Part 4 of 5 -
AfChix Uganda Stories Featuring Viola Bazanye
Viola Bazanye is a member of the AfChix Network and is currently a Developer
Platform Evangelist Intern for
Microsoft East & Southern Africa. Viola recently completed her Bachelor of
Software Engineering degree from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and
will graduate in January 2014.
On Saturday
7th December 2013 Viola facilitated the Afchix Code Session focusing
on basics of C# and Windows 8 App development. The event was hosted by
ThoughtWorks in Kampala Uganda from 10am to 1pm. Ten women and thirteen men
attended the session. She encouraged attendees to join the Microsoft developer
community and to find more resources on C# from C#Station and other
developer tools from Microsoft Dreamspark.
The week
of October 2nd to 5th, 2013 was memorable Viola Bazanye,
Joan Nayiga, Lisa Katusiime and Liz Mirembe as they had a chance to attend this
year’s Grace Hopper Celebration for
the first time. Viola says that she particularly remembers one statement that
inspired her by Megan Smith the Vice President at Google during her keynote
speech on moonshot thinking and disregard
for the impossible: “In effort there
is joy, technology is hard but there is joy in it.”
Viola
says that she learned lessons on the importance of us Africans developing our
own technology for differently abled users.
Her advice for other young aspiring women in technology is “to remain
persistent in everything that you do, no matter the color of your skin or where
you come from, never give up on your dream. Think big, drive forward!”
Viola is
very grateful to the following: Anita Borg Institute for the scholarship that
enabled her attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the AfChix
Network for mentorship and her family for the moral and financial support.
