DevFest Makerere 2013

The GDG Makerere DevFest 2013 was held on the 21st of September at the Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, Makerere University

The event kicked off at 9:00 a.m with the arrival and registration of speakers and participants. The speakers reached in time but the participants were few in number. The number of participants increased with time and at exactly 10:00 a.m, we had our first session. 

The team lead +Emily Karungi gave opening remarks. She gave a basic introduction about this year's DevFest and the Google technologies to be covered that is; The app Engine platform, HTML5 and the Android SDK. She also introduced the +GDG Makerere team and the speakers to the audience.

Our second session was conducted by +Nsubuga Hassan a guest speaker from +GDG Mbale. He made a presentation and later took us through a code lab about Google's App Engine platform. He also talked about the  Google Cloud Developer Challenge  which got the students really excited and many developed interest in participating in the challenge.

This was followed by a Q&A session and some goodies like T-shirts, stickers were given out to participants.

The third session was conducted by+Victor Miclovich A. K. He is a software developer, serial entrepreneur and a RapidSMS consultant. He gave us tips on  how to monetize applications. His presentation was focused on teaching the students how to make money out of the applications they build.

+Deb Elzie an interaction designer from Tulane University gave a talk about Tech for women. She talked about the 7 deadly sins of Techie women. Her talk was aimed at getting more women involved in tech. 

Deb's session was followed by a lunch break. Lunch was served to over ninety people both participants and non participants. Thanks to Off Shore catering services for the work well done. The buffet was delicious and more than enough for all the participants.

After the lunch break, we had an HTML5 session which was led by +Caesar Mukama, a developer at Code sync. He took us through  an introduction to HTML5 and a code lab session. In his presentation, he explained the relevance of using HTML5 and the structure of HTML5 which was followed by a Q&A session.

The last session was about the Android SDK. This was led by +Nicholas Kamanzi team lead +GDG Busitema and GDG champion Uganda. In his presentation, he talked about how to implement the ActionBarSherlock side menu which allows one to easily develop applications with an action bar for every android version.








After the last session, there was a lot of networking  among the developers and the guest speakers. 

The event was a success. A lot of students gained interest in using the Google technologies discussed especially The App Engine platform and many are looking forward to participating in the Google Cloud developer Challenge.

Special thanks go to the communities and the people that sponsored and supported this event to make it a success. +Chukwuemeka Afigbo , +Uttam Tripathi, +Adriana Cerundolo , +Van Riper, +Elijah Kitaka , +Google Developer Groups , thank you so much.

To the speakers, +Nsubuga Hassan, +Victor Miclovich A. K., +Deb Elzie, +Caesar Mukama and +Nicholas Kamanzi, thank you for gracing us with your presence. The audience loved your presentations and we are looking forward to inviting you for any future events.

Lastly, to the entire +GDG Makerere team, thank you for the teamwork and all your effort towards making this event a success. Let us keep the spirit!

For more pictures about the event, please visit this link