Google Africa Developer Scholarship Developer Conference
Over the past 2 years, we have partnered with Google and Pluralsight to provide learning opportunities to developers across the continent. This year alone the program offered scholarships to over 30,000 learners across Africa to enable them to learn and develop on Mobile, Web, and Cloud technologies.
As we close out the 2020 program, we planned our first ever GADS developer conference dubbed #GADSConf. Our main goal was to bring together our current learners, alumni, and partners to share their experiences, knowledge, and learn from industry practitioners and we did.
While we were not able to host physical events this year, we organized a fully remote 2 day Conference with over 400 developers joining us for Day 1 and over 300 developers joining us for Day 2. The conference focused on delivering content to developers on what the demand side of talent looks for and how they should position themselves for success.
Reach
The goal was to get 6,000 developers to join us for the session and we got about 5,000 RSVPs and a total of 800+ live views and a total of 6,000+ youtube views so far.
Conference Day 1 Highlights
The Conference Opening Keynote was delivered by John Kimani, Developer Ecosystem Program Manager at Google who highlighted how to build transferable skills in this era.
Other sessions held on Day 1 would be a Fireside chat with Startup Founders with Benard Banta - Co-Founder, Finplus Group and Hanson Johnson - CEO, Start Innovation Hub, Job Readiness Session by Tejumade Olaniyi -Engineering Recruiter at Andela and Building your career as a remote freelancer by Saad Hamid - Developers Relations & Ecosystem at Google.
Conference Day 2 Highlights
Day 2 Opening Keynote was delivered by Agnes Muthoni, Talent Partnerships Director at Andela while the Closing Keynote was delivered by Eric Alder, Head of Partnerships at Pluralsight. As Agnes mentioned we are so grateful to our mentors and Program Assistants who work hard to ensure the success of our GADS learners.
Other Day 2 sessions highlights were Practical Session- Building your Profile for Opportunities by Michael Gacha - Engineering Recruiter at Andela, Panel Session on Positioning yourself as a developer in the global market with Rihanna Kedir — Software Eng/Google Developer Expert, Abubakar Ango — Developer Evangelism Program Manager, Gitlab and Juma Allan — Snr Android Eng, Backbase and a Lightning talk on Improving your Productivity as a Developer by Lorna Maria Aine - Technology and Innovation advocate, UNICEF.
In case you missed the conference you can still catch the sessions here;
DAY 1 Sessions: bit.ly/GADSConfDay1playlist
DAY 2 Session: bit.ly/GADSConfDay2playlist
Let’s look at some of the feedback we received;
“This conference has had one of the greatest impacts on my life and developer journey. I hope to make the best out of the lessons and resources I have obtained in the conference” Odhiambo
“Honestly I was so excited I made it to the conference, the speakers were so grounded and I love the fact that they poured out their hearts for us to become better-emerging tech professionals.” Leadwap
“I like the fact that the day of the conference could fit into 2–3 hours; it made attending the conference manageable and fun.” Dhruti
A big shout out to our partners Google and Pluralsight who ensure that we keep delivering quality content and support to our learners, the Andela Partnerships (Lina Ng'inja, Ejiofoh Joy, Agnes Muthoni, Mayowa olunuga, Ann mukundi ) and Marketing Team (Aniefiok Ntia, Adeola Alokolaro) for the collaboration to deliver an impactful conference to our community, Speakers who volunteered to share their expertise/perspectives with GADS Conf attendees, and Program Assistants who worked tirelessly to ensure GADS Conf was a success Bethany Jepchumba, Nadine van der Haar, Chris Barsolai, Emem Jonah and SAM ESIDEM.
