Along came forloopZimbabwe

A new chapter from Southern Africa

“There is no power fro change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”

Margaret J. Wheatley

Building a culture of community, learning to listen to each other, sharing knowledge and building together. A lot can be learnt from a group of people who have a hunger for knowledge, zeal for success and an appetite to represent the best of what can be.

Welcome to forloopZimbabwe!!

Meet, Share, Collaborate

#forloopZimbabwe Maiden event hosted on 13 April 2019 in Harare, Zimbabwe

Meet, Share, Collaborate grew from being a mere theme at the Maiden event of #forloopZimbabwe to becoming a code, a value, and a worthy cause in the Zimbabwean tech scene. It started with numerous discussions about the growth of Zim tech communities, the issues they have faced over the years and what solutions are available to fix these issues.

“…so you are good at JavaScript, he is good at social media marketing, she is an expert in Big Data. How can we help each other get good jobs, remote jobs or maybe build life changing projects?”

Meeting(remotely or physically), Sharing(advice, knowledge, resources, even contacts) and Collaborating(building solutions, teaching other people). These became the core values of a growing community for #forloopZimbabwe. As a first event, the theme had to be inclusive, not too technical, and relating to the core values and goals of forloopAfrica.

the maiden event…

#forloopZimbabwe maiden event attendees April 13 2019— ImpactHub Harare

If anyone had foretold the whole experience of organising the #forloopZimbabwe maiden event, I don’t think I would have agreed 😅. This experience became the most stressful and exciting thing I’ve done in 2019. The idea of getting many people together, networking, getting a venue, food among other things seemed like an impossible task until the day of the launch. It was a one-day event with 5 talks, unfortunately Olivier J.M the 6th speaker from forloopZambia couldn’t make it to the event.

Our speakers were from different fields of technology and this is what made their sessions interesting. Each talk had a Q&A session and a 15-minute break for networking because the main goal of the event was to meet different people who attended and find a common ground.

The speakers

Brighton Mukorera – “From the old to blockchain”

Brighton talked about making use of skills you have acquired from the basics of programming to become a blockchain developer.

Follow Brighton on Twitter and checkout his Talk

Hannah Madzinga – “Putting data to good use”

Hannah talked about how we can leverage the data that’s already at our disposal for good use.

Follow Hannah on Twitter and checkout her Talk

Prosper Otemuyiwa – “Engineering faster Web experiences in Plain Sight”

Prosper talked about the instant to-do rules and optimal strategies to build fast loading web experiences for users from every region.

Follow Prosper on Twitter and checkout his Talk

Shingirai Marandure – “Tech collabo”

Shingirai encouraged collaboration on projects among developers and called for increased and improved participation of women in tech.

Follow Shingie on Twitter and checkout her Talk

Lennex Zinyando – “Remote Possible: How to work from the jungle”

Lennex gave pointers on how to make the job hunting process less painful while making yourself a better developer that gets job offers.

Follow Lennex on Twitter and checkout his Talk

the AfternoonShow

This was an afternoon session for networking, asking questions and understanding the values that brought about the forloopAfrica community. This session had Prosper leading the discussion, answering different questions from the crowd while talking about the roots of forloopAfrica and what lies ahead for the community.

He received various questions ranging from his skillset, forloopAfrica, women in tech, remote working and the crowd’s favorite comparison between Nigerian and Ghanain jollof(there is video evidence) 😂. He even went further to compare Nigerian jollof to Laravel code because of it’s presentation.We also received some questions from those who were live-streaming the event on Twitter.

what’s next?

The maiden event showed how much people love to work as a community, how curious people are when it comes to development’s best practices and their willingness to share and learn from each other. #forloopZimbabwe aims to put the Zimbabwean tech community on the world map while also collaborating with other forloopAfrica chapters in different countries. We believe we can grow from learning and also teaching others. This will be done through more events, bootcamps or hackathons.

Prosper Otemuyiwa taking a group selfie

The forloopZimbabwe maiden event was made possible by Cloudinary and many more events can be made possible if we get sponsorship. The forloopZimbabwe sponsorship packages are available on the forloopZimbabwe website.

A special shout out to Remy Muhire for recommending us to start a forloopZimbabwe, Prosper Otemuyiwa for helping us launch this wonderful community and flying to Zimbabwe for the event , Lennex Zinyando and Adonis Rumbwere for co-organising the event, all the speakers, ImpactHub Harare for hosting us, attendees and the wonderful people at forloopAfrica.

This is because;

“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.”

Helen Keller

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