Google Developer Group Mombasa hosted it's first ever DevFest event in Mombasa which was held at the Royal Court Hotel on Saturday 14th September 2013 proudly sponsored by Google. The event kicked off with a house full of 45 people, out of which 10 were females, very encouraging!
Invited guest speakers from Uganda; Nicholas Kamanzi (GDG lead Busitema who is also the GDG Champion Uganda), Hassan Nsubuga (GDG lead Mbale) and from Nairobi; Anthony Nandaa a.k.a Prof (GDG Nairobi) and Mercy Orangi (GDG Lead Kenyatta University) and Billy Owino (Qualcomm Technologies) and Anwar Ahmed (Manager at Simbanet) were all very glad and enthusiast to meet the community members who had all presented themselves well before time.
The first ever GDG Women Launching event courtesy of Google
GDG Women Mombasa hosted it's first event to officially launch the GDG Women Chapter in Mombasa which was held at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology on Saturday 13th July 2013. A total of 20 people attended the event, out of which 6 were male and 14 were female, how impressive :) Thanks to all the attendants.
The event kicked off with an ice-breaking session where by attendants were asked to introduce themselves and explain in a sentence why they chose Information Technology and not any other field, the answers were really interesting...Later on Alifiyah Ganijee and Said Fuad officially marked the opening of the event and welcomed the attendants with a brief introductory session about GDG, GDG Women, its goals and why the initiative, after which we had an open discussion on challenges facing women in technology and amongst the few mentioned were lack of self-confidence, discrimination from the contrary sex, laziness, negative attitude (mindset) towards programming, persistence and resilience and also lack of resources for example access to computers and internet facilities...These were some of the reasons discussed which hinder women to reach where they need to be...
The Google MapUp event is an event in which a group of people come together to improve the places they know and love on Google Maps by using Google Map Maker. The MapUp event also teaches new mappers how to use Google Map Maker, bringing together experienced mappers, and everything in between.
The event was aimed to show participants how to map different places, add categories and discuss other features. It enabled them become citizen cartographers and improve the quality of maps and local information. The event was focused to make particularly Mombasa better mapped place with relevant local information such as roads, schools, hospitals, banks, hotels, police stations and such other important places entered by users, having local knowledge.
The Africa Android Challenge GDG Barcamp Mombasa officially kicked off at noon on Saturday morning at CAMARA Hub Mombasa, despite the chilly weather and downpour, we had about 35-40 people who actually made out of their comfortable beds to attend the event
The purpose of the Barcamp was to spread the word about AAC 2013 and GDG Barcamp and to motivate attendants to work harder and participate in AAC 2014. It was indeed a day for experienced as well as experienced Android developers.
The Africa Android Challenge proudly sponsored by Google, Alcatel One Touch, JCertif and eApps, is a multi-country challenge which will provide awards for great Android Apps developed by Africans. This is to encourage developers to write innovative android applications which is driven from local content.
