[python-nigeria] 2016: The Year in Review… And Onward!

[Tosin Damilare James Animashaun]

Dear Pythonistas,

We are delighted to welcome you all into the new year.

The year 2016 was an amazing one for this community; we had a number of
noteworthy achievements, and we would like to thank everyone for being part
of it. Although it had been our year of infancy, we did show so much
potential for rapid growth.


Here are some of the high points of the year 2016.

In the month of February, we had a successful maiden edition of the Django
Girls workshop, which has quickly spread across the country, courtesy of
your amazing spirits. To this end, we want to specially thank all
organizers, mentors,  sponsors, and supporters all too numerous to mention.
It has been a delight to watch more workshops come up all over the country
especially in some hard to reach areas.

As an organized community, we held our first in-Slack elections in the
month of May. This helped us charge a group of individuals (Nwachukwu
Chukwudi (@ichux), Aisha Bello (@aishab), Biola Oyeniyi (@b33sama),
Hamdalah Adetunji (@geekhijabi), Eyitemi Egbejule (@insaida), Osayamen
(@oxax), Tomiwa Orolu (@tmdoubleu), Tosin Animashaun (@acetakwas)) with the
responsibilities of governing the community, planning, and corresponding
with partners/potential partners of this organization. Later in the year,
upon voting by the aforementioned, invitations were sent to two more
members of the community to join the Board: Tim Akinbo (@takinbo) and
Edward Popoola (@edwardpopoola).

Furthermore, we set up a technical team headed by our IT Manager, Biola
Oyeniyi (@b33sama), to help with handling the technology needs of the
community. This team was able to put up our website, which is located at
pythonnigeria.org. We also appreciate Kingsley (@kingsley) for coming up
with the official logo of the community. The team has other projects to
complete, and welcomes everyone interested in joining.

Also, our social media accounts (twitter.com/pythonnigeria and
instagram.com/pythonnigeria) were setup not too long ago, and we encourage
everyone to promote information shared via any of these mediums.

Our Chairperson, Nwachukwu Chukwudi (@ichux) and Tomiwa Orolu (@tmdoubleu)
became Grants Committee members of the Python Software Foundation (PSF)
during the course of the year, 2016.

Even more, the goodwill and work of our Vice Chairperson, Aisha Bello, have
been recognized globally -- she represented us at the DjangoCon US 2016 and
even won a Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize award only a few weeks ago.

With support from a team drawn from members of the community, we have begun
making efforts at planning towards a PyCon Nigeria. Having made some
progress with this, we hope to see it come to light in the year 2017.

In the month of December, we had a successful commencement of the Smart
Girls project in partnership with the Carrington Youth Fellowship
Initiative (CYFI), and we hope to round this off in the first quarter of
2017. We would Like to recognize the following volunteers so far, who have
taken turns to mentor and coach the girls: Michael Okpala (@mikedeace),
Elohor Thomas (@elohor), Osayamen Omigie (@oxax), Tosin Animashaun
(@acetakwas), and Nwachukwu Chukwudi (@ichux). We still are looking for
volunteers to coach. Therefore, you may reach out on the #cyfi-smart-girls
Slack channel if you would like to mentor.

We also got funded by the PSF to provide Raspberry PI computers to some of
the participating girls.

Recently, we have been in talks with a burgeoning Data Science community in
Nigeria. The prospects are big, and we are to partner with them in getting
the program off the ground. You'll learn more about this soon in the
#pydata Slack channel. Anyone with interest can join that channel and make
known their interest.

We encourage everyone to make use of the channels available (mailing list
or Slack) in sharing their experience with the rest of the community.
Always feel free to ask questions, make contributions, or raise suggestions
any time.

We are happy about the growth of the community so far (Wow! Over 300
members already). This year, let us surpass this. Keep innovating; keep
building; and keep empowering!

Have a *pythonic* year!


Kind Regards,

*Tosin Damilare James Animashaun*

For: *Board, Python Users Nigeria Group*