A vision I1 have for @sysconf_ is that we attract at least two kinds of engineers. One: Engineers in Africa solving (or researching) the hardest problems on the continent. Two: African engineers doing the same globally. No matter the domain or popularity of the product.
I am passionate about technical excellence and I’m a big believer that community is a critical factor in improving the quality of an ecosystem. Iron sharpens Iron. I want a generation of engineers to be inspired to do hard things by hearing what their peers are doing. I want the rate of global contributions from Africa to increase exponentially. I want us to posit new theories, solve problems for ourselves and the world, and contribute more to the advancement of humanity. There are many challenges in our ecosystem, but there are people doing these things in spite of them. Let us sharpen ourselves through their experiences and knowledge.
Some of the best solutions to problems I’ve faced have come from reading papers (& books), watching conference talks or talking to people around me who have built in similar (or adjacent) domains. I’ve also discovered completely new and interesting problem domains through these interactions. I have been aggressively thrown into rabbit holes because I didn’t understand how someone solved a problem, but I wanted to. I have been inspired to build things to test my understanding of things I’ve seen and heard through these channels too. I’m constantly sharpened by the people (and resources) around me and I want the same experience for the whole ecosystem, and though we are doing much in this regard, I believe there’s even much more to do.
The @sysdsgn team2 spends a lot of time thinking long and hard about how to create structures to contribute to achieving the aforementioned goals within the African ecosystem, and we’ve made varied submissions through @sysconf_, @sdsaprogram, the @sysdsgn community and our podcast. The next goal is to make these consistent and scale. There’s more to come on the other programs, but this post is dedicated to SysConf.
For the unaware reader, we had our maiden version of SysConf in 2023, to some acclaim. We had speakers talk about different domains from AI and Operating Systems to Distributed Systems and Databases. We only scratched the surface. This year’s edition of SysConf is slated for Nov 8th, 2025 and our goal is to make this even better than the last. But this goal depends on you, dear reader.
If you are one of the engineers that we can learn from because you’ve worked on or researched a difficult problem, submit a proposal to speak at SysConf. We want to hear how you solved this problem. What did you try? What didn’t work? It’s also fine if you haven’t succeeded at solving this problem yet. Earnest effort is worthy of note and can direct future sojourners to the right path. Apply. We want to hear about the rabbit hole your research has led you down and what this discovery means. Apply. It can be any domain as long as it’s engineering. You (or your product) don’t have to be famous. Apply. We’re really looking forward to hearing from you. And if we receive enough quality applications that we need to add a day to the conference, we will joyfully do so.
And if you’re one of the engineers looking only to learn from others during this edition, please keep an eye on our Twitter page for directions on how to register. We will share the next steps soon. And If you know any engineer in Africa or African engineer (outside of the continent) that fits the bill above, ask them to apply.
See you at SysConf soon.
Though I use “I” here, this is really a shared vision between our co-founding and core team. “I” here is me communicating one part of our vision in my own words. ↩︎
Thank you to our program leads Tosin, Fadekemi, Kehinde, Ifihan, Ogbonna, the rest of our core team and all our volunteers that make our programs possible. ↩︎