Year 2019 in review
365/365 -31st December 2019
It’s been an amazing 12 months of 2019, filled with lots of success stories, lessons, disappointments and more. I’m choosing to write a review of my year for the first time, because it wraps up a decade and has been filled with so many activities plus successes which I would like to remember in the future.
So here goes:
CAREER:
Started the year with a role I already held and really admired, leading the Developer relations team at Interswitch Engineering but apparently the year had more plans for me.
Mid this year, I got an offer to work with the Developer Relations team for Sub-saharan Africa at Google (Nigeria). Dream come true? Yes!
A few minutes after announcing, I found out I was trending Nationwide with “Congratulations Ada”, un-fucking-believable!
COMMUNITY:
Last year I focused more on my personal and career growth, so this year I made more active efforts to grow and effectively lead the communities I founded and platforms I volunteered in;
At She Code Africa: I heavily pursued my advocacy for women in tech and planned on growing membership to “just” 100 members and 2 countries but with lots of dedication and teamwork, we exceeded all of that and achieved even more! The tweet below throws more light on our achievements for 2019.
At Open source community Africa:, our major goal was to plan and work towards successfully organising the first ever “Open Source Festival and Sustain Summit Africa” to bring together open source advocates from across Africa.
More than proud to say this is coming to a reality on the 20th — 22nd of February 2020, with the 101% help of an amazing co-founder, organising team and sponsors (peep the sponsors list 😉)
At forloop podcast: With several hiccups faced in recording episodes this year, still glad to total a release of 8 episodes in 6 months on the tech podcast.
I had to take a pause on recording more episodes as a result of internal logistics issues but definitely looking forward to going back to it and doing what I love most on the mic, podcasting!
EVENTS / SPEAKING :
This year, I spoke, attended and organised 20+ Tech events (I lost count at 20) in 6 cities and 3 African countries, both work related and self motivated. They include;
- DevFest Events across Sub-saharan Africa,
- Concatenate conference,
- Code Literacy day,
- React Ladies Bootcamp,
- Tensorflow Roadhsow Lagos
and many more.
SPOTLIGHTS / FEATURES / AWARDS:
- I made my debut with Live TV interviews via Channels Television, when i got interviewed about my career in Software Development and the work I do with my organisation: She Code Africa.
- Got featured in the TechWomen of Lagos series by Techcabal, as one of the top 50 women in Tech in the Lagos Tech Ecosystem.
- Got Awarded as one of the top 100 honourees in tech by the Future Awards Africa.
- Also made a debut on Live radio with an interview on Rhythm FM Lagos, talking about my journey in tech.
TRAVEL:
Amidst all the activties, I got to make work trips to 2 new countries and 6 cities across Africa, while finding some time to do some “touristing” amidst my busy work schedule. All work and no play?
SETBACKS:
Irrespective of all the numerous wins, I also took in some “L”s this year:
- Twice, I got all-expense paid invitations to attend and speak at Google IO 2019 (May) and GitHub Universe 2019 (Nov) respectively but got denied US visas to attend for no definite reasons.
- I fell out of my goal to read 12 books in 12 months and write at least 12 technical articles, as I struggled to find sanity in my schedule and maintain a healthy work-life balance. I only managed to finish 3 books and never got around to finishing any of the technical articles in my draft (jokes on me😒)
NEXT YEAR?
It’s an open book at the moment, but I’m definitely looking forward to ;
- Achieving more than this year, personally and with the communities i’m involved with.
- Going into consultancy in Developer relations.
- Successfully organising “Open Source festival” in February (Get a ticket here).
- Giving more talks and workshops globally.
- Writing more technical articles
- Improving my work-life balance
- Making new friends and also visiting as many countries and cities as I can.
I’m more than thankful for everything 2019 brought with it and I absolutely look forward to an amazing 2020!