By Patrick Wamuyu

In November, the Computer Department played host to two events, Droidcon Kenya 2022 and the Google DevFest. Droidcon is a global conference focused on the engineering of Android applications, providing a forum for developers to network with other developers, share techniques, announce apps and products, and to learn and teach. This was a three-day developer focused gathering held on November 16 to 18. Droidcon is a community driven Android Development conference, offering best-in-class presentations from leaders in all parts of the Android ecosystem. This event happens once every year.

The event, which attracted 502 attendees, had workshops and code labs focusing on the building of Android applications and gave the participants an excellent chance to learn about the local Android development ecosystem, opportunities and services as well as meet the engineers and companies who work on them. The 3-day event consisted of a community day and 2 developer days.

The community day drew developers and developer communities from all over Kenya and the world. Speakers were drawn from Kenya and the global Android developer community.

The DevFest, which was held for the fourth time at USIU-Africa is an annual event hosted by the Google Developers Group across the world to bring the technology closer to the developers. It was an all-day developer conference with focus on multiple technologies through presentations, mentorship sessions, and training workshops. There were workshops, hands-on experiences, hacking and debugging events, all centered on the Google technologies. The event had 3600 participants.

The DevFest events are hosted by the Google Developer Groups community, featuring leading experts on Google technologies in areas like Android, Firebase and so much more. Google Developers Group (GDG) is where developers of all levels, interests, and background meet to learn new skills and share passion for the Android technology.

GDG organizes hands-on workshops, training, events, talks, and meetups, online and in person on a range of technical topics. GDG is the Google’s outreach program that to scale awareness and education on its technologies and has been running for 11 years in Kenya and have 6 groups with the largest being Google Developer Group Nairobi, also known as GDG Nairobi. This group has had over 9,000 unique developers go through its training and events in the last 5 years. The Kenyan groups are part of a global network of over 1,000 chapters across 140 countries and so there’s always opportunity for knowledge sharing and collaboration at a global level. All these groups are volunteer-led, and open to everyone who is interested in learning more about Google’s developer technologies.

Google’s commitment to support developers extends to students and aspiring developers as well. Google Developer Students Clubs provide students with the opportunity to connect, learn and grow while still in university, equipping them with much needed practical skills required by the industry. We currently have GDSC USIU-Africa which was established in 2019.