we were all trying to do final touches before 8:00am in the Morning.
Everything seemed really set but the participants were no where to be seen, things were getting complicated for the organisers and the ushers but we had faith. One by One the people begun to pull in and we were ready to roll.
+Nicholas Kamanzi the organiser kicked off with the keynote and the first session which was an Android CodeLab, it was to take people through different design principles. We then followed this with different brain teasers and tongue twisters to keep our audience engaged.
+Nsubuga Hassan our Guest Speaker took the stage and talked to us about the ongoing Google Cloud Developer Challenge. He also took us through an intro of the App Engine to quick start our developers to the cloud computing challenge. There was a question and answer session thereafter which was followed by break tea and snacks.
After break Tea, +Emily Karungi from GDG Makerere took us through another exciting session about Women in Tech, giving us reasons why there are very few women involved in Tech and how we can beat the gap. She encouraged ladies at GDG Busitema, not to be bullied by guys who throw the typing course works to them so that they boys focus on the code but to also get involved and do actual coding.
After Emily's talk we headed out for a nice lunch that was served to more than 100 developers who attended our Devfest. there was alot of networking going on over lunch but we had to go in for what was the most exciting part of the evening.
We kicked off by getting a small talk from +Ssesanga Dennis Ernest who has been an intern at Google Local office in Kampala talking to us about to stand out as a student doing whatever course you are doing and how to become a Google Student Ambassador. He also talked about his experience as a Google Intern which inspired alot of students in Busitema.
Our Final pitch of the evening was delivered by +Elijah Kitaka a Googler from our Local office who is in charge of Google Business Groups across Africa. He talked to us about "How he would Build a Successful Start-up . He started by defining a Start-up as a temporary organisation used to search for a scalable business model. He went on to explain the 4 things Needed to improve on a Start-up. These were:- Need a good problem
- Structured Methodology
- Access to Talent(People with Skill)
- Enough Runway.
He took us through what he believes are the most important steps for a start-up and he tended to a lot of questions from the soon to be start up founders.
We later had some evening Tea and a snack as some of the developers were showcasing their app to the guests.
We are very grateful to the team at GDG Busitema that was working in the background to see everything moving according to plan. We appreciate the efforts of +Atukunda Edgar the Co- Organizer of +GDG Busitema. We are forever in debt to the local Google office for the Swagg they sent us on a short notice. We thank +Evolution events for the decorations of our Venue.
We also appreciate our Guest Speaker who travelled from their home towns to come to the forest in Busitema just for this DevFest. +Emily Karungi , +Nsubuga Hassan and +Elijah Kitaka we appreciate the love.
To the sponsors and mentors of our DevFest +Google Developer Groups , +Chukwuemeka Afigbo , +Uttam Tripathi , +Adriana Cerundolo and +Van Riper we thank you so much and we are glad to have been part of this exciting DevFest Season and our DevFest would not have succeeded without you.
