December is usually a month of reflection, so we want to use it to present what a year we had with our Infobip Connect meetups. These tech events have been held all around Africa, North America, and Europe. They have proven popular amongst local communities and enabled us to tap into their culture and vibrancy.
The story behind
The Infobip Connect meetups represent the basic principles of Infobip’s Developer Experience (DevEx) department. These events are gathering developers, startups, and tech enthusiasts with a mission of empowering local communities, presenting their tech initiatives and successful dev and startup projects. We also introduce developers to the tools and solutions that can help them build their projects, and mission-driven startups with our Startup Tribe initiative.
We are happy that our meetups provide a space for developers to meet, network and exchange ideas. We also connected startup founders, and developers with the investors who attended our meetups. After every meetup, at least a couple of new startups joined our Startup Tribe.
Why Infobip Connect meetups?
It all started in 2022, when we organized a few meetups in Lagos (Nigeria) and Accra (Ghana). Those events were very successful and proved to us that in-person events are a great way of engaging with the local communities and presenting how Infobip can contribute to their growth.
Encouraged by that success, in 2023 we decided to organise meetups across Africa.We did 3 tours in February, April, May, and October with events held in Nairobi (3), Casablanca (2), Lagos, Kampala, Cairo, Abidjan, Kigali, and Accra. All of the meetups had an amazing turnout with most of them being full houses. We are also proud to say that this project was awarded “The Best Regional DevRel project” at the DevRelCon London 2023 conference held this September.
Along with events in Africa, we extended our meetups to Europe and North America. In Europe, we organized well-attended events in Berlin (2), Amsterdam, and London, while in North America, we visited Miami (2), New York City, and Toronto. You can read all about the North American tour in our previous blog post.
Infobip Connect in numbers
During this year we organized 19 meetups in 14 cities on 3 continents – Africa, North America, and Europe. More than 1700 developers, startups and tech enthusiasts attended our events.
When we reflect on the numbers, we can be happy with the results this year in building local tech communities. With an average of almost 90 people per event, those were very well-attended community events. On our mission to build local tech communities, we had to fly 150,000+ miles, but the jet legs, flight delays, and missing luggage didn’t stop us on our mission. :)
Conclusion
We are happy that our efforts in building local communities paid off. We managed to achieve local partnerships in many cities that will continue organizing meetups and carrying on our community torch. Awards won by our DevRel team this September at DevRelCon London 2023 for the best DevRel program overall and for the best DevRel regional project is a strong wind in our sails for 2024. Guided by the Olympic motto Faster – Higher – Stronger (lat. Citius – Altius – Fortius), next year we plan to double the number of the Infobip Connect meetups and expand to South America and Asia.
Regarding tips and tricks on how we managed to organize successful meetups, you can find them in this blog post. Although this blog was related to meetups in Africa the tips apply to all our Inobip Connect meetups.
Stay tuned for the announcement of the first meetups in 2024.
We are just starting!
