This talk is to discourage folks who get into opensource for self-beneficial purposes. People fail to understand (especially new folks) that opensource is a selfless service: you do it for the community and the love for the project, not the self-glorifications and travel funds.
This is a reason why most individuals pop-up the questions at the end of most opensource events “what are the benefits of contributing?” The talk aims to impact the granular understanding of opensource being 100% Beneficial with 0 Benefits; not as a reward for participation, collaboration or contributions, but gratitude for selfless service. Opensource has zero (0) spelled out Benefits for you (the collaborator), You (the collaborator) make your contributions count which in return becomes Beneficial to you (the collaborator).
There has been an accelerated growth in the number of software engineers in Africa with varying degrees of experience. My talk will highlight some of the ways software engineers can open source their experience through various channels like writing or virtual mentorship to help young developers grow. Open source has opened so many doors and lowered the entry barrier to becoming a successful programmer but becoming a world class software engineer requires a lot more than knowing how to write code. This is where experience comes in. Sadly, the majority of the growing community of software engineers have limited access to opportunities that can accelerate their growth to becoming world class. There are fewer internship opportunities, startups are not patient enough, agile teams are fast paced and experienced developers are too busy. This talk seeks to highlight various ways software engineers and tech enthusiasts can leverage on available digital channels to share their hard earned experiences by way of peer-to-peer mentorship, virtual mentorship, delivering lightning talks, supporting tech-based user groups, sharing of post or articles to grow the tech ecosystem by educating more developers on none technical topics like Time Management, Work Ethic, Finances, and other soft skills
