About This Talk
It’s not just a zero-hero story but also about consistency and strategic effort. I began my journey into Open Source through the Women of Open Source Community Africa (WOSCA) initiative in Africa. WOSCA is an initiative of She Code Africa and Open Source Community Africa to promote a more gender diverse, inclusive, and innovative culture within the African open source ecosystem.
Taking on challenges from WOSCA brought me into contact with the open-source community, influencing my career to date. Despite the difficulties I faced in finding an OSS project, using Git, and navigating through project codebases, in less than a year, I launched myself from being a code newbie to being an advocate for beginners, the first African Female GitHub Star, and a Maintainer in the CHAOSS community.
I want to share how my strategy, lessons, and paths worked for me and how we can be more proactive about diversifying open source contributions in Africa.
Presenters
Ruth Ikegah (she/her)
Ruth Ikegah is an Open Source Program Manager, Technical Writer, and GitHub Star. She currently acts as the Community Lead at CHAOSS Africa, a community that focuses on improving the health of Open Source software, contributions, and communities across the continent.