[#125] Digital Transformation & The Sweetness of Home
Hello 👋🏾,
I trust you had a blissful past few months. It’s been about seven months since you last heard from me. Life got busy, change emerged, and I had to go slow. During this time off, I’ve had ~100 of you subscribe newly, bringing a new milestone of 1000+ people reading these letters. Apologies for the radio silence so far, and thank you all for sticking around. Indeed, I have missed writing to you, and I’m glad to get back to writing more. I’ll probably figure out a new cadence and re-strategize this newsletter a bit, but the goals remain the same. I have a lot to share and will take time to slowly disseminate all of them for your benefit!
Btw, here’s a friendly reminder that cold potatoes on your own table taste better than roast meat at your neighbours, and the honeysuckle at your own door is the sweetest you’d ever smell. When you are out, your friends do their best, but still, it is not home. "Make yourself at home," they say, because everybody knows that to feel at home is to feel at ease.” Find your home, and when you do, cherish it.
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A special shout-out to my amazing supporters and patrons: Angie Jones and Obinna Odirionye. Their support enables me to keep writing these letters, teaching, curating resources, and supporting others. Thank you!
📢 Learn how to become a sponsor to support this newsletter or promote your product/company in each letter.
Nerd Memes of the Week 🥲
Featured Technical Articles ✍🏾👩🏽💻
The 10 Commandments of Navigating Code Reviews by Angie Jones.
Six ways countries are implementing safe, inclusive, and interoperable DPI with open source by Jon Lloyd.
Revisiting the difference between content and data by Michael Andrews.
How to Get Funding By Caring About Research Software (I) by Dr. Heidi Seibold.
How to Get Funding By Caring About Research Software (II) by Dr. Heidi Seibold.
Making a business case for documentation by Ravi Murugesan and Lana Novikova.
Overcoming obstacles to shutting down a digital service by Julia Harrison.
Open Up Guide: Using Open Data to Combat Corruption by Open Data Charter.
What is llms.txt and Why Your Website Might Need One by Gift Egwuenu.
How digital public goods can help unlock the public interest potential of AI by Liv Marte Nordhaug.
How to Build Design Editing Apps using Nextjs, Clerk, and IMGLY’s CE.SDK Engine by Bolaji Ayodeji.
SEO is sinking ship. Swim or Drown? by Linda Ikechukwu.
Elinor Ostrom’s eight rules for managing the commons by Jeremy Williams.
Featured Productivity Articles ✍🏾🦅
The Nothingness of Money by Lawrence Yeo.
Better than a master of one by Ire Aderinokun.
5 Boring Ways to Become More Creative by Mike Manson.
Letters to Avidan: On the Brevity of Life by Equiano Vitruvius.
The Ultimate Productivity Hack is Saying No by James Clear.
Product of the Week ✨
Open Food Facts is a collaborative, open database of 3M food products from 180 countries. It provides data on ingredients, nutrition, and environmental impact, empowering consumers, producers, researchers, and governments to make informed decisions for healthier and sustainable food. You can explore the source and contribute on GitHub.
Good Tidings 🔊
A few months ago, I participated in a summit to discuss how redefining how technology is built to serve humanity and the planet, and working with governments, is crucial for a radical shift in a world submerged in crises and conflicts. This is currently being facilitated at the Digital Public Goods Alliance, and I look forward to seeing even more participation from different stakeholders and digital solution builders like yourself. Moving forward, my career focus will lean more towards digital transformation for public service delivery and businesses, advancing how software, data, content, and AI systems can be used to make the world better and not just create solutions for people with free time and a spare laptop.
Do you know that you can turn any GitHub repository into an interactive diagram for visualizing the project 👀?
Finland and UNICEF Venture Fund launched a global investment opportunity for fem tech solutions (those improving the health, wellness and socio-economic participation of women and girls) in and for emerging economies. Ensure to apply before 8th May 2025 if you’re interested.
React and Next.js have powered some of the most ambitious projects on the web in the last few years. Here’s a breakdown of real-world case studies from engineering teams and products, highlighting their challenges, solutions, and results of building with these tools.
The long-awaited Open Source Festival is back and better this year, from August 14th to 16th. Expect elevating and educational talks about the open source ecosystem in Africa. If you’re interested, you can submit sessions to present, reach out to sponsor, or begin to make plans to attend.
Google for Startups Accelerator program for Africa is now accepting applications from early-stage tech startups.
If you’re interested in contributing to open source, GSOC has announced exciting organizations mentoring for this year. You can begin to reach out to them to increase your chances of being selected for the GSoC program.
The French (DINUM) and German (ZenDiS) governments are building Docs, an open source collaborative note-taking, wiki and documentation platform (alternative to Google Docs). This is a good collaborative digital transformation effort.
TIL about the funding.json standard, a very interesting way open source projects can communicate funding needs in a public and machine-readable format. Keen to see how it evolves and makes getting grants easier for FOSS projects, and contributes to financial sustainability challenges.
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects can use the Best Practices Badge App to voluntarily self-certify, at no cost, to explain how they follow different industry best practices.
You should check out the Shubhra Kar Linux Foundation Training (LiFT) Scholarship Program, which aims to increase diversity in open source technology by providing access to training courses and certification exams for deserving individuals at no cost to the recipient.
Recently, the Nigerian government (through the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy) released the Nigerian Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) framework to achieve a unified approach to delivering digital services across critical life events for Nigerians. This is a very solid start, and I'm keen to see how far the implementation will go and how citizens, communities, and other stakeholders will be involved.
Interested in Data Visualisation and AI? There’s an open PhD paid position at Tallinn University: Data Visualization and Artificial Intelligence for Monitoring Competence Needs in Industry and Lifelong Learning. You can apply before 30th June 2025; studies start by 1st September 2025.
Starting an Open Source Program Office? GitHub OSPO has shared their policies, tools, and best practices to guide you through the first 6-12 months of your organization's open source journey.
Lists and Collections 🗂️
You can take over 2,500 MIT courses from various fields online for free through MIT OpenCourseWare.
Here’s a curated list of project-based programming tutorials you can use to learn how to build applications from scratch.
Here’s a collection of digital solutions for different use cases, designed with privacy, security, open standard, and best practices in mind, you can adapt to your unique contextual needs.
Here’s a complete computer science study plan you can use to become a software engineer.
Here is a collection of universities, companies, and organizations that offer free online courses with certificates.
Here’s a collection of the best promotional deals for developers to level up your skills, workspace gadgets, etc.
If you’re looking to get started with technical writing, you should check this for a curated list of articles, books, videos, tools, podcasts, etc.
For managers, here’s a collection of engineering leadership resources that you’d find helpful.
Are you looking to network with other student community leaders and professionals or level up your skills and give back to your community? You can join the GitHub Campus Experts program now and expand your connections!
Here's a recommendation of the top websites to find remote jobs for different software engineering and product fields in tech.
Here’s a curated list of interview questions for different programming languages, frameworks, and technologies.
Book Recommendations 📚
Why Students Don’t Like School by Daniel T. Willingham.
Saved from What by RC Sproul.
Zero to One by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel.
Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner.
Building Python Web APIs with FastAPI by Abdulazeez Adeshina.
Featured Tweets and Videos 😍
Here are some cool tweets and my favorite videos from YouTube these past weeks.
⬇️: Hackers Find Missing People For Fun
⬇️: Your Space Reflects Who You Are.
⬇️: Guess the Language
⬇️: Why Some Animals Can't be Domesticated
Quote of the Week 💙
“The improvement or growth in understanding is the highest form of progress a natural man can attain, so real EDUCATION is the highest gift or blessing to natural man. Because the greatest thing in man is his mind and the greatest thing in the mind is understanding.” —Dr. Duro Ehalaiye.
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