GitHub Event
We were six DSCs …
Kelly murmured the idea to me after she had spoken with Mercy. This was around the last but one Friday of our Firebase Series. It was a good opportunity for me because the event chain in DSC AE-FUNAI would continue. It was good for our communities because they would learn to use tools we can’t do without in today’s coding world (Git and GitHub).
We ended up being six leads for six Developer Student Clubs chapters that came together to organize and bring out this GitHub event. We were:
1. Kelechi for DSC Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO)
2. Stephen for DSC Federal University Lokoja (FULOKOJA)
3. Tabitha for DSC Makerere University Business School (MUBS)
4. Mercy for DSC Federal Polytechnic Nekede (NEKEDE)
5. Johnson for DSC Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology (UICT)
6. Myself for DSC Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu Alike Ikwo (AE-FUNAI)
With two DSC chapters from Uganda and four of us from Nigeria.
The event was in light of #Hacktoberfest. We, six leads, wanted our community members to win polos during Hacktoberfest. So, we wanted to teach them how easy it could be to send pull requests. After all, this year’s Hacktoberfest was entirely opt-in and it was not compulsory for your pull request to be merged.
#EndSARS & Uganda Election Crisis
I don’t know if both crisis intentionally showed themselves one after another, but I can assure you that our event took place much much later than we planned because of postponements due to both of them.
The #LekkiMassacre took place on 20th Oct 2020, a Tuesday. All things being equal, our GitHub event was to take place on the following Friday, 23rd Oct. But a week or more earlier than the #LekkiMassacre, we had indefinitely postponed the GitHub Event because of #EndSARS. The emotional instabilities were really much. Many of us were protesting and we techies are the most harmed by the police. That’s why we were advocating for #EndPoliceBrutality and hence, could not proceed with the GitHub event. DevFests in many Nigerian towns was postponed too. In fact, Auwal explained to us, six leads, that whether #HacktoberFest or not, we will still need to teach Git and GitHub to our community members because they will need it in other projects, especially the upcoming Solution Challenge.
We had rescheduled the event to a date in November and had to postpone it again because of the Ugandan Election Crisis. It happens that the current Ugandan president does not want to leave the seat. He then arrested presidential candidates and Ugandans embarked on peaceful protests. The military fired at civilians and that’s how the crisis began. Somewhat similar to military firing at Lekki, in Lagos. The bottom line is these crises are part of the event’s story.
Nevertheless, the event still took place 😪.
Intro to Version Control | Git and GitHub
That was the final event title we chose. The event finally took place on Thursday, 26th Nov, 2 pm GMT. It was a youtube live at https://youtu.be/uf12u9keG10
More Obstacles
We, six leads, had no experience with Youtube live events 🤦♂️🤣. So we did not know that we needed some extra tools like Streamyard or OBS among others to achieve what we wanted; that is, switching between screens and various speakers for various sessions. We thought this feature was inbuilt in Youtube live, just to discover the opposite, three hours before our event. We eventually tried out many things and due to the frustration, we used a Youtube link, different from the one we had created. Not just that, we started about forty minutes late trying to setup streamyard in the highest emergency. We were at the point of postponing again, coupled with the time disappointment and confusion instilled on attendees. In fact, it’s safe to say that we had fewer attendees than expected because of the Youtube event link change 💔.
Tabitha was the moderator/host for the day. We had two speakers: Auwal MS, our program manager (actually program manager for DSC SSA [Sub Saharan Africa]), and myself. When it was time for me to talk, I had internet connectivity problems 💔💔💔. To cover up, daddy Auwal had to speak for me. Thanks, sir. Thanks, Tabi. You two deserve more appreciation.
Pull Requests
Auwal did a practical usage of GitHub during the event. He showed how to make a pull request as an attendee of this very GitHub event on a GitHub repository we had prepared for the event. So one had to fork the repo, add their details to an attendees.json file, commit and send a pull request. When the pull request has been merged, a Firebase Deploy GitHub action, that had been set on the repo, will run. It will actually redeploy the site we had created for attendees with the attendee details added.
After Auwal had made the repo’s first pull request during the event, others followed suit later on. The repo used for the event is at https://github.com/DSC-AEFUNAI/github-event. Whereas, the event site on which successful pull requests reflected on is at https://githubevent.web.app
My take-home
I took much, home this time around. There is just much the experience exposed me to than I could write. Above all, I think this event thought me the value of community. We help each other in the Developer Student Clubs. I wonder what would have been our fate, if not for the other leads in this collaboration, for Auwal, or for the many others who assisted in anything concerning the event that I didn’t mention about. They are all of the community, and our participation grows us in one way or the other.
Next steps
Special appreciation to my colleagues, the leads with whom I collaborated to host this event. I also thank the attendees especially those who bore the event delay with us and sent pull requests.
After this event, we proceeded to prepare for the End of Year Party. The year has been tough and we can’t wait for a new calendar, but let’s celebrate our lives in this one. See you there!!!
Event Link: https://dsc.community.dev/e/m9qcya/
