#Building Tech Communities: Hello World
A Success. That’s what HelloWorld2023 was. On 1st August 2023, Christopher Phiri, Chisomo Tyrone Kasenda and I set out to host the first software developer conference in Malawi in over half a decade. We had some simple goals: host a developer-focused event with 50+ attendees, an uncommon yet talented speaker lineup, all while giving room for alot of intellectual discourse to foster engagement and community.
26th August, we made it happen. With 120+ participants, 7 speakers, and a room buzzing with excitement, determination, and hope for a better developer ecosystem, the Hello World conference delivered on its mission of creating a platform where developers can interact, share ideas, and meet their heroes, mentors, and future professional partners.
One of the highlights was many people meeting in person for the first time—some who had known each other for years but only online. We provided a platform for that. In addition to that, I was also impressed by the liveliness of the event from beginning to end. These two observations stood out to me because they spoke to the hunger people have for such spaces and events and that we had indeed filled a need.
With our main goal being building a sense of community in the tech ecosystem in Malawi, particularly around developers, Hello World will, over the next couple of years, become a convergence of the many tiny communities that exist across the country but go unnoticed. Hello World will put in the limelight the hidden gems and talents that exist in the Malawian tech ecosystem and facilitate them becoming world-class and internationally recognised all through the help of the ecosystem they exist in.
Taking the lead role in organising the event I had to make sure we stayed on track with our goals for the event, acquired the budget we needed and stuck to it, and balanced a thousand other priorities for us to successfully pull this off to the satisfaction of our attendees, sponsors and ourselves, the organisers all in just 3 weeks. It was an impressive and exciting experience for which I will pat myself on the back.
NBS Bank, mHub , and Sygen took the first step with us by sponsoring this event, and if you too would like to support us as we go further on this journey, please do reach out; I’d love to hear from you.
A special thank you to the speakers, participants, and the impromptu team that volunteered themselves leading up to the event; all of this would have been pointless and difficult to pull off without you all.
Here’s to the future. See you again next year.