west.ern
this one was written out of my comfort town(western Kenya)
of developer communities …
i will be focusing more on content-first developer communities a lot.
DjangoCon Africa 2025 call for speakers is open, still(1 month, 2 weeks from now):
https://pretalx.com/djangocon-africa-2025/cfp
also; DjangoCon Africa 2025 opportunity grants are open! and it’s open till 31st march.
https://2025.djangocon.africa/opportunity_grants
before applying for the grants, please consider this:
we get a feel for how much impact this grant will have on the applicant and the wider community and country, compared to others. In this, we consider things like involvement in a local community, the social impact of the applicant’s activities, and how accessible other conferences are to them.
once again, i am on a campaign to get more africans and kenyans/tanzanians know more about the amazing opportunities that djangocon africa 2025 brings! - speaking and the opportunity grants.
i try and do more on my mini discord server: https://discord.gg/ehmJNPMn
pycon tanzania …
this is by far my best community.
i will share something intimate:
i did manage to attend pycon tanzania 2024.
my proposal to speak: Building Resilient Communities with Django was accepted, well initially the organizers reached out stating that they are low on funds and it would be hard for them to cater for travel and accommodation for speakers outside the country, and would be tough to get me in to speak.
i really really wanted to attend Pycon Tanzania, and share the talk I had proposed. I live closer to the tanzanian boarder, it's almost a 10 hour bus ride to Dar es Salam, and I could get cheap accomodation while there, so I offered to sponsor myself to attend and speak.
i mailed the organizers, told them that I will attend the conference, and confirmed that I will also be delivering my talk. i was scheduled to speak on day 2 of talks, so I travelled the day before. i really loved the community(still love it).
my talk stirred up conversations on the troubles NGOs go through with local governments(this was last year, and after US president got into office, most of the fears were confirmed), it was lovely.
i met a few of Django Girls participants, who we interracted on Django Con Africa 2023. it was amazing seeing the progress they make. i appreciate the time and efforts organizers put in to create and plan for Pycons and DjangoCons all over. Looking forward to DjangoCon Africa this year!
one of the best thing that happened, i brought along my friends to dar es salaam for the conference: ismael(software dev, mombasa), rizwani(software dev, nairobi) and moha(civil engineer, mombasa).
we had an amazing time, connecting with the tanzanian developer ecosystem and communities.
the organizers were accomodating, friendly and knew how to keep the audience engaged, made sure they got what they came for! shout out to Noah, Julius, Fuad, Lupyana and many many members of the pycon tanzania community! nawapaenda sana …
anyways …
i am building: https://www.chrisdevcode.co.ke/people-workbook