Samson Goddy

I gave a keynote to more than 1k+ developers at Devfest Abuja, and the title of the talk was "Open Source Synergy: Fueling the Next-Gen Software with Community Building", this talk was centered around how OSS has shaped modern-day software development enabling corporates to adopt some of the working models, why they are adopting those models, going back to the history of open source definition, the three decades of open source and where we are at the moment. From advocating governance and definition to advocating and using open source by default, and now with the power of AI (I used GitHub Copilot chat) as a use case to how building complex software is even more possible, with onboarding into legacy codebase to making your contribution much faster. I displayed how Copilot helped me to understand a code I wrote around nine years ago. Lastly, I introduce the concept of Supply Chain Security and why the everyday developer needs to be aware of securing open source code.

I gave a talk at a local meetup in Vermont, organized by cool open source folks within UVM called the "Open Source Connector". The conversation focused on the best ways to effectively build a welcoming and vibrant community around your open source projects. I highlighted some of the work I have done with my experience supporting the Sugar Labs and the Sugar Desktop Environment, why it is always important to measure the community's health, and understand how contributors interact with projects. There was a bit of demoing with Orbit.love model connecting to Github to showcase contributor metrics.

As people keep adopting open source in different areas, it is becoming harder to understand what "openness" genuinely mean, especially in places like open science, government, and open education. I was part of the "Interdisciplinary Open Practices Workshop" hosted by the Open Source Program team at the University of Vermont, and the goal was to understand areas of open work practices and how people build collaboration. I gave a talk under "Openness Expertise through Practice", on how companies and open source projects are using platforms like Github to manage communities and why it is essential to enable users to become contributors, the ways to support them, areas to improve upon like great documentations to effectively create more engagement and usage.

I spoke at DevCareer's Twitter(X) Spaces Series about boosting productivity in tech

In the spirit of Hacktoberfest, I join forces with the Novu (Building Open Source Notifications Infra) on their Twitter(X) spaces, discussing ways and why contributing to open source is essential and the benefit that comes with it.

I spoke at the Apereo Micro Conference about community building, ways to manage both small and large community

I co-presented "Getting Involved with Gnome" at the Open Source Festival 2023. The goal of the talk is to encourage developers to build apps into the Gnome app ecosystem and how they could build and contribute to the code bases, enabling more contributions from the African continent by introducing the Gnome Foundation also.

For the third time in a row, I hosted the Open Source Festival 2023 with colleagues from OSCA, and it was our biggest yet, with over two thousand participants in Lagos, Nigeria. The Open Source Festival is arguably one of the most technology conferences in Africa and the most influential Open Source gathering on the continent. It is the flagship event of the organization I co-founded to support the ecosystem's growth within Africa. I was the event chair, leading things like fundraising, event strategy, and other related activities, working with organizations to create collaborations and support developers through the events, and working and onboarded speakers while focusing on creating an almost one-week-long festival of experiences with all things open source.