Developer Conference Live Viewing Parties
Sub-Saharan Africa — Developer Ecosystem
Camera on! Hey! Welcome to F8!
Good morning and welcome to Build 2018!
Good morning and welcome to Google I/O!
This happens to be a good afternoon or good evening in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It also happens to coincide with the time when most people are coming from work/school, aka rush hour, or when they are already home unwinding from the day.
With all these unavoidable timezone differences and consequences, most of our technologists in the developer ecosystem in SSA, enthusiastic about fresh updates from the annual developer conferences by the tech giants, will most often be caught up in a place with minimal or no Internet access that cannot allow them bandwidth to stream video content for ~1hr. They are thus left to follow through the event’s hashtag or from other social media accounts of people who are live at the event. With the speed of updates on social media, and human responses, such posts are definitely prone to human bias, and/or errors broadcasted to keen followers.
As such, the ecosystem players in this region, SSA, are always trying to create platforms and opportunities to level out such barriers and challenges. This entails getting a venue that has fast, reliable Internet to stream the conference live, in addition to sitting space that can be opened to the public to host the wider tech ecosystem for the live viewing. And (hopefully) include some snacks to take the viewers through the live viewing :) Hence the name live-viewing party!
Such enablers include tech hubs e.g. iHub, Co-Creation Hub, and companies, such as Andela, that are willing to open up their doors to foster such opportunities.
As such we are not only bringing different ecosystem players and contributors together to experience the conference first hand, but also fostering a global village, where exciting tech news trickles to techies at the same time regardless of your geographical location or Internet penetration hence giving an equal playground for them to get started on new/updated technologies.
This year at Andela, we are incredibly happy to have opened our doors to the wider developer ecosystem, hosting >200 developers for Google I/O 2018 Keynote Viewing Parties in Kampala, Nairobi and Lagos. This was in close collaboration with Google’s Developer Relations Team in SSA via GDG Lagos, GDG Kampala, and GDG Nairobi.
The excitement was felt across the 3 locations, with sentiments pouring real time; what with elated developers who saw their phone brands listed to receive updates directly from Google at the same time with other global brands! And debates around feasibility within the continent of Google Assistant’s newest update that enables it to make reservations on your behalf! Then the its-about-time feeling and elation of camera’s newest update that allows one to copy text via e.g. a book using camera! The list goes on and on and on…
This is a community feel that is unmatched, a sense of being a part of the global tech village; being able to react real time to news and updates from the conference sessions; and being able to experience this with fellow techies. There’s something this experience does to you… especially in fueling the fire to keep exploring, creating and innovating around such technologies.
At Andela, we will be taking this a step further, via Andela Workshops where we will do a deep dive on some of the technologies that have been highlighted during Google I/O, and other tech conferences globally.
To keep informed, feel free to follow Andela Nigeria, Andela Kenya and Andela Uganda on Twitter for upcoming tech events in your country!
Appreciations to Aniedi Udo-Obong for being an executive sponsor from Google’s Developer Relations Team in SSA, Olaiwola Bolaji for the swift planning and logistics with amazing GDG leads in Kampala, Nairobi and Lagos (Solomon, Roina Atieno Ochieng, Dennis Riungu, Moyinoluwa Adeyemi) and a group of EPIC Andelans for hosting on location!
Let’s keep providing enabling opportunities to top tech talent in Africa!
Feedback? Comments? Questions? Feel free to drop me a line here… or on my Twitter page.
