A 2022 DevFest in Nairobi, and More!

DevFests are Google's celebration of the developer ecosystem. It's not only code that is discussed during DevFests though. Also, DevFests are distributed, so any Google Developer Group can host one.

GDG Nairobi hosted a DevFest on November 5th, 2022. When I saw the Call for Presentations (CFP) I decided to give it a try so I could network with the Nairobi crowd. A friend of mine had also mentioned that the event would be preceded by a 2-day community summit of GDG leads from the East Africa region. Oh, what joy!

There was just one problem: I wasn't a GDG lead from East Africa and I didn't have an official invitation. So I did what anybody in my shoes would do: I asked the organizers to accommodate me for two nights while I attended a summit that they hadn't invited me to. What could go wrong with such a request? I also asked them to give me time for a workshop with the participants. Such audacity!

At this point, you should have guessed that my requests were accommodated.

GDG Community Leads Summit

I got to spend two days with leads from Mauritius, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Burundi, DR Congo, Congo Brazzaville, The Gambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya! 46 people in total, without counting the lovely DevRel team from Google. I reconnected with old friends and made new ones.

I got a 90-minute window to spend with the leads on the first day. I used that time to introduce them to programming microcontrollers, and I handed out an Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect to each participant. These microcontrollers were paid for by Arm , and I would like to say thank you to Stephen Ozoigbo and Marvin Rotermund . This was designed to serve as a gateway so they can practice some TinyML, and also so they can build interest within their individual communities. I also fit in an Edge Impulse presentation.

I spent most of my free time on the second day trying to get my old friend Nsubuga Hassan set up with the microcontroller on his Ubuntu laptop. I also showed and got him up to speed with the Hello World TinyML example.

If you were at my session, please hold me to account for any promises I made, either about getting you boards or about organizing specific sessions for your community.

DevFest Nairobi 2022

We woke up to the news of Kenya Airways pilots going on strike, but the day wasn't going to become cloudy because of that.

I had two official assignments at DevFest: I would be delivering an ML Keynote, and I had a breakout session that was targeted at deploying ML models on edge devices. I would like to say thank you to the GDG Nairobi team and to Ngesa Marvin for this opportunity.

There were over 3,000 participants at DevFest, and they were all at the Keynote tent. As a result, I delivered an MK Keynote address to 3,000 people. You can find my slides for the keynote address here.

My breakout session was on deploying ML models on edge devices, with a focus on Raspberry Pi. You can find my presentation slides here. The 20-second clip is from my friend Fanie Ndlovu .

After my session, I met up with Brayan Mwanyumba and we decided to find a vacant room for a hands-on lab. It took a bit, but we found one, and after a bit of waiting to get access to the projector we got started. This time around I was able to log onto Edge Impulse studio and demonstrate training a model that uses data from an Inertial Measurement Unit.

We had to break for lunch and I, unfortunately, couldn't get back to the workshop. Solomon Githu came to the rescue and completed my workshop. Thanks, Solo!!!

Pilots on Strike!

The point of any trip is to return home when you plan to. A strike by the pilots just threw a spanner in the works due to all of the uncertainty, in addition to the time it takes to sort things out.

I came out of this situation with a renewed sense of trust in the Google DevRel team and how they handled accommodating and rescheduling everyone who attended the summit. Thanks Eunice Allela , John Kimani , Khadija Abdul Juma , Muhammad Samu , Ada Nduka Oyom and Sodiq Akinjobi . You all did a fantastic job and if I had to go through this all over again I would choose this team.

What's Next?

Like James Bond, I will be back in another installment. I will be speaking at DevFest Lagos, so please stop by my session if you will be attending. I have also requested a slot at the West Africa community summit. Fingers crossed that I get accommodated once again.

Thanks for reading!