Over the last one year, I have had the opportunity to preach the gospel of Git and GitHub in different conferences and meetings across Nigeria. From organising the Lagos GitHub Meetup to speaking at Google Developer Groups events and Dev Festivals.

I have also tutored at an event geared towards tech diversity and inclusion like the Rails Girls meetup. The journey thus far has been amazing. The enthusiasm with which participants accept these meetings is nothing short of awesome.

This past weekend I was in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, to speak to about 300 persons about Git and GitHub. The Uyo GDG(Google Developer Group), organised what I’ll call the biggest and largest technology event in both the South-South and South Eastern zone of the country.

Let me give you a little bit of context, Uyo is a small and beautiful city. The city is quiet. Hitherto, technology (software and hardware) was always treated as a side dish and not the main course. The city has commercial activities bustling there, but nothing compared to the energy in Lagos.

For a long time, Lagos has been known as the epicentre of technology in Nigeria, if not West Africa. Seeing this event happen in Uyo made me so happy and gave me so much hope that the technology community in Nigeria is growing and fast spreading to other parts of Nigeria.

I had the opportunity to meet, speak and interact with amazing software engineers who are building cool things. People, who, above all odds, are building amazing apps to solve their local problems.

At the event, an app called AfroPot was demonstrated, think GrubHub when you think about this app. AfroPot allows people order African food from local food vendors/restaurants in their community. I love this app. It scratches an itch.

Another app called House Girl was demonstrated. This app is our own version of Handy. It helps send handymen, artisan and errand men/women to help out with chores you would normally do yourself.

An app called AKTrivia, a trivia game that test your knowledge of Akwa Ibom state was also presented. What amazed me most of this particular app was that it was presented by a 9yr old.

It is awesome to watch the amazing things coming out of this city. My talk lasted for about 40min. I introduced the participants to git, GitHub and the whole concept of distributed version control system. We talked about simple everyday commands like git add ., git commit and how to use a cloud git server like GitHub.

A participant asked how non-software engineers can use git and GitHub. I took the opportunity to brush through the concept of Git Large File Storage.

All I can say that tech and the startup culture is catching up really fast. We just need to fan the flames a little more.

Attached is a Slideshare of my presentation.

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Do you want to say hello? Email me - celestineomin@gmail.com

I tweet at @cyberomin