It began with a little ad I saw online sometime in April. Normally, I hardly clicked ads. But this was different, enigmatic and intriguing. I can’t remember the exact words but it looked something like “Want to be a developer?”, it was thrilling that I just clicked it and was redirected to the site for GNigeria.
What is GNigeria? In simple terms, a meet-up between Google and Nigerian Developers and Techpreneurs. On the site, they were hosting two events. The first day for Developers and the second day for Entrepreneurs.
At the time I went to the site, the seats for the Entrepreneur Meet-Up were already filled up. So, I registered for the developer section. [This was what I wanted to attend anyway].
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I had watched several Google Developer Videos from you tube in the past… It was with elation that I looked forward to the event. I looked forward to see the “Programming Ninjas” that drove the limits of technological innovation at Google.
PREPARATION
I had to travel from Owerri (Nigeria) to Lagos (Nigeria) for the event. It took a total of 9 hours of traveling time. The event was to hold from 8a.m. to 6.p.m on Tuesday, 3rd May, 2011. If we do a little calculation here for my round trip, I traveled for over 18hours to attend a 10hours event… So far, not bad.
ACTUAL DAY
The program was scheduled to start by 8.00a.m that day. Due to some logistic complexity, it finally kicked-off a little before 10.am. There were over 15 Googlers (Googlers: a word to describe a Google staff) who came from various parts of the world (California, Australia, Kenya, U.K., Sweden). It was a full house.
The organization was great and the sessions exciting… There was much to learn, and much to share. The Googlers mingled freely with the attendees. They felt at home and reveled every second of the event.
I had to return the next day and traveled for another 9hours to get back to my base. I got back tired, but I had to make to work the next day! So, it took me the weekend to fully recuperate from the stress and put my thoughts together to get this little story out.
It’s been one week since GNigeria. And life has gone back [almost to normal]. Normal? Not really normal, because I would say, I have become a better developer… This is my story, this is my song. But… I have some work to do!
