Building a Django Community in Africa

I also

Speaker 1: want to specially thank the Django uh Denmark team for making this trip possible for me. Actually, I'm supposed to make the uh present this particular talk uh together with a colleague, Abigail Mistri Nami, but unfortunately she couldn't make it here due to visa issues. Abigail is one of the is the lead for piladies in Ghana and she's doing amazing amazing job by uh encouraging more ladies in Ghana to learn the learn Python and hosting Django girls workshop uh across the country. And uh since Abigail is not here, she has a message for us and let's watch this. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. You have to play this line. We can see it machine that work Yeah.

Speaker 2: Um I apologize for not immediately. Oh really? Yeah. It's just uh we don't know about sharing or anything about what we

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: Hello everybody. My name is Abigail Busin Yamidobe and I'm a proud member of the Python software community in Ghana and also the lead for PyLadies Ghana. I apologize for not making it to Copenhagen and I'm excited to be doing this video as well. I want to use this opportunity to say a big thank you to the organizers. They've been so supportive. Elvis, Benjamin, Sarah, I love you so much. I appreciate all the love. And I also hope you enjoyed our stock. Greetings from all of us here in Ghana. Bye.

Speaker 1: All right, thank you Abigail. Thank you Abigail. Uh I hope I will make you proud. Alright, so who am I? Uh I'm Noah Lau and a developer and uh an individual member of the Django Software Foundation. On Twitter, Plasmadre and GitHub, Noah Low, and you can always shoot an email to noalo at gmail. com. Alright, alright, so let's get started Building a Django community in Africa. The beauty of community is that it connects people. You and I all gathered here, are here because of the love.

Speaker 1: we have for Django and Django a community brought us all together. The heart of every community is its members. Without its members, there is no community. Building together makes us stronger. I would like to share a quick story about how it all started and uh where we are now And there is this particular initiative called Django Girls, and uh uh I hope uh all of you uh you know about Django Girls. How many of you don't know about Django Girls? Alright, so Django Girls Workshop allows people to learn how to program and it's still it for ladies to learn how to code.

Speaker 1: So I happened to attend my very first Django Girls in Ghana that is uh early 2017 in April and uh I was so excited about the ladies interested in learning uh learning how to code. So in the course of the training, I realized that there are different categories of people and uh some are like following and they are able to build their block and some are like oh this is not our thing And some are also looking for A on the keyboard, like they are actually struggling. And I was like, how can I help solve the the ones that are not having access to this part or are not following the whole uh workshop. So I decided to create a tutorial for them so that at their own pace they would they will be able to uh

Speaker 1: view their blog whenever they have time. And then another workshop. Uh there is another call for coaches to uh mentor at another Django Girls event. And this particular workshop It's same in Ghana. That is the actually the second workshop in Ghana. And this workshop is hosted by Nigerians, no not Ghanaians. And I was like, why would someone travel the way from Nigeria just come and host Django Girls events? All this has been done because of the love of the community. And we were like, okay, what can we do again? There's another issue because all these worships are being held in the cities, but not in the rural areas. So I and a friend or colleague called Mani

Speaker 1: , we decided decided to host our very first Django Girls workshop and that was held in Ho in the Vuta region of Ghana Uh during uh that particular uh workshop uh and uh we decided to um we were uh discussing about how we can have a community that can see to all these things. So Uh that particular Django Girls workshop leads to the formation of Python software community in Ghana. And last year we we hosted our very first PyCon and this year we'll be hosting PyCon Africa. I'll talk about that later. So looking at this particular map uh uh map of Africa, this this represents the coverage of uh workshop being hosted in uh

Speaker 1: in Africa, Django Girls Workshop. What you are saying is in the in the years to come, focusing this one year, we should see that all this workshop will fill the whole Africa. And what this map is also telling us is that we have developers in Africa that are making use of the Django framework and uh Python. And uh the reason why they are attending this workshop is to connect with other developers, learn, share, network, and collaborate, aside uh teaching the ladies. Do we have a community that brings all these developers together? No.

Speaker 1: This is a picture of I and Respond Tancer, also a developer, Django developer. Went on a round trip with a motorcycle to attend one of the Django Girls workshops in the northern part of Ghana, approximately 1. 7 thousand kilometers. And uh when we went there, we met a young lady, 11 years old. So it's very rare in Africa to see kids coding actually. So we we had this encounter with the lady, they are so excited that Anytime people see me, uh they were like uh Django Lady or Django Man or whatever they've been calling me. Uh so this uh this shows the love we have for the community or we want to give back to uh Give back to our society.

Speaker 1: My colleague Abigail and I conducted a survey recently and we asked if uh they would like to have a community in their cities And we had uh responses. We've received uh responses from Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and the rest. And uh 96% are interest, uh 96 % says they are interested in having a city, uh, a community in their uh city. And then we have 4. 0 which are in 50-50 if they would like to have or the w they are not interested. And we we had zero for no.

Speaker 1: So what does that mean? It means that having a c a a community in Africa will aid it uh will provide an opportunity for developers to contribute to the uh uh to the Django framework. We are not going to be just users of the framework, but we also be contributing to the framework. Aside that, Django supports 10 languages for now. Uh with the help of a community in Africa, it will aid in the indigents contribute to their language. to uh contributing to their local or translating the documentation of Django to their local languages. Tutorials will also be written in their local languages whereby they can

Speaker 1: developers in that particular area. Based on our survey, they were like the the the the uh some of the Africa countries can like and not and uh the languages that they speak uh the the documentation doesn't uh have that particular language for them. So they find it very difficult to make use of the uh this amazing Oops. This amazing uh framework. So this will provide a platform for them to uh uh make tutorials in these. Aside that, it's also uh having a community will provide us uh like we will be able to host workshops and trainings to learn more about the Django framework, new new updates and everything, contribute as well

Speaker 1: And uh this also creates an awareness, uh, for us to uh create an awareness with workshop, etc. A lot of people heard about the Django Con. in uh Europe on Twitter, etc. Having a workshop uh for instance in uh for instance we also will aid in promoting the Django framework in Africa. Aside that, it's going to also strengthen the relationship between Django developers, it will bring all develop uh all developers in Africa to meet and then network. So what's next? Later this year we'll be hosting our very first Django Summit or Congress. And uh after the Congress

Speaker 1: in 2020 , we are going to host the very first Django Con Africa. And we can't wait to see you uh come and experience Django Korn Africa for the first time. And we have a team dedicated working tirelessly to actually make this happen in 2020. So when the time is due, we will actually communicate it and I also post on the uh Slack channel. So let's do this for the love of the community. I would like to specially thanks to all people who made this conference a reality. You are all super amazing.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you. And if you have any question, you can

Speaker 3: Thank you. I'm super excited to go Go to Jenga Conos Africa next year. So who else is? Woo Okay, are there any questions? Does there is. There's a Russell

Speaker 4: I'm really excited to find out about DjangoCon Africa. I hope I manage to get there one day. I would like to know your thoughts about or what you have done and any any advice you have about building a community in a an area as large as Africa. I'm guessing language issues in some cases, different national boundaries you're dealing with. Australia is big and we have difficulty pulling together a national Python community and a national Django community. Do you have any tips for how uh for how you have been able to pull it together even though you've got the additional barriers of languages and cultures and

Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so if I get you right, uh with regards to that, what you we plan of doing is to have different different meetups at different different uh countries And uh and then later on we all come together and uh host the uh have a a successful uh conference or meetup. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Speaker 5: Okay. So glad to hear you talk. This was so great in meeting you in person. Um so my question is m it's very similar to Russell's of with um with uh with PyCon Africa um coming up um in August um and things like that. How what resources are you are you utilizing mostly and how can we help and participate and when call for proposals come out, where should we be listening?

Speaker 1: Alright, so we will be creating Twitter channel and also be uh posting on the mailing list. Yeah, mailing list. So we will actually broadcast all those informations So with regards to the way that you can uh possible ways of helping us, uh we uh if you mean PyCon Africa.

Speaker 5: All of the above

Speaker 1: All right, so uh for PyCon Africa we've actually uh opened call for proposal and you can find that uh on uh paper. I can actually show that if you want. Yeah, I mean it's yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: Can we get the slides up again, please?

Speaker 1: All right, so PyCon Africa will be in on the sixth to tenth August in Accra, Ghana. And uh what to expect, workshop, talks, sprint, and community. Uh our call for proposal is open till 1st June. And you can submit your proposal to this particular link, PyConafrica. io slash PyConAfrica. And uh we also, if you want to sponsor us, uh here is the link to see our sponsorship packages that we have. And now if you want to connect with us, uh here our handles on Twitter at PyConAfrica, uh Facebook Pycon Africa, and you can join our Slack channel to get to know people that are traveling to Ghana to experience their very first

Speaker 1: PyCon Africa. So yeah.

Speaker 6: Hi, thanks for the talk. Very inspiring I'd like to know more about uh those the financial and structural uh needs. Like we I I think we probably face the same problems in Brazil uh as you face there. We have like huge territory And we make a huge effort to bring not only gender diversity but also social diversity. And the main problem we have normally is financing. all those events because you have to bring tutors, you have uh all of structural things to like come up with. Uh how do do you have a like special way

Speaker 6: of providing that or just like going to uh companies and asking for sponsors.

Speaker 1: Alright, so with regards to funding of our event, uh it's very difficult in To be sincere, it's very difficult to get uh sponsorship from our local companies. So we rely on international organizations. So Mostly when you take a look at all the Django Girls Workshops held in Ghana or other parts of Africa, I realize that uh the majority goes to in like the funding or that we get are from international organizations. Without that particular support, I don't think we'll be able to make uh or host those particular workshops. So we rely uh on the international organization. We hope the local companies will actually come on board to support us.

Speaker 6: Yeah. Thanks.

Speaker 7: Hi, uh thanks for the talk. Uh I would like to ask what's the most difficult thing that you faced in building a community? Because coding is not something that everything everyone is passionate about, so uh how do you kindle that interest in people?

Speaker 1: Alright, so um I I I forgot to share this. So when we hosted uh this particular Django girls workshops, uh we have midwives that got like when they they first encountered this particular uh code coding they were like wow I think I can do this part-time. And then yeah, they actually learn how to code now and uh they are uh also giving back to uh society. We have nurses, chemical engineers who don't have anything to uh do with computing the yet yet they are able to experience this and uh also co uh giving back to the society yeah So uh with people who don't have interest or people who don't have the necessary means of learning.

Speaker 1: So we will have a meetup that we can enlighten more people about um coding what they can do uh with it so I think that is how we will be able to draw them to this particular uh community.

Speaker 7: Thank you.

Speaker 1: You are welcome

Speaker 8: Thank you, Noah. Um I wonder if you could say something about uh for the potential travelers to a PyCon Africa or uh other events in in Africa because um many of us we travel very happily within Europe or between Europe and and the US And we're in familiar territory, speaking languages we know, using currency we know, in cities we are maybe familiar with already. But for many people traveling to Accra, for example, it'll be a brand new experience. And I wondered firstly if you would have any advice for the potential traveller And secondly, if you have any plans to help those travelers who are coming from very different places and cultures

Speaker 8: and countries when they arrive to orient them.

Speaker 1: Okay, so uh Accra Ghana is very peaceful and very friendly. Uh for we welcome every every and anybody to Ghana. Um With regards to uh yeah so uh it's it's a very peaceful area that you don't have to worry about your nobody will just attack you on the way or uh do anything to you. Uh the the indigents are very very friendly. You can go to the markets, chats, and uh almost all of them will speak English to you And uh touring Ghana, we have a lot of uh tourist sites that you can visit and trust me, if you happen to make it to Accra, Ghana, we you have uh an interesting, uh

Speaker 1: wonderful time in Accra. We have a plan uh a particular day dedicated for touring Ghana that we will send you to experience uh the will of life in Ghana and also there will be festivals and uh some other uh programs that will be go going on in uh Ghana that we plan of uh bringing our international travelers to come and experience. So Accra is very welcoming your safety is assured Yeah, thank you.