About a year ago, the organizers of Game of Learners asked if I could commit to mentoring a group of students from Africa for five one-hour sessions each month. I am always happy to give back and the opportunity to help guide students into the world of technology was too enticing to pass up.
As with many things in life, I got as much out of the mentoring sessions as the students did. During one of our sessions, the topic of brand building came up. The question was, “How do you make a name for yourself in our industry?” My advice was, “Own something.” What I meant by that was if someone is searching for information on a topic no matter where they look they should find you. That means you need to tweet about the topic; write blogs; answer questions on forums; create videos; speak at conferences, meetups, and user groups; be a guest on or start a podcast; create TikTok videos; submit issues and pull requests to open-source projects; and join Discords or Slack channels. If there is a way to share information on a topic, produce content in that format and share it.
To help the students build a brand, I encouraged them to write a blog post on any topic they wanted. I promised to share it on my social media channels. I also wanted to have a more permanent way for people to discover their work, so I decided to practice what I preach and write this blog post.
Below are the links to the blogs of the students I mentored and their contact information. You will want to keep an eye on each of them because I have a feeling they are going to have a noticeable impact on our industry.
In alphabetical order (first name):
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| Bethany Jepchumba Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog |
| Bethany is a Program Coordinator at Andela. At Andela, she works with the Andela Learning Community, curating different programs and opportunities for 100,000+ developers in the community. Bethany continues to empower developers outside Andela through programs such as Microsoft Certified Trainers, and formerly, Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors and Technovation Girls. Outside communities, Bethany always has an idea up her sleeve and looks for ways to implement them via code or design. |
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| Festus Idowu Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog |
| Festus is a frontend web developer that brings UI designs and products to life with accessibility and performance in mind. He is currently in his final year at the Obafemi Awolowo University studying Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He is a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador, Google Developer Student Club member, and Open-Source Community Africa member. He is passionate about web technologies, sharing knowledge, and contributing to Open-Source software. Outside software engineering, he plays the guitar, violin, and keyboard. He also enjoys learning about financial markets. |
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| Fortune Adekogbe Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog |
| Fortune is a Machine Learning Engineer at Josplay, an African music intelligence organization. He is also a freelance Technical Writer who enjoys writing about Python, data and machine learning related topics. In his free time, he contributes actively to tech communities as a tutor and mentor. Fortune has an academic background in Process Engineering with multiple scholarships and awards to his credit. He is interested in nanotechnology, renewable energy and building systems that help tackle the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). |
It was an honor to spend time with these bright students and I am excited to see how they impact the world.