DEVFEST WESTERN KENYA 2015

The 2ND annual Devfest Kisumu  was an unprecedented event in the history of GDG Kisumu.Some 250 persons, from three universities nearly half of whom were women, attended the event on  November 28th 2015.The atmosphere was electric, and the air was thick with love – love for technology and free schwag.

It could have been that we were excited to hear what the two Googlers from the Kenya office had in store for us.Or perhaps it was our anticipation for the future of the tech eco system in this part of the country. Whatever the reason, we were all on cloud nine.

Android offline kits

The tone of the conference was set with opening remarks from Victor Mwendwa - lead organiser of GDG Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology.

The first keynote John Kimani Developer Ecosystem Program Manager at Google.He talked about the Google ecosystem and how the tech community in Western Kenya can be part of the ecosystem.

John

The second keynote was from Mercy Orangi - Developer Ecosystem Community Manager at Google.She talked about how android developers can improve app quality.She talked about Google resources such as Lauchpad that the tech community can use to scale their start ups.

Mercy

Roina Ocheing from GDG Strathmore university also gave an awesome talk titled "Women Techversation" highlighting the evolution of women in technology.

Roina 

We took a short break,then we had several side events in smaller rooms for one hour. Most of them were practical workshops focused on different technologies and codelabs. (Polymer,firebase,android and tech-prenuership)
All these sessions were led by ladies.Yeeiy Women techmakers!!!

Attendees having lunch

With our bellies full of  chicken and a couple of drinks, we kicked off the second half of the fiesta with a presentation from Eugene Mutai, who a GDE and a full stack web engineer at Andela.Eugene gave a detailed presentation on "Web development craftsmanship as of 2015"

Eugene

GDG Kimathi University of Science and Technology lead, Kenneth Kinyanjui, anchored the event with the second presentation on "Service Workers: Offline Functionality and Push Notifications"

Kenneth

Panel Discussion.

The local techies also got a chance to present to the audience what tech start ups they had been working on.

The conference was not just talks and workshops. The speakers had a small  tour around Kisumu city on Sunday before they left.

Boat ride at Lake Victoria

Here's the link to more events photos
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Special Thanks to

Google

Lake-hub

GDG Kisumu and MMUST

WTM Kisumu and MMUST

All the organizers

All the volunteers

God above all