Introduction

Since its inception, the Lepsta Developers initiative has been focusing on helping developers take part in shaping the future of software development. The starting point has been to organise and facilitate events where developers come together to learn about different  technologies  and how they can be used to solve daily problems. But now, it's time to kick things up a notch. Let me explain:

Our belief

"The best way to predict the future is to create it" - Abraham Lincoln

Current approach

The framework of our community development efforts comprises of a few simple steps that have seen our audience grow from tens of developers gathered in a single room, to over 4000 developers across the continent of Africa hosting events in different cities throughout the year. This is all built around meet-ups held in different cities.

Our approach to meet-ups is as follows:

  1. We identify a topic to discuss around software development with a futuristic view of the subject;
  2. We appoint a speaker for the day who is an expert on the topic;
  3. The speaker delivers a presentation to a group of people in a physical location;
  4. The event then ends with an interactive Q&A session.

While this approach has done wonders in terms of being a platform to share knowledge and ideas, one major component of our mission remains unaddressed:

We are not directly helping in creating the future yet...

So, it's time to get even more involved.

New approach

We are embarking on a mission to create an ecosystem of creators. A place where collaboration does not just end with sharing information, but where we go the extra mile to apply what we learn to solve real problems. This effectively progresses our initiative from one of discovering new things, to one where people develop new skills and increase their chances of employability.

We believe that the best way  to achieve this is to encourage and facilitate collaboration between junior and senior developers. In practice, this is an effort to pair the two sets or people on real projects such that there is a continuous exchange of value. We like to refer to this as "experiential learning" and are of the opinion that it is the most conducive way for people to develop multiple sets of skills in one setup as it best mimics industry exposure.

With this in mind, our approach will now look like this:

  1. We ensure a good flow of real projects and challenges for people to work on;
  2. We facilitate the creation of an environment where developers can form teams to collaborate on any project;
  3. We incentivise participation of both junior and senior developers;
  4. We continue hosting events such as meetups but, this time with the purpose of progressing these collaborations.

Conclusion

We are still in the planning phase of this initiative and will publish more details on this in the next coming weeks, but we do hope that it is something you can get excited about.

This has a potential for making a huge social impact by creating learning opportunities for people to better their lives in terms of employability, inventiveness and innovation in general.

Stay tuned for more details, and if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us at [email protected].