Django Girls Harare Workshop

This blog post was written by Anna Makarudze and Humphrey Butau. Thanks ❤️

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Our first Django Girls Harare event took place on the 9th of April 2016 at Muzinda Hub in Harare, Zimbabwe. It was co-organized by Anna Makarudze and Humphrey Butau. We invited more than 30 women/girls to attend the workshop. However, 25 managed to turn out for the event. We had hoped to host 30 girls but the other attendees were probably turned away by the heavy rains which pelted Harare on the eve and day of the workshop. We are really grateful to those who braved the harsh weather and managed to attend, kudos to them all!

We are also grateful to our awesome coaches, who turned up despite the bad weather. We had a total of 12 coaches, who almost outnumbered the attendees! It was not difficult to get coaches as we took advantage of a group of students from Muzinda Hub who had finished their Python Track with Treehouse Inc. These guys were really eager to impart their skills and couldnt wait for the day of the event.

On the day of the installation party we had 20 attendees whom we assisted with the installation of the prerequisite software packages. During the installation of software, we faced challenges as some of the computers had malware which made it difficult to install Python. With a team of awesome coaches we were however able to install all the software that was needed.

Marketing The Event

Having been inspired by PyCon Namibia 2016 and Django Girls Windhoek, we started a massive campaign to market and organize Django Girls Harare. We relied heavily on social media to spread the word about the workshop. Much of our advertising was on Facebook and Twitter. We also had support from Harare News who published our story in their March issue. We had attendees who said they heard about the event from “a Harare newspaper”. Initially the response was a bit slow due to the fact that we have not had any such Pythonic, Django or Open Source events in Zimbabwe before. However, the newspaper article really helped us in getting in the limelight and as the day of the workshop drew closer, interest in the event also began to increase. We hope to improve during the next event and move to Universities and colleges to spread the word.

Diversity

We had a very diverse group of attendees made up from people as young as 8 years and as old as 60 years. It was lovely to meet Rashid and Elleni, who were our eldest and most enthusiastic attendees. Prior to the event they had been constantly enquiring about the event. We also had the young ones who were heavily engrossed in the proceedings of the workshop. The workshop included developers who had no experience with Python and Django and really wanted to know more about the former. Overall, I can say the group was made up of girls/women from different walks of life.

The Venue

The venue was just amazing. It really matched the event, as everything that was required for the event was available. On the day of the installation party the internet was a bit sluggish and we had to resort to installing packages from USB sticks. On the day of the workshop however,  the internet was super-fast and we were able to continue without any bandwidth problems. We also had a generator on standby just in case we had power problems. Muzinda Hub being a hub for developers really made the event look awesome as it had everything that a developer would want. The attendees really felt comfortable making their first encounter with Django awesome.

Lessons Learnt

For the next episode of Django Girls Harare we hope to spread the word further by engaging universities, colleges and schools around Harare or any other town we may host it in. We also learnt that it is important to have all the funds from sponsors at least two weeks before the event. In this regard we also hope to engage more local sponsors.

Thanks!

We would really like to thank our sponsors: The Python Software Foundation, GitHub, Muzinda Hub and Django Girls Windhoek (who helped with some monies leftover from their own workshop) for making our workshop a success. I should also at this juncture mention Helen S.Taylor who was working from behind the scenes to make the workshop a success. Lastly but not least a massive thank you to the group of coaches who sacrificed their day and devoted it to teaching women how to code.

We are grateful to everyone who made our first Django Girls workshop a success and we hope to work with you in our many other Python events to come.

Thank you once again.