DevFest 2024-Artificial Intelligence

On the 14th of December 2024 DevFest took place at Motiv Kampala. We attended the event and present a summary of what took place from key note to sponsors to other speeches as well as breakout session topics. The 1000 plus attendees heard from leading voice in the technology and innovation space especially those who have excelled and managed the complex transition from tech to policy and leadership. Elijah Kitaka gave a key note and warned those present to beware of stagnation and an event focused lifestyle. He also encouraged young people to develop business acumen and not just technical expertise. With regards to the theme of the day-AI Elijah Kitaka mentioned three major areas to watch Infrastructure, Co-Pilot and Agents as well as the use of Data to Train Models for the modern workplace. Tabitha Namwone a leading voice and leader in her own right introduced the audience to Career Trees. In this episode, we encourage our listeners to pay close attention to breakout sessions for ideas about tools and trends and to plug in to the ecosystem as well as to build partnerships with the big companies behind these technologies and tools. We see these events as important links between global companies and local users who will form a key resource in using and improving and extending the life of technologies that many of these companies are hungry to have tested. Breakout session leads included James Mwai (Implemeting Scalar Vector Search with Vertex AI), Wesley Kambale (Building a skin cancer analyzer with Flask and Gemini API), Collins Mesue (AI powered UI), Kayongo Johnson Brian (Neural Style Tramsfer with TensorFlow), Francis Akol (Building Ethical AI Dashboards with Angular), Oliseh Genesis (Building an AI Assistant DAPP on ICP), Sumalya Nalukwago (Building the future of Android), Collin’s Mbulakyalo (Web Notifications), Mwiine Daniel (Simplifying Cloud Management with Terraform).