 day conference and all the movers and shakers in the System Reliability Engineering field were there. I blogged about my adventures here.
2017 in… Community
I joined an amazing network called
(Building Things for Nigeria) which hosts meet-ups for people interested in building products and services for Nigeria. I’ve met so many great people at their events. It’s the place to be!2017 in… Passion projects
I’ve always been mentoring in some sort of capacity because I am really passionate about paying it forward. I’ve had great role models and I want to be the same for others. In 2017, I started working on a women in Tech initiative,Witty Careers, which helps female students get the skills they need for technical roles in the Tech industry. Find out more about Witty Careers here.
While getting the initiative on track, I was invited to be a panel speaker at Insyde Talk’s International women’s day celebration and Step Forward’s Women in Tech event.
2017 in… Learning new skills
This year, I decided to work towards becoming as much of a “full-stack” developer(front-end +back-end) as I possibly can. I also want to constantly have a product manager mindset so I can build the best products moving forward. Throughout the year, I went to a couple of Tech meet-ups, these were the game-changers:
- At UX Crunch- got to know the ins and outs of product design(I wrote a blog on this)
- At Google’s London office- found out how Big Data and machine learning are used to drive the Google Ads business
- Facebook’s London office- learnt how to build React apps with the pepperoni framework
So that wraps up my Tech highlights for the year. I’m going to try to be even more intentional and daring with my adventures in 2018. Let’s see how it goes :)
I’m always up for a chat so feel free to ask any questions/get in touch via the comments section below or on twitter @similola
