 Please give a warm welcome to Mary. Hello everyone. Good morning. I'm excited to be here. It's my first time in Mombasa, Kenya. And it's wonderful to see so many faces. Great to be here. So my name is Mary Jub. I guess you already know that. I run Hogyu Tech. It's a tech research agency. And I also have a non-profit where we teach young girls how to get into tech. I also am the co-organizer for the Lagos and Ijebu WordPress community. Lagos majorly, but then I live in Ijebu. So how would I go to Lagos and not have the WordPress community in my village? I live in the village, by the way. Yes, two cities. We also had a first WordPress camp in Lagos this year. And we have another next year. I'm also the lead organizer for that. So I'm happy to be here. Are we all happy to be here? We are. Awesome. Okay, so I'm here to talk about my topic. WordPress is the easiest way to get into tech. Anybody wants to dispute that before we begin? How many of us know about WordPress? Because I know somebody just asked, what is WordPress camp? We all do 90%, right? Okay, so does anybody want to dispute this? Do you think it's flawed? Is it 100% right? Or 90, 80, anyone? All right, so we'll say 90. Okay, let me not be generous. We'll say 70%, maybe. All right. First of all, I want us to deal with the notion that tech is for certain people. How many of us here use Facebook? How many of us use Facebook? How many people here use IMPESSA? Okay, because when I wanted to buy my joint ticket, I noticed you can't do it without a Safari Com line. And what I got was an air token. So everybody uses IMPESSA because it seems to be the main form of payment, right? So you don't think you're into tech already? To use IMPESSA, it's technical. You press this code, you press that code. You're already into tech. I say this because when people say, oh, I'm into tech, the thing that comes into your head is that picture right there, am I right? When somebody says I'm into tech, you just automatically think this person must be a serious programmer, right? That's not true. We all use Facebook, Twitter, e-mail. I know some people don't like social media. Some friends who are not on social media. But you use an e-mail or a web mail. You said something. You use an e-mail, you use a web mail. You're into tech. Tech is for everyone. Okay, so back when I was in high school, it's customary when you finish secondary school. They send you to a school, a place to learn some skill before you go into the university. I remember back then, what was common was a secretarial school. Is it the same year? Like after secondary school, after high school, do you go straight to college or you go do something in between? College. Okay, so back home, Nigeria, I think I speak for majority. You go to, because you're too young to go straight to college, right? So you're not 19 or 18, you're not good. Back then, now it's changed. A lot of parents send kids 16 straight to university. But back then you have to go to middle school to learn a skill. So it used to be a secretarial school. But now everybody wants to send their kids to a computer school. Like go learn Microsoft Word or something. Why? Can anybody tell me why? Like why do you think they do that now? Are we starting to agree that we're all into tech? In fact, I want 1000% agreement by the time we're done. Right. Everybody sitting here already watching, tweeting, Facebooking, whatever, you're into tech. We are all into tech. There is no such thing as tech. It's for a particular group of people. So how do you do tech? With what price? I think I'm going to skip a little. What do you want to achieve with tech and how? I need answers to proceed. Like everybody here, like what do you want to do with tech? Like it could be to get an email like he said. I need answers please. What do you want to do it? Okay, why are we here? Yeah. Sorry, let me introduce myself. My name is Mustafa. I'm from Mambasa. Nice to meet you. Yeah. Me personally, my aim with tech is to become a blogger and make the world a better place with my blogging. Which of course. Help people spread information. So when I leave this world, at least it's slightly better than when I found it. Awesome. Great. One person should give us an answer. Any answer. Someone please give us any answer. Like why are you here? Why do you want to go into tech more? Just tell us. It could be anything. We want to know more about technology. You want to know more about tech? Awesome. I'm asking you because somebody out there is always watching when you put out your posts. How many people here have a blog? I know I have a blog. So I used to blog. I tried blogger. I tried, there's this one. I tried so many platforms. Who has used blogger before? That platform is just there. It's uninspiring. You don't even want to write. That's the fact. The most I got when I was using blogger is one like. From a friend that is concerned. Let me just like a post. Just one like. That was the most I got. Then in 2015 I was in Ghana. I was doing my IT for my masters program. And my cousin said why not blogging on WordPress? And I'm like I don't want to use that application. It's too complicated. Have you seen the interface? Like I don't even understand what is going on right there. And he says did you take a course? Like did you try to learn before you just registered an account and you expect to automatically understand what is going on there? I said of course I just registered for an account. I just want to write. I'm not interested in all the technicalities involved. So he gave me some videos and said you know what go watch. After two weeks of watching those videos I ran and then moved my blog. I spotted from blogger and moved to WordPress. And when I did that within three months I made friends. I made friends from far and out. My post has a lot of likes. Whenever I put out a post it has comments. Like I was inspired to keep writing. That's what WordPress did for me. So I like to tell people WordPress found me when I was roaming the internet when I was roaming proud to death. I mean I was intact but I was roaming. I didn't know why I fit that in. WordPress gave me a place to fit in. Now that's for me owning a blog. And it was a free blog. It was a free. It was marijub.wordpress.com. Because people have this notion that if I start using WordPress like you know I have to be marijub.com. I don't know how to feel about that. Like would you go for free domain as opposed to a paid domain? We would go for a free domain. Trust me like I said somebody somewhere is always watching and observing your posts. You know today when employers want to employ you know they go through your social media profiles. When somebody wants to work with you they go through them. Are we aware? They do. Somebody sends me a friend request on Facebook I first go to the person's timeline and I look at everything. Red flag, red flag. Reject. Ya because it's almost goes with this saying like you are what you have around you. So if I say things that I don't agree with on your timeline why should we be friends or follow each other? It might be things that are offensive. Alright so let me continue my story from the free blog. So I got a message from this woman in the UK she said I like how your blog looks. It's on WordPress right? Do you mind redesigning our website for us? I'm like oh so you can use WordPress to build a website this is interesting. I didn't know that. So I thought that you know what. Yes sure why not. And then I started googling troubleshooting. Now do you see the trend here? I started from where? From a free domain. Probably free domain. I was still on a free domain even after a year white taking the job. I was still on a free domain. So I started from roaming the internet and then to blogging on WordPress and now somebody is asking me to build a website. I'm naturally courier. So of course I wanted to know how to do it. So I started troubleshooting. So how did you be like okay I didn't even know there was such a thing as self hosting. Like self hosting was that. I started reading up. She gave me access to their website. I started digging in learning all I could learn about it. And I was able to fix a site for her. In fact she had to convince the board in the UK like look the person we gave the job to here isn't doing a very good job at all. We hardly are able to reach him. So why can't we give it to somebody out there who's available and has fixed our problems for us. So that was my first job building a website. Or redesigning a website. Of course I wanted to learn more so I did. I think my first job I took $10 to build a website. Yes the first website I ever did. Because I didn't know anything. I won't charge $1,000 when I don't know anything. It doesn't make sense. Now I do take $1,000 and above. I don't take below $1,000 but then. Like I build based on how I feel like I'm competent enough to build. So I went from that. I was still on a free domain by the way. It was still marriagejob.wordpress.com. And this is why because I started using WordPress. Maybe if I had done a different route I probably wouldn't have discovered that. Now we have one come and go. Everybody wants to be reachable online. Like if you have a local shop here where you sell those t-shirts. If you were online, would you achieve marriage? Do you think you would have marriage if you put those t-shirts online? Yes, right? Who picks up their phone when they wake up first thing in the morning? I mean even the Bible app is on the phone. So if you say you want to pray just use the app. Right? Where's the first place you go to get information today? Google, right? Google is my favorite. Like if I met you right now and you told me your name. As you're telling me your name, I'm typing it into Google and putting plus. Something that you say you do to see if I can find you online. Because that's where people are able to reach you. And WordPress gives you the easiest way to be rich. Because you can have a blog like you want. You can have a website or you can have an application built with it. And you can do this either by paying somebody or learning how to do it yourself. And trust me, learning how to use WordPress is easy. It's easy when you take the time to actually learn like you want to use WordPress. Don't just jump into it and start using it. That's not fair, right? I mean if you had a webmail you would want to understand how it works. So it's the same thing with this one. If you buy a microwave you would read the instruction manual, isn't it? So it's the same. You read the instruction manual to understand what you're trying to achieve and you do that. Do we agree that it's still the easiest way to get into tech? Not everybody can afford to pay a developer to build a site for them. It's become crazily expensive these days. And the sad part is if you're not careful you pay somebody who is a newbie somebody that just started and wants to collect 1,000 from you. I said I started with $10, isn't it? If a woman contacted me recently she said she wants to build a site. She was among the first people I collected $10. So she was like, Mary so so time. I said how many years ago was that? Do I look the same way I did when I collected 10 from you? So why do you want to collect 10 from you? You know I won't collect 10 from you. Okay because you're my friend maybe I'll take 500. And she's still like Mary. I said yeah but you've seen my works that's why you came back to me right? Because for me I keep telling people when you want to go into business or you want to do anything start free and then climb your way up. Why? Let me give you this case study. So somebody comes and says I want to start an SEO digital marketing agency. I've almost finished the website. Okay that's great. What about the clients? But it's a new business. I don't have the clients yet. I'm like okay. What about marketing? Well I'm thinking of putting $100,000 into Facebook ads. What do you think is going to happen to that person's business? It's going to go down fast right? And I keep telling people use what you have to get what you want. That line is not by me it's by John Dobidze in Lagos. It's not my line. Use what you have to get what you want. So use what price to get to where you want. You want a store right? Maybe you sell footwear. You want a store. You want to reach more people. You can have a store on what price isn't it? How much does it cost to buy a domain name? $1,500. That's about how much in U.S. That's about 10, 15. Yeah 12. 15. How much does it cost to host these days? For hosting and domain? How much is that in Keyanshelins? How much would you pay somebody to do all that for you? $25,000 to $30,000. So how much did you just save yourself by doing it yourself? How much did you just save? 15. We haven't talked about the process of actually building. The manual is online. You can find it anywhere. Now we've talked about how to use what price to get into blogging. Just start with a free domain. If you're a student, start blogging about your interests. If you work for someone, you can also still blog about your job. Well, not the sensitive part. You can still blog about your job or blog about your interests as well. Back in the day when our parents were growing up, it was fine, right? It's either you're a doctor, lawyer, engineer, any one of those things, right? But these days it's crazy the pressure is real. If you say you want to be a programmer then I say which one? You want to code Python, Java, Rails, which one? Or you want to be a full stack? Even if you're a full stack, you still can't learn all the languages. I mean if you don't want to... Who is a developer here? I presume how many languages are there available in the program. How many? Rough guess. Just rough estimate. Maybe I'd say about 20 plus. 20 plus. How many do you... Do you write? About five. Five. And I'm sure it's very good, right? The first time I tried Java script I almost went crazy. I went to look for the equivalent of Ugarli. After 24 hours that's how I felt because I was like what is this? What am I here? Okay what exactly am I doing here? So I can imagine what it means to know five languages. I can't imagine really. It must be really hard. If you say you want to be a social media person then the next question is Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat. Who is this Snapchat? I don't understand that platform. At all. I downloaded it and I asked myself what am I doing here? Like my Snapchat disappeared so I'm supposed to keep up but some people use it to sell their business it works for them. So you can't even be a social media person in peace you still have to learn how to do this. The career options these days are seriously, seriously confusing. You can't do one thing but what I do to all people because you can't do everything at least, sorry at most two or three and then be the best you can in those areas. There's no point trying to be everything trying to do everything it doesn't make sense you might just end up depressed. Now we have a irritant of depression. How many of our parents were depressed back in those days? I doubt they got depressed but now you see a 20 year old or 25, 16 they tell you they are under so much pressure. Why do you think that is that way? Anybody? Why? Rough answer? Yes please. Let me take an example of India. Okay. For what I know every guy is supposed to be an engineer so it's like the parents it's like kind of a movie once and there was this guy and he wanted to be a wildlife photographer and he wanted to say no this occupation Oh they move it three idiots TDI, TDI So you see there's this kind of pressure from the parents that no this thing doesn't make money what will you do in this profession? Exactly But what I believe you should follow your passion follow your passion Yes If you feel this for you go for it. My mum will come everyday like I'm at work so you're in a sitting room Yes I'm at work they don't get remote working like whoever thought remote working was going to be the thing now but they all buzz down to one thing right we all want to put ourselves out there some people don't because of their job I understand but majority of us want to put ourselves out there and what price of has you the best way to do it? If you have an interest or passion you can blog about it in fact I think everybody should be a blogger Do you know Facebook, Twitter the likes are actually blogging platforms as well Yes they are it's called micro blogging those are micro blogging platforms short snippets short snippets but with what price you can put everything up you can have a page about me if you sell something you can put it there if you want to have a store you can achieve that with a self-hosted site at little or no cost if you're willing to put in a time to read the instruction manual right if you want an application you can also do it maybe with a little help from a developer because to get to that stage then you definitely need help or you need to put in more time to read all the instruction manuals which might take time depending on what you want to achieve but for the basic things the basic idea of putting yourself out there you can do that easily with the WordPress blog is it possible to go on the internet here? like I want to show my blog here so why won't you use WordPress that's not me by the way maybe I should have made an emoji of me screaming so why won't you use WordPress anybody who isn't using WordPress okay let me ask who is not using WordPress right now to do any of those three things I listed okay I had no knowledge about WordPress but personally before one year ago I opened an account with WordPress but I didn't have more information about WordPress that's why I stopped blogging from it that's why I came here I came here for getting more knowledge about the WordPress awesome have you been able to get anything so far? I just left the account so what do you want to do when you live here? yeah okay from personally when I live here at the end of this session I'll be able to know about the WordPress more so you're willing to read the instruction manual yeah you're willing to make use of it the best way possible exactly awesome yeah I saw like five hands when I asked don't hide why you know using WordPress yeah it was kind of confusing for me at first I didn't know how to use it so just stopped okay what about now do you think you can do something with it? yeah I can what do you plan to do with it? well first I'll start with blogging then next I'm kind of a little bit interested in web development so I'll grow myself from there so you're curious like me yay I do tell my by the way everybody thinks I'm a developer I have nothing to do with computer science or computer science it was philosophy mass communication information management knowledge management I don't have anything to do for me it was a passion like I've been on the internet since 2002 I used to spend my nights in cyber cafes not alone of course I would pay for two of my friends guys because I was always the only woman in the cyber cafe and it felt really weird of course it was not safe to be there alone so I would pay for them you guys are going to the cyber cafe with me tonight and then I would spend my entire night there and which is why I said for me WordPress gave me a place to fit in you see like I was roaming what did I know Freelance Upwork it was Elance I think Up Up something is the name of the platform that I used to block I did so many things virtual assistant if I done one occasion my mum followed me to the ATM she said I want to see if this thing you do really pays you like I don't get the concept at all then she went with me like I had a payoneer card who here uses payoneer because in Africa it's difficult to get payments especially when you work for foreigners right so payoneer makes it easy and she's like I want to see if money is going to come out from that card truly so we all agree that WordPress has a solution for us right be it blogging be it programming be it setting up a store selling your services talking about the things you do it has a solution for you so why won't you use it okay I think now we agree that we're going to use it right to do something if you're a student if you're studying you're in high school you're going to college like I have two students in my hub who just finished high school I like to teach so that space was supposed to be an office space but I'm like I don't even work from the office I work from my room or my sitting room so why not just make this into a hub for young ladies who want to find their way into tech because when they go to college and they give you assignments how are you going to do your assignments if you don't know how to use your computer who knows about Google Scholar what do you use Google Scholar for what do you use it for easy for getting some reference when you're writing maybe an article or something are you guys aware about that you know in high school like the teacher doesn't care where you get your answers for most of the time it's not relevant but when you get into college you can just write and then submit there has to be a reference how do you get a reference you use Google Scholar scholar.google.com that's why you find all academic articles all those things are little things that matter that puts you at the forefront in tech because amidst your colleagues they're looking at this person as a guru like she knows exactly where to go or he knows exactly where to go so regardless of the option you want to take or the route you want to take what press has the answer oh yes I wanted to show you my blog so this is my blog now it's mojispix.com but it's still not self hosted all I did was buy a domain for $13 and points pointed to this blog so if you type marriageup.workpress.com you still get here and this was done this year it wasn't done last year so I write about everything that I'd like to inspire people so I just write and here you can find six to seven thoughts I never had that on blog I didn't even have one it was a like from a friend and these people here are people I have built relationships with built relationships with like I have friends from India we've never met physically of course but we're like best buddies we talk about everything and everything that's another thing you need to learn to do instruction manual if you have a blog and I come to your blog every day to read because I like what you write about and I also have a blog and you don't return the courtesy what do you think I'll do at a point stop visiting right so you want somebody to read your work but you don't want to read other people's work so you've read instruction manual you're just throwing out the content you're just throwing everything out and you don't want to return the courtesy to people who also do the same thing in your field there's this analogy I use I don't know if it's the same here when you go to a typical Nigerian market all the pepper sellers are in one place all the yam sellers are in one place all the whatever sellers are in one place is it the same here in your markets or they are scattered a typical Nigerian market they are all in one place and then people will be like competition I don't have to support my competition why are they all in one place if they are not making money they must be selling otherwise they'll be stupid to keep coming to the same place they all are in the same place so you walk by and they are all smiling come buy from me they are all in one place there is enough in this world to go around it's just human greediness and selfishness that makes one person wants to take everything to themselves because I live in the community at home I get mails every day asking for can you recommend an SCOS but can you recommend a developer can you recommend somebody who does this if I was greedy and selfish what would I do what would be my response to those mails anyone what would be my response let me tell you what my response is thank you me me me like yes I can do it yes I can do it isn't that what I would do if I was greedy and selfish we cannot afford to be greedy or selfish there's enough to go around sometimes I need money so bad and I'm like I can do this thing but because I don't believe it's ethical to actually say yes I can do it so I put it in a slag group for everybody to see somebody is looking for this if you know you do this go contact the person except the client specifically says I want you to do it even sometimes when they say I want you to do it just tell them there's somebody who can do it better than I can let me end with just this shot back in those days big companies they don't have social media accounts right they don't interact they just put the market out there and probably use the person selling even the person selling may not have full knowledge of what their selling is the person just sells but now if I told you that I was selling this what would be your next question I'm selling this come by okay how much is it okay what would be your next question where can you get it any other person what's it for perfect question discounts no I'm not giving you a discount what would you say are there other products can I answer all those questions by engaging you on social media right why should I put all that information in my head when I can put it on social media for you to find I mean I should know if I was working for the company but the first place you most likely are going to get look for that information is online isn't it so this company is selling this remote what is it for itself what am I going to do with it I love windows shopping for me is a great way to know the prices and know about things I want to buy in the future so the first place you go to get why do you think they are trying to engage with you by telling you what it is for and how to use it and blah blah blah why do you think they are doing that we have become information hungry we live in a digital world now people want to know why before they commit isn't it they want to be convinced you can't just tell me to come buy the remote and be using it to change TV stations in my house so why should I buy but I have one already or I can just press the buttons if I want give me a good reason why I should buy so you have to tell people why, how how much is it it is this and that isn't it which is why they all have show me their accounts and they all have blogs back in the day when you build a website for your company web developer yes when you build a site did you used to put a blog on it back in those days those static ones that are just there was there a blog on it one made CMS so popular is the blog part of it because then you get to interact and engage with your audience that's why CMS is so popular how many percent of the internet let me see who is going to get that how many percent of the internet right now 25 35 ah you said 31 I think the last time I checked was 30 but I'm not current so you guys are current so I agree with you guys 31 and 35 it's just a matter of people want you to engage with them regardless of what you do they want you to talk to them and they want to talk back to you you can't just be posting pictures and expect me to just be okay swiping left and right this is what I thought people online communities you just drop the blog post I won't read I don't have time to do that but you can just put a line or two and tell me why I should read would I be more inclined to read yes right my slide please raise it I want to get to the last page so we all agree that WordPress has a solution for us if you agree let me see your hands me I agree like 1000% WordPress has a solution I'm not saying enough hands ahaba it has a solution for everyone use it the best way you can