Your Django Story: Meet Aisha Bello
This is a post in our Your Django Story series where we highlight awesome ladies who work with Django. Read more about it here.
Aisha Bello is a current student at Cardiff Metropolitan University, where she’s finishing up a MSc in Information Technology. Her final project is centered on open source data mining technologies for small and medium-sized hospitality organizations. Aisha co-organized and coached at Django Girls Windhoek in January 2016, and is also organizing a Django Girls workshop in Lagos, Nigeria in February 2016. The Lagos event will also double up as the first meetup of the Python community in Nigeria. Among other things, Aisha is an ardent tech and Python community enthusiast with a strong desire and passion for social change and women’s tech education and empowerment. These are themes she explores in her Journey through Python talk, which she recently gave at PyCon Namibia.
How did your story with code start?
My case is somewhat outside of the norm. Honestly, if I were to put a time-stamp on when my journey with code started, I would say from my second year in University. We were introduced to C in class and subsequently C++. Java followed suit.
But my real story with code started in 2015, when I attended a two week Andela bootcamp for women in web dev. We learned and used HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Imagine being through thick and thin and then discovering Python & Django. It was like, “Where have you been all my life?!”
What did you do before becoming a programmer?
I honestly don’t refer to myself as a programmer. I like to think of myself as a data scientist who knows how to code. :D Before now I have done quite a number of interesting things with myself. Shortly after my first degree, during my service year in Nigeria, I wrote motivational content for a club in school.
I moved on to modelling, tried to get into music (I just wasn’t Adele enough ;)), learned how to do hair and makeup, and finally, started a small business: Illustrious Belle. The funny thing is, when I created the website for my startup I didn’t really have to write any code - it was just a bit of customizing an already existing template!
What do you love the most about coding?
I love how you can create something so amazing from an empty canvas. Also, now that I am into Data Science, I love how knowing how to code makes your life easier by giving you so much flexibility in deciding what goes where. I also love how it all feels like magic. Like, “Hey, here’s this empty box,” and voila!, here is this amazing work of art.
Why Django?
I would say Django found me at a point when I was trying many different things in a bid to find myself. I mean, here is someone who went through the whole nine yards of learning different types of “beginner” languages and ended up feeling discouraged and like programming simply wasn’t for me. Python/Django came along and took all that complicated scary stuff away and made me realize I could definitely do it without all the fuss.
What cool projects are you working on at the moment/planning on working on in the near future?
I just completed a data science project where I had to work with a hotel in discovering hidden insights and customer behavioural patterns from their data set. It was particularly interesting that they had this huge chunk of data sitting on their desks doing nothing and didn’t realize how much of a gold mine they kept hidden away. I am currently trying to partner with a company to take this service to many more hotels.
What are you most proud of?
Currently, I am proud of the successful Django Girls workshops in Windhoek and soon in Lagos. I am also proud of the presentation I gave at PyCon Namibia, and how many people listened to me and got inspired. It means so much to me that, because of my talk, I informed the world of the Nigerian Python community and our plans to do great things with Python in Nigeria. I am particularly proud of how the Python Community in Nigeria has grown.
Another beautiful thing: Django Girls Lagos brought about the creation of a Nigerian Python community that didn’t exist before. It brought together a lot of great minds who are passionate about promoting the use of Python in Nigeria. Because of that inspiration, in less than three months another event in Nigeria Django Girls Ile-Ife will take place (in April). For me it doesn’t get any cooler than that ;)
What are you curious about?
My curiosity changes with time, but presently I am curious about hospitality data. What information or insight I can uncover from seemingly large and messy datasets? It’s like digging where you are sure to find gold. #WhatIstheDataSaying
What do you like doing in your free time? What’s your hobby?
The truth is I do a lot of things, so it’s hard to pick one specific activity I do in my free time. They include surfing the net, listening to pop and soft rock music, and having intelligent conversations about anything. :)
Do you have any advice/tips for programming beginners?
Be Authentic and Believe in Yourself : Honestly maybe your boss isn’t the first person you want to be true to. But be brutally honest with yourself. As Naomi Ceder says, “You can’t be outed if you’re already out”. Being up-front with yourself about your shortcomings will propel you to change the things you don’t like, and to improve the things you would like to get better with.
Keep pushing and never stop believing in yourself. Remember: talk is cheap. When you have a bad day and can’t seem to debug that program you’ve painstakingly looked at for over 3 hours, take a break and do something different. Listen to music, dance, take your mind off of the problem. You’ll come back with a fresh perspective. Trust me: a #YesICan attitude always helps!
Don’t ever give up on yourself. The journey could get hard, but don’t ever, even for once, think you don’t have anything to bring to the table or that you’re not good enough. There’s only going to be one you ever in the history of humanity, and you would be doing the world a disservice if you give up on YOU. It’s okay to live and try many different things until you finally find that one thing, or many things that defines you, that makes you unique.
Mentorship: I can’t stress this enough. Having someone or a group of people that you can talk to about the brick walls you face on your journey is invaluable. Surround yourself with people who truly care and want to help out. Don’t be afraid to ask for help even if you feel you don’t need it, and don’t try to go at it alone. Learning to program can be hard enough when you go at it completely alone. Seek out a mentor. It’s as easy as sending an email, or just talking to someone. Try and get someone who is willing to hold your hand through the journey.
How did attending a Django Girls workshop influence your life/career? What did you get out of attending a Django Girls workshop?
I can say it changed the direction of my life in many ways than one, and opened up my world to the possibilities I never knew existed. Attending a Django Girls workshop helped me discover who I really was when I was trying many different things in a bid to discover myself. Through Django Girls, I found my love for Data Science, and I saw how there was a place for me. *No matter the path you choose to take Python has got a library/ framework somewhere for you*. I am just about rounding off a Master’s degree program in IT, and in the process of partnering to develop a startup that would focus on data science for both small and medium sized hotels.
Django Girls also helped me discover my passion for travelling and has given me the pedestal to change lives. After helping organize Django Girls Windhoek and giving my talk at PyCon Namibia, I had women who were beginning their journey come up to tell me how I had inspired them to go back home and get better, find mentors, and organize their own Django Girls events in their communities. I can totally relate when Brett Cannon during #PyCon2015 said “I came for the language, but I stay for the community”. I have honestly yet to discover another community as full of selfless, amazing, and helpful people, as the one I’ve found in Python.
Thank you so much, Aisha!
If you would like to suggest someone to be featured in the Your Django Story series (or would like to nominate yourself!), please email us at story@djangogirls.org!
