On 28th November 2015 GDG Kisumu hosted Devfest western Kenya.This is an event that took about two months to put together. I'm particular impressed with this event not only because it was a great success but because ladies were at the fore front in making it a success. From the organizing team which was lead by your truly(me) ;-). To the break out sessions that were all lead by ladies. We had four main speakers, two of these speakers were ladies. Mercy Orangi gave a keynote on Launchpad and start ups, and how techies, can use launchpad to scale their start-ups. Roina Acheing of GDG strathmore gave an amazing talk titled "Women Teversation" she talked about the evolution of women in tech and how far we as women have come. We had four break out sessions Polymer,Android,Fire-base and Techprenuership and start ups. Polymer,Android,Fire-base sessions, were hands on code labs and the ladies did a good job at it at guided people through it. The panel discussion included four ladies and two gentlemen, several issues were discussed including how women can run successful tech start ups. The event had 250 attendees of which women were slightly above 100,this has great fully improved compared to our last devfest. I'm was glad because women did not take a back sit this time.I also learnt that when we let women get actively participate in an event you increase chances of more women attending the event.
Roina talk on evolution of women in tech
Percila leading the fire-base session
Speakers with their Gifts bags
Mercy -The second Keynote
Esther(the lady with the blue dress),lead the tech-preuership and startsups
International Women’s Day , which is officially on March 8, 2015, is a day to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater equality within our communities. As Women Techmakers powered by Google Developer Groups, we celebrated international women's day by organizing the biggest women tech conference on the 28th of March that brought together 150 people,80% of which were women and 20% were men. This year's theme was Create. Celebrate. Connect.In line with this years theme we had a great line up of speakers that traveled far and wide just to come share with us.As far as 360KM that's about 230miles We had a great line up of speakers and panelists.
Dorcas Owinoh - Welcomed everyone to the conference and played a short welcoming video from Melissa Powell community manger for Women Techmakers and Adriana Cerendolo community manager for Google developers groups
Judith's topic was entitled "She Builds.She Serves.She Leads".She urged ladies to take advantage of the opportunities that tech has to offer and make something out of them.
She gave an inspiring talk about her life from humble backgrounds of never interracting with a computer to studying software engineering and becoming the first female from Africa to participate in the IBM Master The Mainframeworld Championship held in New York
Magaret Odeng
4.James Odede: Founder and Director at LakeHub was the only male speaker he spoke on how women can leverage on the opportunities that Lakehub has to offers.He also asked the men to be more welcoming to women and encourage them to be part of the technology.
James Odede on stage
The Panel come Fireside chat
We had an amaizing panel that was moderated by Percila Njira. They discussed
Issues facing women at work and how they can over come them.
How women should step up and avoid being intimidated at work.
How women can start there own tech start ups.
The Pannel
From right Agasna Othero-Managing Patner at Agsna and Othero Co and Advocate,Judith Owigar of Akirachix,Esther Monchari Founder of SokoNect, Resla Wesonga EdTech Reseacher at ihub and James Odede Director at Lakehub.
The event came came to an end with cake cutting that was done by Charity Women techmakers lead Masinde Muliro University of science and technology and Ingrid Loreta Operations manger at Lakehub.
Thereafter guest networked amongest themselves as they took photos.
Some of theevent highlights
Our amazing hostesses Leah and winnie
Group photo
Agsna Power to women
Girls cutting the cake
Networking session
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Special thanks to
Lakehub for partnering with us
Google through GDG for their support
All the speakers that turned up
Women Techmakers nairobi and MMUST
The organising team for putting this together even with a very tight budget
On 7th February 2014 WomenTechmakers Kisumu held had an App Inventor training.
The training was suppose to take 2 hours but it ended up taking about 5 hours :-).
This was because we had an amazing coach.The girls were enjoying the speed at which they were making application and they were having fun creating simple application.
Only 10 girls registered to attend the training but we were later joined by five more girls and 4 boys.The whole training was so much fun that we stayed all through past the intended time (Without snacks or refreshments just water).
What's even amazing is that they offered to go volunteer as coaches in girls high school to teach app inventor through the technovation program.
They can't wait for the women techmakers conference in March
The first ever #CollegeHack in Western Kenya took place last Saturday at LakeHub, Kisumu. This event saw students from various campuses of higher learning institutions participate in large numbers. This event was the first of its kind and was hugely successful as witnessed by the excitement and satisfaction of the participating teams.
The #CollegeHack is meant to bring college students in Western Kenya together to a one day open hackathon that begun at 9.00am and ended at 5.00pm. #CollegeHack was initiated so that the students could promote their skills in teamwork, entrepreneurial thinking and skill actualization.
A sections of the hackers.
This session was mentored by James Odede, who is the Co-Founder and Director of LakeHub, Dorcas Adhiambo the Community manager and GDG organiser of Kisumu.Chandi Tome, who is also a director at the hub, Micheal Diang’a, a Developer who specializes in Web, George Osang, a Mathematician and programmer, Dennis Ochieng’ Computer Scientist and Businessman and Deryl Aduda, a Marketing and Public Relations guru.
This particular session of #CollegeHack succeeded in its objective of helping the students come up with innovative ideas that would offer real solutions to the community.
One such idea was from a group of four, aptly named Quad IT, who are planning to fully automate the land registry thereby reducing corruption, land grabbing and time wasting by providing an application that will avail land records, location and land laws. This would make the land search and purchase more transparent and less tedious.
NyumbaNeat team presented an idea that offered a home cleaning service through an online portal. NyumbaNeat’s idea was meant to target the young and upcoming professionals (Yuppies) and bachelors.
TechDoc group wanted to boost maternal health by linking expectant women and young mothers to medical practitioners especially in the Western Kenya Region. Their app would also help mothers manage the entire pregnancy with a calendar and best practices. This, they hope, will help reduce pre and post-natal deaths.
X Farm team worked on an idea of an app that would provide farmers with information about farming. This app would enable farmers to get information such as the kind of crop to grow in a particular soil type and climate.
X- farm making a presentation of a smart idea.
M Commerce came up with an idea to offer businesses with no online presence a platform to list their products without incurring the extra cost. M Commerce’s idea would target the the small shops and retail stores while EasyReg group of students worked on an app to eliminate the paper work at college during the registrations of various items.
Some had to operate from two workstations
As you can see, we had lots of fun for a first event of this nature. We have a long way to go, no doubt. And we have realized that many of us have lots of ideas that are worth probably millions of shillings. We therefore have to proceed with the #CollegeHack series next month. Be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.
Calls for applications for the next hack shall be announced soon.
