 Hi everyone. Thank you for joining my talk. My name is Ruth Ikegar and I'm from Nigeria and I'm going to be talking to you about the women of open source community Africa and how I made that this far. So I really thought I was going to make it in person but unfortunately I'll be presenting virtually but I hope by next year I'll be able to make it in person and meet with everyone and network. So about me, a technical content manager at Animals, a Gtop star and a people person and I also love eating cakes, especially red velvet cakes. So on our agenda today I'm going to be sharing my open source journey, the challenges I encountered while contributing and you know the recognitions I've gotten so far with, you know, one year plus contributing to open source, my current and future contributions and appreciation to the persons that have helped me so far with contributing to open source in general. So let me take you through my open source journey and how everything, you know, started. So our first I originally started with, you know, I came from a microbiology perspective that was after graduating in 2019. And then I started, you know, learning tech during the time of COVID, when COVID started in March 2020. And I started off with learning Python as you know, the first language was really pretty big enough for me and I was able to link it to what initially I wanted to do, you know, in my master's degree. So after three months, I think after three months of, you know, doing Python and, you know, getting set to take on data science because that's originally what I wanted to do in fact. I got to know about the open source community in Africa, and also another community called, you know, the chicode Africa community here in Africa. And there was this initiative called Wozka Women of Open Source Community Africa. And there was a challenge that was going to be launched in the month of July. And you know, I was, I was really eager to participate in it. And I attended the webinar on June 20, 2020. And I, when I attended the webinar, there was a little workshop on how to get started in open source and thank you. Shout out to Zena for organizing this workshop. And this workshop was, you know, an introduction to open source and how to get started with contributing. And I was three months into tech, I have never used Git, or never used Git before, and we needed Git to, you know, make the contribution and a GitHub account also. And during the workshop, the workshop last day for one hour, so I had to set up, you know, everything I had to install Git. I had to, you know, get a GitHub account and, you know, all those other stuff, but I was following along with the workshop. And eventually I made my first contributions open source using the first contributions repository on GitHub. And this is a tweet I made that day. I was so happy because I called out some challenges trying to, you know, push the pull request. I called out some really, really funny challenges. And eventually I was able to do it. And I made a tweet about it, that I made my first contribution. And as you can see here, they're like all over 200 and four likes and was like, this is just adding my name to the list. Why is everybody saying congratulations. I was like pretty, pretty interesting. So I was okay. I was going to do this challenge that was car. That's women of open source community Africa was launching. So the challenge was just like, if you are familiar with October 1, it was like just like October 1, where you, you know, make a number of pull requests in a month. And then you get like a price. So for the worst car challenge, it was getting a number of pull requests in the month of July. And you're going to win a domain name. So I said, okay, this is something I would love to start on with. And what I had like a list of organizations that, you know, there were resources for you to find organizations to contribute to and get involved with. So I participated in this challenge and said, scouting and hunting for, you know, organizations that I could contribute to as a beginner. So the first organization I contributed contributed to was the known foundation. So I found no foundation as one of the resources that was listed out in, you know, by was caught to contribute to. And when I found the known foundation, there was a project, you know, ongoing at the time, called scalable onboarding project. So that project was, you know, how to get, how to make newcomers to the new project, how to, you know, make their experience worthwhile, how to help them to understand the how the foundation works and where to contribute. So that's meeting was, you know, held with GC app as of that time last year. And, you know, the first I remember the first meeting I got on to, I was really, really shy to introduce myself, but, you know, with the welcoming I got to the call I was able to share my ideas that they only know how to help newcomers understand the project because there that was a newcomer and I had the pain points to, you know, share. So I started contributing to the non foundation with that project and eventually moved on to other projects, like the extensions or booted initiative and, you know, I said making pull request I know the first request I made was about updating the repository. The non foundation uses GitLab. So I also had to learn how to use GitLab at the point, but I also had help, you know, all the way going on. So another community I found was, you know, the layer five community shout out to the, the Calcutta founder. I found the layer five community as one of those resources listed out, you know, by the was kind initiative. And when I found the layer five repository on GitHub. There were some issues good first time issues that were about updating the read me across all their five repositories and I indicated interest that I was, I was going to do this and then it was assigned to me. And I started contributing, I said pushing pull request to the read me to update all the read me because they were like, about 30 something repositories if I can call. So that needed updating across the read me. So I had to take on that tax and after contributing the community was really welcoming. And I, you know, engaged in the community calls. I said taking on, taking on initiatives like welcoming newcomers, because basically I carved a niche for myself in each community I got involved with. I always looked out for a need to welcome a newcomer because I had pain points, while starting to contribute. So from contributing to the read me, I moved on to, you know, creating an initiative for welcoming newcomers and having newcomers in newcomers call shout out to Anita a human for always being my work party, she would always work things out together and you know into the five community and you know get, get ideas and welcome newcomers host newcomers meeting and from becoming from hosting newcomers meetings. I became a mesh meets an image meet in their five is somebody like a mentor. I became a mentor to mentor others newcomers that were coming into the project. So you can see how, at each, at each stage, a transition from being a newcomer to the project to help in order newcomers, you know, understand the project and contribute effectively to the community. So another community that I would love to talk about is the chaos community. So the, my contributions to the chaos community was really, really a significant one because we talked about I had to join the diversity working group so chaos is a very, very, very welcoming community. So I got engaged with the diversity and diversity equity and inclusion working group. And I found out about the project that that's that I'll also be presenting on, I think, I think our next day, next day of this conference. So that's the badging project, I found the badging project and it was really, really intriguing to me and it was really exciting. So the badging project is a project to badge events and projects that are that are diverse and inclusive. So my contributions to chaos eventually made me like a maintainer in the badging project. And, you know, I stared out, I just stared out with, you know, engaging in calls from engaging with cause I became a maintainer in badging projects. So you can see how I transition from each community from each level to each level, contributing, share my ideas and share my knowledge across these communities regardless of where I came from and what I started with. So these are like the three main communities aside to the other contributions I make like speaking, you know, and writing because I also said a blog at the time. So, going back to the worst car challenge. In that month of July, I was the first, the first on the list with the highest amount of pull request and I really got you know a domain name, a domain name that was awarded to me after that challenge. And after July, I still continued with contributing and engaging with these communities. I was still sharing my knowledge, I was still pushing things forward. I was trying to also involve others with getting to open source, getting to open source, and also advocating for beginners in open source. So next I'm going to be sharing the challenges I encountered with contributing to these communities and also with contributing to open source in general. So there were the technical difficulties I, you know, I encountered with contributing. As I said earlier, using it. So, initially, when I started, you know, contributing to open source, before I started contributing to open source, I did, I did not know about it. I did not know about the software and the first contribution I made, I had to quickly install it and some of the resources I found online, they were not really, really helpful because I wasn't grasping anything, I wasn't understanding anything. So it was really, really difficult at the first two months, although it's still a problem now, but it was really, really difficult for me using it at that time, I would struggle so much, you know, push, I would try to push a pull request and it would have issues and I'll have to delete the whole repository and start again. Right, so I had that struggle for the first two months with contributing to open source, but that did not stop me, you know, contributing. Another issue I had was installing and setting up, you know, softwares, I was using a very old computer. So, like, for example, the GNOME Foundation, I couldn't, you know, install and set up GNOME on my computer because there were like some challenges I had technically with the computer. I had issues installing and setting up some of the projects which, you know, made my, which made me not able to contribute to code and I leaned on to documentation side more of it because I wasn't able to do this. And I also had network bandwidth issues, right, because sometimes I'll be on the call and I'll be trying to explain something and then my network just goes off, right, and it will even be hard for me to get back on the call and share my ideas. So that that was really like really, really a problem. I also had electricity issues, which, which had to go from a further distance from home to a working space. I would always go there every weekday to be able to assess power and, you know, power of my system and, you know, continue working and continue taking up, you know, roles in the communities. I also had communication difficulties, right. It was hard sometimes to hear, especially when you're like on the Google Meetup has like a transcription in life captioning, but you know with Zoom, that was, that was not really available so sometimes I wouldn't like hear what the other person was saying because, you know, these challenges of hearing, you know, differences in, you know, country, I wouldn't be able to hear what the other person was saying. I also had the time zone issue where, you know, the other person is in a different time zone. Initially, the first month when I started, it was, I did not really understand, you know, the whole time zone thing. So, you know, over time I got to understand that these other persons on a different time zone. So, even when I send a message, they wouldn't respond at the moment, but I should be patient with, you know, receiving response. I also had like personal difficulties, trust me, big bad imposter syndrome. So I had, this is what this was like a whole lot because, you know, I was always, I was always, I always felt bad sometimes about, you know, that I was just three months I didn't know anything. My ideas were not going to be heard, you know, a whole lot of things, but I'm really grateful for these communities I found, they were always, you know, attentive to my ideas, they were always, and they always wanted to care what I had to see, implement what I, what I suggested and, you know, it helped in lots with my personal imposter syndrome. So, all these challenges, aside from all these challenges, I share these challenges because I wanted to show you that, even while contributing, I had some really bad challenges, but I did not let those challenges stop me from getting what I wanted, because contributing to open source for me, I saw it as helping other people out, I saw it as pushing the community forward, I saw it as changing the world, so I still, you know, went forward regardless of the challenges I had starting to contribute. And right now I want to share with you the recognitions I have achieved so far with sharing my knowledge and contributing to open source. So, one of the recognitions that I hold so dearly is being a Github star. So, this recognition is started as a nomination, so when I was nominated last year, I was really surprised because I was just five months into starting journey of, you know, starting to contribute to open source. I was, I barely knew many things, but I gave in so much passion, so when the nomination came, I was happy and I really wanted it to push forward and eventually I, you know, became a Github star as of last year. And it was really, really exciting, especially when I got, you know, the award from Github and other pecs that I came with so many other things. It made me feel so good. It made me, it made me push forward. It made me, it made me contribute more. It made me motivate other people. So, to understand that I have a spot here. And my contributions matter. I also got swag from the Google open source from Google open source appreciating my contributions to these communities. Over time, instead of applying for events, I got invitations to speak at other open source events and you know, help others get started with open source. I got to open at over 20 local events here in Africa, you know, to get other persons involved with open source and, you know, start their journey. So, aside these recognitions there are so many others, right, but these are the ones that I really hold dearly. And I know that moving forward, more recognition are to come with my contributions in open source. So, my current and future contributions. So currently, I host the GitHub Africa meetups every month. And I try to also mentor others, you know, that want to get started with open source events that once gets them contributing to open source in different communities and also in my local community. I speak at OSS events like this one and you know, local events I tried to apply to some events and some I get invited to speak at those events. My future contributions, I am looking forward to starting like an open source office hours and the month of September and moving forward where, you know, because since I say working it's been pretty tough, juggling contributions to open source and work. So I want to start something like an open source office hours that will have time set aside to get other persons started with contributing to open source. And I'm also looking forward to, you know, an OSPO role where I would solely work with open source and, you know, change the world. And so if you want to contact me or reach out to me, I'm always active on Twitter. I'm at Kigar with on Twitter, and you can also shoot me a mail ads with Kigar at gmail.com. And this talk will not end without me appreciating these persons that have been amazing. They have pushed me to move forward at every time I felt discouraged. They have been there to answer all my questions because I asked a lot of them. They have been there to, you know, help me out. Shout out to peace or Gemma shout out to something goody shout out to Sri shout out to Ada and shout out to create these persons who have played a key role in my open source journey and making sure that I be my best and contribute to my best and also be the star that I am. Thank you to these persons and to other persons that are not listed here that have been impactful to me throughout my journey and also shout out to me, the founder of layer five layer five community. Thank you all so much for listening to my talk and you know, connecting with me. I hope to I hope to give this and be in person next year and you know share something else with you all. Thank you for listening to my talk.