Massive Drupal Talent Development: Prelude to Actualizing the DrupalCon Africa Dream.

Presenter: Chimezie Chuta

ABOUT ME

@mezie16

Trainer | Developer | Community Organizer

https://www.drupal.org/u/chuta

Massive Drupal Talent Development: Prelude to Actualizing the DrupalCon Africa Dream.

DrupalCamp Gauteng 2016

Africa

is on the

verge of a new kind of

Technology

Revolution

Hundreds of millions of people will be brought out of poverty

Drupal framework provides a high potential to disrupt the status-quo and to create new kinds of positive social impact.

Africa will no longer be seen as a charity case, but as a continent with an unparalleled consumer base that offers incredible opportunity and value for investments.

Talent is spread evenly across the world – but opportunities are not.

Drupal software is a medium for Africans to achieve great things and prove that they can compete internationally.

With Drupal, young Africans can quickly move away from a Continent of content consumers toward that of Content Creators.

With Drupal, African Governments & Agencies can deliver greater citizen engagement and transform their operations.

Drupal gives African businesses the best of both worlds:

A rigorously-tested and passionately-developed product without the licensing fees and compliance requirements that come with similar proprietary web development products.

Africa is Ripe for Massive Drupal adoption.

...like the rest of the world

Drupal’s ability to do complex heavy lifting is one of the factors that attract big businesses;...

...so too is its approach to security.

Huge Drupal Talent Gap Frustrates massive Drupal adoption by African Governments, Businesses, & Organizations.

Why is the shortage of Drupal talent bad news for Africa

and frustrating to the DrupalCon Africa Dream?

• It makes finding Drupal skills costly, time consuming and sometimes just plain impossible.

• It drives up Drupal developer rates, and consequently, the price that Drupal agencies charge. If this gets inflated too much, it will kill the Drupal ecosystem in Africa.

• It becomes hunting ground for cowboy recruitment agents that just want to make a quick money, hiring out poor skills disguised as experience, and leaving a bad taste in the mouths of those that used them. By association, it creates a bad experience on Drupal’s name.

This is Bad News for Our DrupalCon Africa Dream!

DrupalCon Safari

What can we Do?

Assuming you wake up one morning and while preparing to brush your mouth, you discover that all your teeth have turned to pure DIAMONDS. You then checked on your  dentist who confirms to you that each tooth is worth $15 million in the  market. How many tooth will you ask the dentist to remove for immediate sale?
You can't replace them after removal!

Lessons from India

• Few years ago India was in the same stage that many African countries are in today – on the cusp of major success.

• India has grown its tech industry to tens of billions of dollars, directly and indirectly employing more than 10 million people.

• India has over 70,000 registered Drupalers on Drupal.org, making India the highest source of traffic on the website after the US.
• India had the second highest number of contributors to Drupal 8 core.

India's model has proven that channeling technological innovation to strengthen a wider economy is the way to simultaneously boost growth while strengthening the foundation for future success.

Dries Buytaert visited India in 2011 when he attended Drupalcamp Deccan.

His goal was to increase awareness about Drupal in India.

Today, Drupal camps are regularly held in various cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, and Hyderabad to promote Drupal among students, coders and developers.

.

2016, DrupalCon Mumbai, India.

How the Drupal Association picks DrupalCon locations?

• Popularity - People want to visit the host location to site-see
• Strong local community: Size of the camp in the proposed city / number of camps in a country
• Size of Drupal business community - number of Drupal businesses within that country and region
• Ease of doing business with a country: Easy to set up a financial entity so DA can collect ticket sales revenue and pay vendors in local currency.

How the Drupal Association picks DrupalCon locations?

• Local Support: The community reaches out to the Association, requesting a DrupalCon and offering to help produce it.
• Inexpensive travel  - This gives insight into the average cost of lodging in the city
• Visa: Easy to get a visa or one is not required to enter a country.
• Strong business environment - The number of Fortune 500 companies in that region
• Community survey;
• Where does the community want to go?

DrupalCon Africa, our Own Safari, will happen soon!

What can we do to accelerate the actualization of DrupalCon Africa Dream?

• Grow Strong and Vibrant local Drupal Communities across Africa. –Camps, Meet-ups, DevCamps, DrupalCampus etc.
• Increase Africa’s presence at drupal.org
• Grow Drupal Businesses through handling turn-key projects.
• Drive Drupal for African Government. (Participative Democracy)
• Raise effective local support groups that should begin reaching out to Drupal Association, offering assistance to help organize DrupalCon and realize the Dream.
• Build Massive Drupal Talent pull.

At the heart of Drupal Community is Collaboration!

• Africa must collaborate and work together as an entity to make this dream a reality.

  Vibrant African Drupal communities include Tunisia, Morocco Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda

• South Africa.

Visible Pathways to massive Drupal talent development for Africa.

Formal Training | Apprenticeship | Mentoring |

BootCamps |

Some options to consider if you are....

An employer:

• Consider training existing in-house PHP skills on Drupal.
• Hire PHP developers and train them.
• Hire part-time or on-demand mentors.

Some options to consider if you are....

A recruitment agent:

• Consider providing training programmes (stop thinking of selling meat alone)
• Find and offer freelance mentors.

Some options to consider if you are....

An experienced Drupal developer:

• Make yourself available as a mentor and spread the word
• Consider providing training.
• Create training videos.

Some options to consider if you are....

An aspiring Drupal developer:

• Find an experienced Drupal developer and ask if they can be your mentor. Maybe trade their time for yours.
• Learn Drupal yourself. It can be a headache at first, but it’s not rocket science. There are lots of videos and articles online. And get yourself on IRC.
• Get involved with writing themes and modules and contribute them to the Drupal community. It’s a great way to learn and gain confidence in your Drupal skills. It will make you visible to Drupal talent hunters.

Some options to consider if you are....

A Drupal training company:

• Offer post-training mentorships. It will complement the training very nicely, as most of the real questions a developer will have will arise while doing some real Drupal work.

What makes South Africa a good host country for DrupalCon?

• South Africa has an impressive number of Drupal leaders, contributors, businesses, and end users.
• The country drives the highest amount of traffic from Africa to Drupal.org.
• DrupalCon in South Africa can highlight the country’s Drupal strength to the global community while conversely showing the local community how they can contribute more back to the Project.

What makes South Africa a good host country for DrupalCon?

• More specifically, South Africa ranks high because it has several mature camps and many local communities throughout the country.
• Producing DrupalCon outside of North America and Europe requires a strong partnership with community leaders all around Africa, who can help with logistics.
• DrupalCon needs power in numbers to make it financially worthwhile and effective for the Drupal Association, so a large community base is key.

Thank You

Slide is available at: https://slides.com/chuta/deck/