DevFest Jos 2023 — Builders, Ideas & Community
Nov 18, 2023 · Walshak Manasseh
A full day of AI, Flutter, cloud, and real talk — DevFest Jos brought together developers, founders, and creators to celebrate growth, share ideas, and build connections across Plateau State.
DevFest Jos 2023, hosted by GDG Jos at the Fox Hotel on November 18, was more than a conference — it was a celebration of what developers across Plateau State are building, learning, and becoming.
The day kicked off with a WTM Breakfast Meeting and registration, followed by an opening keynote from Ajor Victor that set the tone: this was a room for doers. From prompt engineering with Bard AI to fundraising strategies for northern entrepreneurs, the sessions covered real ground — not theory, but actionable insight.
Highlights included Robert John's talk on accelerating model deployment with Transfer Learning and Vertex AI, Helen Ugoeze Okereke unpacking innovations in IoT, and breakout sessions on designer-developer collaboration in UI/UX and building robust ML applications with TensorFlow.
The afternoon brought a powerful panel session on harnessing digital technologies for job creation, inclusive economic growth, and sustainability — a conversation that hit different in a room full of builders actively working on these problems.
What made DevFest Jos stand out wasn't just the talks — it was the energy between sessions. The games, the sponsor segments, the lunch conversations, the photo sessions. It was a community showing up for itself, celebrating its wins, and planning what's next.
Key themes of AI, Flutter, and DevFest culture ran through the entire event. From Lois Choji breaking down how to kickstart a data science career to breakout sessions on Google Cloud Databases and mastering Flutter layouts, every session was designed to equip and inspire.
