The Genesis of forloopAba first maiden meetup
Prologue
And it finally happened: forloopAba first maiden meetup
How can you grow a tech ecosystem in a business-oriented community?
How can you get people who care less about technology to adapt to building technology?
These were some of the questions we got when people heard forloop was coming to Aba. Actually, there’s no blame for such questions because they were all true. We live in a city where people strongly believe in their brick and mortar techniques of getting stuffs done, a community where the only super knowledge younger ones gets to know on technology is word processing, which they eventually do after secondary. But the question here is, how did forloop Aba became a success story despite all these hitches?
The Genesis
The planning of this event started mid 2018 when I (Ifunanya Onwughalu) first applied to organize forloop Aba, thereafter came Prosper Otemuyiwa comment when I met him at startup weekend global in IGHUB Aba. He’d said, “I’m thrilled and excited” and this made me feel a propensity to do much more.
Getting sponsors for the first maiden meetup was like a nightmare. We wrote to many technological agencies around Abia, Companies, Hubs and individuals for the sponsoring of the event. But I won’t forget to give credits to Rad5 tech Hub who through GDG platform provided us with some swags, you know what that means for events participants… IGHUB who was our diamond and super sponsor: provided us with venue, ensured the availability of what I called the original Nigerian Jollof, Samson Goddy can attest to this and took care of all our guests. I won’t forget to mention #forloopAfrica who through Prosper Otemuyiwa gave us the initial event planning fund.
Why “Growing and developing a sustainable tech ecosystem?
Most meetups are technically-themed. But we understood that over 80% of techies around this community are newbies, maybe you should ask Peace Ojemeh (Perrie) what happened during her talk session.
So we decided to help the audience understand what it takes to
Grow a tech ecosystem
Grow and develop a tech career
Implement collaboration within the ecosystem
Because a newbie without an existing ecosystem to leverage on might end up being frustrated.
We had to streamline our speakers and topics discussed to portray our theme. Hence we had:
Opara Prosper- Learning: A developer’s perspective
Trust Onyekwere— A gentle introduction to AI
Samson Goddy— “Going world class”
Peace Ojemeh (Perrie)— Building a design system
The high spirit and enthusiasm at which the audience cheered on when each of our distinguished speaker mounted the podium for a session was inciting.
After each speech, the audience were always given the privilege to give few words about the value they got.
Several ice breaking moments were observed and yeah, it was a fair dosage of fun.
The panel session which was anchored by the CEO of Innovation Growth Hub, Daniel Chinagozi was an eye opening moment as the panelist EZE, Gabriel, Lucas Bruce and Samson Goddy discussed “How to develop a Sustainable Tech Ecosystem”. Lots of energy was channeled towards enlightening participants on what it takes to start a journey in tech, how to grow and develop career in tech and how to keep the fire burning even when the cash isn’t flowing. It was vividly elaborated that several reasons could spike one’s involvement in coding, which could be passion and profit; whichever, best practices were explained to the audience.
End of story…
To wrap up the event, we have proved once again to the tech folks to be the leading community that serves the most sumptuous /Nigerian jollof. As business deals done on an empty stomach hardly yields good returns, so does listening to all the talks without food might have made the speeches seem like sounds from a broken tumbrel.
In conclusion, #ForloopAba has created a better ground for developers and techies within the city to learn, grow and communicate effectively. The journey of becoming world class continues.
To be part of the just concluded event, you can go through the event photos at https://photos.app.goo.gl/pAuQ4vFp1einKhEa9
