Dipo Olowookere
In continuation of its efforts to create a network of developers across the world as part of its mission to give people the power to build communities and bring the world closer together, Facebook’s Developer Circles on Saturday, December 8 organised a Startups and Developers Summit in Lagos.
The summit which took place at the Landmark Event Center and brought together about 600 Developers and Startup Tech founders, was held with the aim of re-establishing Facebook’s commitment in the region for the tech communities, inspiring developers and startups with the latest technology from Facebook as well as highlighting the Developer Circles as a strong, technical community.
Among topics discussed by internal and external speakers were: ‘Design Thinking’, ‘Working at Facebook – My FB Journey’ by Barbara Mbanefo, ‘Payments for Messenger: Custom Flow for African Businesses’, ‘FB Products for SSA’, ‘Predicting Growth with ML’, ‘Startups session NLP for Messenger Bot’, ‘Taking Accessibility with You’, and a host of others.
The event also offered Developer Circle teams an opportunity to share insights about their activities from their respective regions, while discussing issues facing different circles and how Developer Circle Leads can support each other in their respective communities.
Speaking on the programme, Chimdi Aneke, Startup and Developer Programmes Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa Facebook, commented: “Facebook is a company that grew from the developer community, and Developer Circles is a programme we developed to make local developers stronger at a global scale. We are creating communities for developers to collaborate and share knowledge because we believe in empowering developers around the world to learn from each other, and benefit from the products, services and best-practices that Facebook has established.” Developer Circles from Facebook is a global programme designed to create locally-led communities of developers, providing them with a place to collaborate and learn from each other both online and offline. They meet regularly to create unique solutions that cater to the needs of their communities. With over 42,800 members across 32 cities in 15 countries, Sub-Saharan Africa has amongst the largest number of DevCs. Each circle is led by a volunteer (a circle lead) who arranges offline meetups and discussions, as well as manages their own dedicated Facebook Group where members can continue the conversation between meetups, share code and deepen their knowledge on topics like React and bots for Messenger.
