Saturday, December 7, 2013

Part 4 of 5 - AfChix Uganda Stories Featuring Viola Bazanye



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.