The Impact: 150+ At Codepen Africa Maiden Event
The determination to win is the better part of winning. — Daisaku Ikeda
I will summarize this writing based on this quote by Daisaku Ikeda. The journey of hosting the first Codepen.io Meetup in Africa started early November, 2017. At that time it seemed very impossible to make a remarkable impact until the event on the 13th of January, 2018. To be honest, I was skeptical about the number of people that will attend the event eventually because the event seemed targetted at Front-end or UI/UX developers but the main goal of the event was to deviate from the normal way tech. events were and to make people learn from the experiences of developers who grew from nothing to something.
It was a tough one for me hosting this event because this is my first event and from the deepest part of my heart, I was thinking 15 people (Would have cried) will attend the event but I was seeing over 150+ come into the venue we used for the event. Nothing made me fulfilled than many things I will highlight below.
The Speakers
I decided that the event will not feature talks like “How to design awesome UI” but be an event where people share their experiences and learn from other peoples’ experiences by asking questions and chatting because I have learnt that the experiences of other people has a way of helping you one way or the other if you wisely learn from them. So, I decided to bring on One of the top writers on freeCodeCamp who at some point last year, one of his article was the first most read on Medium . His name is Ohans Emmanuel.
Ohans Emmanuel was glad to share how he started from the scratch to being awesome to the point of Quincy Larson talking about him in one of his talks I saw on Youtube. Many people couldn’t resist asking deep questions when he was done sharing his experience.
The next speaker was alex vazquez. Mehn! I cannot forget Alex in my life. He saved me from dying at the event. alex vazquez is one of the co-founders of Codepen.io alongside big boys like Chris Coyier and Tim Sabat. Alex made my day because if he did not show up for the video chat which a lot helpful to the the attendees, there is nothing I could have done. Mehn! he saved my ass despite my disturbances. His presence made people believe that the event was for a great purpose of helping people grow. I love you alex vazquez (Pure heart)
If you wanna check out Alex’s awesome slide, here is it.
The Panel
Another interesting thing about the event was the part I had to hijack the big boys Neo Ighodaro , Adewale Abati ♠ and Ohans Emmanuel . Kelvin Umechukwu was awesome as he anchored this section. People were able to ask questions they would normally not get the chance to ask and they learnt from it.
Code Fight
We decided to spice the event up with a little hackathon. The idea was for contestants to build something light on Codepen in 25 minutes then the 2 highest voted contestants win awesome swags.
We had 4 contestants with 2 of them winning the code fight. Here are the links to the pens.
The Impact
My words would fail me if I try to talk about the impact of the event on attendees so I decided to curate some tweets. Enjoy!
Connections
The event was for learning, enjoying and connecting. Connecting among attendees was natural.
Journey From Far and Wide
I met some people who traveled from far distant for the event. Some had to sleep in hotels till the next morning. How I wish I had a mansion to house all of them. I love you.
Sponsors
I will say sponsors of the event are awesome. I really appreciate @codepen , Hotels.ng, (mt) Media Temple, Scotch Development, Accounteer, Consonance,Host Cabal, and Ingressive. I love you!!! Thanks for the sponsorship.
My special thanks to great people who helped during the event. You are awesome Adebimpe Adebowale, Moses Nmor , Jonathan Otokun, Simi Adejumo, Adetuyi Tolu Emmanuel, TeeJay, Steeve, Gladys, Rachel, Segun (Commissioner Of Jollof Rice), Jemimah, Emmanuel Kehinde and you in particular.
A special thanks to Kelvin Umechukwu. He helped in co-organizing the event and handled crucial parts of the event. You are awesome.
The Community
The community does not just stop at the event. There is a lot of things to learn, share and a lot of people to meet and because of that, we created a slack channel for people to share, learn and meet. You can join here.
Follow us @codepen_africa for more updates
