Developer Circles Lagos: 2017 in retrospect
2017 started bleak. In January, a tomato plague rendered the commodity as scarce as gold. Fall in global oil prices pushed the value of the naira down by over 250%. The ripple effect is definitely another blog post. Today we look at the year for the Developers Circle Lagos
tl;dr
In 2017, the Developers Circle Lagos
- grew in members by > 700%
- held 14 tech events with 1166 signups to attend.
- increased online engagement by ~40%
- set over 20 people on the path towards becoming AI experts
Events this Year
Bot Party: 4th of March
The year 2017 kicked off with the bot challenge by Facebook. The challenge was to create bot solutions in three categories — Gaming and entertainment, Productivity and Utility, and Social Good.
We needed to help members as they learn how to build bots. So we threw a bot party!
76 people signed up, 51 people attended. Oscar Oranagwa led us through a step-by-step coding session on how to create bots for messenger. The day ended with at least 10 people showing off working bots!
Facebook F8 Conference (18th — 19th April)
For the first time, we gathered in CCHUB, Sabo to join live the Facebook F8 Conference that was taking place in California!
It was great to be able to share ideas, hear thoughts and opinions as Facebook unveils its 10 year plan and announced updates to the Messenger API, augmented reality, open source among other things.
And Facebook Developers Circle Lagos got a shout out. It was HUGE !
React Summit 1.0: 6th May 2017
Victor Oche, of HelpThinkers Inc., led this. The React summit was our first attempt at building a React community. Sessions were led by Omonori Jesmine (Hands-on introduction to React Native) and Prosper Otemuyiwa (Better authentication for React apps). 64 people signed up, 85 attended.
GraphQL Meetup (3rd June)
Organized by Akinjide Bankole, Oluwatobi Owolabi, Daniel Osineye, Ezechukwu James and Ademola Adegbuyi. This meetup introduced us to what GraphQL was about and how to port an existing app from REST to GraphQL. Shoutout to Ademola for the talk and sample app repository.
Developers Circle Lagos Women In Tech Meetup (29th July)
This was the first women-centric event held by the Circle. It was organized by Alimi Eyitayo, Egbelaje Victoria, Ruth Sobande, Ayeni Blessing and Tosin Kay. 56 women signed up to attend, 29 ladies and 7 guys attended.
It was our first meeting with Nkiruka Ilewi, who would go ahead to become a Community Manger for the Developers Circle Lagos and also chief host of the careers in tech series.
Launch of the Developers’ Circle Uyo [Guest Event] (14th September)
The Circle in Uyo kicked off with a bang and have gone ahead since to grow to over five times their starting numbers. Huge props to leads Hanson Johnson, Ekene Christian and Edidiong Asikong.
Women In Tech Owerri [Guest Event] (23rd September)
Ugochi Amako partnered with us and held a Women in Tech event in Owerri. Over 60 women expressed interest, 23 women showed up and we got enough pictures and testimonies to suggest they had pretty inspiring moments.
Nigerian Women in Tech Meetup (3rd October)
Jennifer Fong, Barbara Mbanefo, Cynthia Obioha and other really amazing women working in Facebook were coming to Lagos so we seized the opportunity to hold a Women in Tech event. I still have my jottings from that event. It was deep.
Developers Circle Lagos Community Dinner (3rd October)
The first of its kind we’ve had. The Facebook team had the chance to meet with members of the developers circle in a relaxed setting, arrested by an army of assorted Nigerian dishes. Proud Dzambukira (Zimbabwean) finally understood why Jollof was such a big deal. Barbara kept dropping chicken-inspired nuggets of wisdom.
Developer Circles Leads Masterclass [Guest Event] (5th — 11th October)
A section of the leads of Developer Circles in Sub-saharan Africa converged in Nairobi, Kenya for intensive sessions on Facebook Analytics, React and React Native and Messenger bots. This sessions were taken by Rod Rolan who leads Developers Circle Toronto, Canada. The bonding experience was better experienced than heard. There was a lot of learning to be shared. The biggest learning of all: Our countries, people and cultures aren’t so different after all.
React Summit 2.0 — The Complete React Developer (21st October)
With 485 people expressing interest to attend, this event caught 571% more attention than the first. It was organized by Seyi Adeleke, Vanessa Ejikeme, Chinedu Daniel, Tolulope Duyile, Kingdom Orjiewuru and Bolaji Olajide.
Boluwatife, Ohans Emmanuel, Precious Madubuike, Kingdom Orjiewuru and Innocent Amadi delivered on different talks, while Tolulope Duyile and Tejumade were our hosts for the day.
The organizing crew delivered an experience that made us agree to make React Summits an annual React Conference. With the React Community growing in the sure hands of Anayo Azuike, Ugbala Valentino, Sheddy Nathan and Ademola Adegbuyi, I’m looking forward to how next year would react.
Developers Circle Community Challenge Pitch Day (4th November)
Facebook rolled out a Community Challenge: build solutions that helps developers improve their craft, get things done or helps developers connect. We came together on the pitch day to listen to people with ideas and then formed teams around viable ideas.
86 people signed up, 95 attended, 10 teams were formed.
AI Masterclass — Neural Networks (8th November)
This class was taken by Timothy Lacroix in Paris, France and attended by Developer Circles all over the world. It kicked off the Developers Circles AI Community here in Nigeria.
Community Challenge Hack Day (18th November)
For two weeks since the teams formation on the 4th of November, teams grilled and grinded to have working products to demo on the Hack Day. When the day came, some people showed up with increased love for Redbull. Eight software solutions were demoed.
Thankfully, Ike Eze and Ovo Emorhorkpor (VCs from Beta Ventures) and Ayodeji Balogun (CTO of Terragon Groups) joined us. They dug deeper into the ideas, revealed valuable insights to the rest of us, picked three promising ideas and offered mentorship support and sponsored hosting space throughout development. When the apps prove viability, the next stage will roll out.
You’ll hear more about Startups Discovery in 2018.
AI Masterclasses on Speech 101 and Computer Vision (23rd November, 30th November)
The rest of November saw AI on the front seat. Introductory classes on Speech and Computer Vision saw us forming study groups and distributing more materials for further reading, learning and practice.
AI Masterclasses on Natural Language Processing and Convoluted Neural Networks (8th December, 18th December)
Yes, it was like that. All Artificial Intelligence until the end of the year. I discovered my love for Data Science and Machine Learning. So did at least 20 other people. So we’ll wait and see what 2018 brings.
The AI Community is led by Peculiar Ediomo-Abasi, Ace Falobi, Calistus Igwilo, Ifeanyi Igwegbe, Kpongette Augustine and Seun Agbeye.
Members
~700% increase in membership in 2017
We started the year 2017 just scratching 1000 members. At the time of writing this article, we are 7296 members strong. Many new members find us by either search, offline events or recommendation by friends.
If you joined us this year, thanks for contributing in every way you did to our community.
[Only] 4.6% Increase in members gender diversity
We started the year with ~5.8% female members and ended with ~10.4% female members. Looking at these numbers at the very end of the year, I’m realizing we never really set defined targets on exactly how much gender diversity we want to have.
To move our push for gender diversity in the group from a dream to a goal, we’ve empowered the Women in Tech arm of the Developers Circle to champion this. Looking forward to what they roll out in the first quarter of 2018.
Online Engagement
Overall
Even with just ~1000 members, engaging online was a bit difficult at the beginning of the year. Active members average below 20% steadily. The general excuse was “Developers don’t comment on stuff on Facebook that often”. Good thing we didn’t listen. Bleh.
At the end of 2017, 59.6% of 7296 members are engaging. Special shoutouts to members who just won’t keep what could help/inspire/educate others to themselves. You guys are amazing!
Female engagement
This is difficult to measure. Facebook Analytics just didn’t help. However for the first time in our history, we’ve had female members making up 30% of the top 10 posts for three consecutive months! Duffed hats to Oluebube Egbuna, Peculiar Ediomo-Abasi, Amako Ugochi and the contributions by the #careers-in-tech series hosted by Nkiruka Ilewi.
Offline Engagement
Increased preference for domain-specific events
This year we saw the increased call for messenger bot meetups, ReactJS summits, GraphQL Meetup, Artificial Intelligence Masterclass, etc.
We’ll be doing more of these in 2018. We’ll also be tracking the impact of these events better. Thanks to specialized sub-communities like the Developers Circles React Nigeria, AI Masterclass Nigeria, etc. and their respective community managers, we would also be getting quarterly reports on the progress of these.
Waaaay more men than women at tech events
For a group with 10.4% female members, we get an average of less than 5% of female members show interest to attend regular tech events, and less than 3% actually show up. For some reason this number skyrockets by at least 400% when the event is a women-centric one.
This makes me feel like we could make regular events more women-friendly (perhaps). Yes, it’s definitely top on our list of things to do better in 2018.
Partnerships
Andela
Always at the fore-front in supporting the community, Andela has spared space, resource persons, finance and even moral support in making sure the Developers Circles community continues to stay impactful.
If you don’t know, Andela invests in Africa’s most talented developers and integrates them into the world’s best tech companies.
Univelcity
Raised hands to UNIVELCITY!! All through our AI Masterclasses, Univelcity provided a secured, conducive environment for us to host up to 60 people. They have even offered to work with us next year to continue the AI meetups/classes. Thank you Univelcity!
Univelcity offers very effective 8-weeks coding bootcamps that move you from zero-experience to a level competent enough to apply for an entry-level developer job. So kickstart your tech career and hit them up today!
Terragon Groups
Our go-to pillars when the odds are stacked. Terragon Groups bent their rules to accommodate our weirdly-timed requests during the React Summit 2.0 and the Community Challenge HackDay. Their support comes not just financially but almost every member of the entire engineering team puts their weight behind community support. Thanks Terragon!
Terragon groups helps businesses reach their preferred audience by gathering and applying insights from data. Check them out here.
Beta.Ventures
Passionate about investing in Africa’s potential, Beta.Ventures were more than happy to step in during the 2 weeks long hackathon to share knowledge on what an idea needs to become a successful, scalable startup. We’re still working with them with Startups Discovery, to get more founders/wannabes thinking about the right things.
Beta.Ventures invests in driven, early-stage entrepreneurs scaling tech and tech-enabled startups to become market leaders.
StartZone
StartZone came onboard with the React Summit and astounded every member of the planning committee by their commitment and motivation to seeing it to success. They championed publicity, gave us their amazing 600-person capacity conference room and were with us almost every step of the way. Muchas gracias StartZone.
StartZone is one of Africa’s leading Innovation Hubs focused on solving the continent’s biggest challenges by supporting the tech ecosystem
Conclusion
Community programs would be rolling out in the group before the end of January. Artificial Intelligence, React JS, Design, etc are but a few that would be part of these announcements.
It’s been an inspiring, educative year for me personally, and for us as a community. If 2017 taught us anything, it’s that we can get to whatever heights we set our sights on. Together.
Huge shoutout to co-leads Oscar Oranagwa and Akinjide Bankole, our community managers, Masterclass leads and other people who volunteer in different ways within the Developer Circle community.
Join us in Facebook Developers Circle Lagos today. Or join a circle near you.
If you’re a member of Developer Circles (Lagos or any other city), how was the year for you? Looking forward to hearing from you in the comments!
