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Episode 131: Bolaji Ayodeji on Open Source Community Africa (OSCA)

Guest

Bolaji Ayodeji

Panelists

Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman | Ben Nickolls

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, our guest is Bolaji Ayodeji, who’s a Software Engineer, Content Creator, Community Engineer, and currently works as a Developer Advocate at Commerce Layer. Bolaji is a member of the Sustain community and has done so much with Open Source Community Africa (OSCA). Our conversations take us through learning how Bolaji got into open source, being a part of the OSCA community and the Sustain Africa session, and what OSCA is all about. We’ll also hear about the communities and companies that are part of OSCA, things we can do to help the next generation of open source contributors and developers from African nations, and Bolaji highlights two Sustain sessions that he thought were really cool and what he enjoyed most about them. Go ahead and download this episode now!

[00:01:39] Bolaji tells us how he got into open source.

[00:03:05] We learn how Bolaji ended up being a part of the OSCA community and how his experience was joining them.

[00:04:20] At the OSCA event there was a giant Sustain track, so Bolaji talks about how that happened and what happened there.

[00:09:04] Now that there’s been a few events that happened, Bolaji fills us in on how the conversation has been evolving, and he tells us about DataFest in Africa.

[00:12:47] Justin talks about Bolaji’s blog and his tutorials around data science and he wonders if he’s giving any talks about data visualization and if there’s any organizations he’s working with that he can take their data and visualize it to the community.

[00:15:30] We hear about the communities and companies that are part of OSCA.

[00:18:21] Find out how many people came to OSCA this year, and how many people that attended are working on open source as part of their jobs or in addition to their jobs.

[00:20:02] Bolaji shares his views on what we should be doing to ensure the next generation of open source contributors and developers from African nations are incentivized and able to join in that community and contribute.

[00:23:16] Richard asks Bolaji if there has been a lot of buy-in about open source from other countries in Africa who’ve come to OSCA, is there a particular reason open source blossoming in Nigeria, and how is it being spread out to places like Ghana or other countries.

[00:25:25] Bolaji explains if there’s anything large companies can do in developed nations to help the open source community in Africa.

[00:27:22] What sessions was Bolaji most excited about at the Sustain meeting.

[00:29:36] When we talk about documentation in OSCA, Richard asks if as a community, Bolaji talks in English or if there’s small subgroups which speak in languages also spoken by participants in open source.

[00:34:51] Find out where you can follow Bolaji and OSCA on the internet.

Quotes

[00:26:37] “The same things that people in the western world have access to, Africans also working in open source should also be able to have access too without bias.”

Spotlight

  • [00:35:49] Justin’s spotlight is his Non-Code Contributor Newsletter.
  • [00:36:21] Ben’s spotlights are a blog post by Abdulsamod Azeez on Contributing to Open Source as a Data Scientist, and a list of Open Source Data Science Projects you can contribute to by Aden Haussmann.
  • [00:36:54] Richard’s spotlight is Heather Piwowar.
  • [00:37:24] Bolaji’s spotlight is TypeScript Error Translator by Matt Pocock.

Links

Credits

Special Guest: Bolaji Ayodeji.

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