Building a Thriving Developer Community with Badr El Houari – Techstrong Unplugged EP55

Welcome back to Textron Unplugged. My name is Cassandra Chin, and today we have Barter a Ali. Yes.

Hi, Cassandra. So you run the conference here for Devox Morocco. Yeah.

Uh, do you wanna talk about like, developers and community? Sure. I mean, my life been around this, this, this world, this area.

So yeah, myself, I'm, I'm, I'm software engineer. I'm graduate from engineering school here in Morocco. But my, my vision was like, to give very good value to developers, because mostly people when coming from an engineering school is like, cultural thing was like, uh, everybody wanna be a manager.

Like, we wanna be like, managing people is better. And I say like, yeah, when I travel to conferences, I say like, yeah, there is good software developers. They, they're like, valuable and valuable from other, you know, from other peers here in Morocco didn't have this, this vision.

So even myself, I was a, puts my hand dirty on the code. I tried to join many open source projects. So this is the, this is one of the, the good advice that I can give.

The first one to the, to the young developers is joining some opensource communities. Challenge yourself, you know, get yourself onboarded, even like, you can help, uh, start and help just for documentation or if review some documentation, go and write you some testing, uh, then, or pushing some codes, some features and stuff like that. So this is how it started for me and say like, yeah, how, why these people in this community share knowledge.

They help each other, they reviewing work, how I can do something, you know, for the local community. And that was the idea. Come to build a, a Morocco jag, which is a Java user group because I'm, you know, myself, I'm Java champion, I'm more Java expert.

And, uh, it started from this and we, we found very good interaction and people wanna learn will, uh, have some experiences. And that's why I like your podcast because you, you, you address to the young generation how to be developers, bring them some expert to share their insights, their experts here, this is what they really need in this, in this, in this period. And this kind of conference bring, you know, shots, knowledge and such area for exchanging and, you know, enjoying time together and living up each other, challenging each other for the good, for everyone.

Do you see a lot of young people at this conference? I mean, usually this year we don't have like that much young, we have a COTA because like, we have like a limited place and we keep always like a COTA for the young developers. And we have also some sessions during the, the CFP for beginners to keep always, because, you know, the young generation is the, is the next, uh, big thing.

So for us it's very important to keep some places for them, but other ways have, like a lot of other communities that we, you know, gather more young people to give them more insights and more contents. I think it's really good that you reserve some slots for beginner content. Yeah, Yeah.

Even because beginner content is good for young, but also good for, you know, sending our people to get themself in new technologies. Because this is also the challenge that we have in our world. You know, we keep, we need to keep ourself updated with the loss of technology trends today.

We, everyone talking AI is not, is not trendy, but it's uh, it's something happening really that we need to know how to deal with the same thing that's happened with the cloud era. So everyone need to know how your, at least your development practice need to be cloud compliance, you know? So this is a challenge to keep ourself always, you know, up to date.

And this is also that, that would be the second, uh, advice for the young generation learn, challenge yourself, get out from your comfort zone, you know, and try to innovate and follow the technology trend in a pragmatic way because there is some fluffy, you know, trends. So, which is like, uh, it's even for senior people, but with the guidance with podcasts like this, you, you, you get like more, more insights. I hope that podcasts like this can reach young people, make content, which is easier to understand.

Yes, I think so. I think so. And I mean, you are doing an amazing job for kids, for young people and even for parent today.

It's like you, you're learning parent how to teach kids and I, I like, I like, I like what you're doing and uh, we should, uh, the very best of luck and you achieve your, your goal and you know, on spreading knowledge and, and inspiring the young generation of developers. Actually like last year we had a kids event at Deb Box Morocco. Yeah.

So I think it's really great that we have this events to like help the really younger generation. Yeah. Yeah.

We will make sure to do that for the next edition. This year was tight, but at least the keynote was so inspiring for the parents. Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. Are you looking forward to anything next year for Devox Morocco?

Yeah, for next year. So we, we wanna make it bigger because, you know, we'll have like some, we change the location to Marrakesh. We wanna make it bigger.

We'll have focus on more, you know, content for the young generation. And also just we have a discussion, uh, with Steve about, you know, how to do the maybe workshops for the young generation in their schools, better than, you know, waiting to bring them to the venue. So that's something we we're gonna work on, you know, uh, more for next year.

I think we can reach more children like that and like it'll give more opportunity. So like kids who maybe can't come here. Yeah, exactly.

Otherwise we can do plan something to go to their schools maybe on the weekend before or after or maybe boat, so, which is good. So next year we make sure to have more impacts and take adventures from you coming to the country. Yeah, I'm excited for That.

Thank you. Uh, how long have you been running the box Morocco? It's, uh, since, uh, 2012.

So this is the 11 edition we didn't do during the covid, but it was, uh, was uh, was a challenging to bring, uh, the same spirit for developer conference from abroad to the, to the country, to Africa. Because it's also special because we don't have really good value, uh, or good contents conferences. Mainly the conference is like, uh, more exhibition style.

So, but for us, we come, the content is the king and that's why our goal is also to inspire the new generation, uh, make them meet and exchange with the experts, uh, know new technologies, new practices. Because also today there's not only technology, but also the, the practices, the way we work, the culture, you know, the spirit that are also important, right? So we've been fighting to bring the best contents, uh, inspiring people, bringing local speakers as well because like, it's like, usually it's culture things.

Like I'm used to be invited to the conferences, I'm not gonna run my session now what is the CAP? So like kind of people are afraid for applying and getting rejected. So we have to tell them, no, that's fine.

You know, even ourself, we got rejected from conferences and so on. So it's like for the good for the conference, take the best contents, it give you feedback as well to, to make, you know, to make better your, your your talk. And for this year we have like a kind of a small quota for the first time speaking local speakers.

So to push them, you know, for the small session for 15 minutes, 25 minutes. So they'll without stress. And we have like some, we deliver some monitoring from, uh, some local speakers will use to speak at the conference.

So that's why you need for the young people, we need to push them. There is always a first experience, but the, you know, that's, we need to push them for that first experience and make, you know, the condition to make it success for them. I think that's Important.

You're creating that speaking opportunity for young people. Yes, I think so because I mean, it's give them the, the public, the, the confidence, the public speaking also it's like a very, very good, uh, very good practice that give self-confidence. And also they, they, they will know how to make their arguments, which is very important for developers.

'cause when you, when you do a talk, it's like you learn, it's like I, you're not gonna advocate. Maybe it, maybe there is a lot of people on the, on the session, on the room that they know the topic better than than you. But just you try how your message will be delivered, which is very important.

So I learned some technology and maybe I do how the word or how to deploy it and so on. But how I can explain it to other people is very important that I learn also how I can make more arguments for my work and for my, you know, for, for my words as well. That's important.

How do you feel about like the growing market and developer community over the years? Yeah, it's, it's growing because, uh, even the market is start giving value because, uh, in Morocco we have like, mainly we had mainly horing opportunities to like, uh, uh, French companies or big companies and just like some maintenance coding or there's not really building big application today, many of the big players back insurance, they be, they build their, uh, you know, their products from scratch. They give more value to developers.

They see their world go to production because it's also very important when you work only maintenance on a project that stay on sandbox is not good. But once you develop something and you see it deployed on production and people use it, it give you more appetite and you feed your value more. So today the market is growing fast.

There's a very, even in the Moroccan digital strategy for 2030, it's focused on having more talents, more focused training and more partnership or bringing more quality training for developers. I think that's great that there's a lot of opportunities for developers here. Yeah, there is a lot of, uh, opportunities and the markets, you know, is, uh, it's huge today.

So they are lucky. That's also one of the good advice, just be smart that there is a big market for developers today. So it's endless markets.

So it's a, it uh, it's a good timing to, to have a spec to be specialized in coding, problem solving and, you know, innovation Also. How do you work to bring diversity to devox Morocco? Yeah, I mean diversity, we work on it only on the, on the program committee, on the CAP events.

Like the content is the, is is is the king. So not gonna be bringing more women, but we try to attract them to convince them to submit for the good speakers. Because it remains also the, the, the, it know, the, the main value proposition for the audience.

It's by, by culture. Even, even if you go in a, in a, in a software engineering school, you may be fine. 50 50 girls and, and, and, and, and boys.

So for in Morocco we have many, you know, many girls in the IT field already. So the events is, we focus, we're like around 30, 30 person or something like this for women attending the conference. But it's by, by culture.

Well, so we don't do that much airports or maybe we're lucky by the location to have this cultural, you know, adventures. I Think you're lucky that the culture already has a lot of women's. Yeah, because I see like US conferences and maybe it's less good.

Exactly that. That's why I told you if you go to the engineering schools and maybe more than 50% girls than boys. Yeah.

So yeah, we have many girls in the IT field. Nick, that's really good. That like yeah, we're starting strong in rock.

Yeah, I think we've had a really good chat today. So thank you bar. Thank You.

Thank you Cassandra. Bye-Bye.