Documenting My Android Adventure

#documentyourcareer

Hi my name is Wilfried Mbouenda Mbogne, an Android developer with a big passion for Computer science and the green robot.

I decided to write this article to start documenting my career and tell my story. (#documentyourcareer).

I was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk who sometimes talks about: documenting versus creating.

The Beginning

Everything began with the love of computer science. I found a book in my house (In Camerun where I am born) when I was in college and it was about BASIC language. I decided to read it so I could learned how to code in BASIC. I finished the book and tried to write my own programs and it was beautiful and interesting. I was falling in love with computer science.

Travelling

I moved to Italy for better instruction opportunities and I learned a new language: Italian.

After my small experience with the BASIC language, I chose Computer Engineering at University. I can say from that moment, my passion continued to grow till now.

For my bachelor Thesis in Florence in 2011, I chose a difficult path: A Thesis about Android. It was difficult because I didn’t know anything about Android development. The thesis was about design and development of an Application for a medical social network focusing on multimedia data. It took me 6 months to achieve this. 2 months of learning (google and stack overflow helped a lot) and 4 months of app development and Thesis writing.

I was happy with the result. My first app as a self taught Android developer.

My first Android App

Another Travel

Then I moved to Turin to take a Master degree in Computer Engineering at polytechnic university of Turin.

In the meanwhile I also accepted a job as a Junior Android developer. So I became a working student. I tried to manage my full time job and my studies. It was a complex and long path but I learned a lot.

During 6 years as a working student I managed to do some interesting stuff:

1. I ran a blog
2. I spoke at 3 Android conferences and I did a Workshop.
3. I volunteered at the local Google Developer Group of my city : GDG Torino
4. I developed 2 personal Android Applications

Let’s me go deep in these stuff.

My blog

graduate or die trying

For me graduating while working was a difficult task, so to be sure I would finish it I create a side project: a blog. The goals of the blog was to:

1. share my computer science knowledge with other students

2. make me accountable about my studies

3. motivate myself to study for my exams

I wrote 19 articles, I collected 122 likes on the related Facebook fan page. now The blog is read around 200 times each week.

You can find my blog at this link. I will write a Deep dive post about that blog in the future.

Android Speaker

After 4 years of working in a small and closed company, I opened myself to the online community. I discovered conferences about android and mobile development.

It was like opening my eyes. Every new feature of android was discussed in conferences. I decided to learn from conferences.

I also had the will to speak but I didn’t know where to begin. Two people help me with that Chiu-Ki Chan through her newsletter and Zach Holman through his website. I have spoken 3 times since then.

I talk in detail about my speaking experience here and here.

GDG experience

During 2 years I gave part of my energy to co-organize events at GDG Torino.

We built a lot of events together.

In 2015 I brought the original idea of Trendroid series with a friend. It was a monthly event with 2 light talks about building an Android app of success. We did 4 episodes. Videos from Trendroid events can be found here

In 2016, I was chosen as the facilitator for the Android study jam in Turin. It was really interesting. As a facilitator, I had to explain basic concepts of Android development from this Udacity course and then review the final Android project of each participant of the Study Jam.

study jam torino 2016 — Certification day

My personal Applications

Bito

bito

BiTo is an Italian Android application for Turin citizens who use the [TO] bike service and love the environment. Bito allows you to save your favorite [TO] bike parking and track how many available bikes or vacancies there are. Bito also allows you to tweet on the environment and the bike world.

Remember to call

This application helps you to remember when to call your love ones.

And now what?

I graduated recently and I am really proud of myself.

#looklikeanengineer

What else?

I got engaged and I am about to supercharge my career by focusing on writing posts here on Medium and speak at some android conferences while learning new things. Stay tuned, the adventure continues.

An adventure is helpful if you learn something.

What did I learned in these 7 past years ?

1. you can do well what you are prepared for, so always prepare yourself

2. complex doesn’t means impossible

3. the passion will bring you forward, so be sure to work on your passion

4. sometimes you need to rest, my mantra: WORK HARD PLAY HARD REST HARD

5. It is a must to have a board of persons who loves and support you on your path.

My name is Wilfried Mbouenda Mbogne an Android developer and I am sending this message to all the developers of the world: “Tell your story, document your career” (#documentyourcareer).

If you loved this article, I’d appreciate it if you give me some claps.

Thanks to the people who help proofreading this article.

This article is dedicated to my fiance who motivates me everyday.

Before you go… If you enjoyed this post, you will love to subscribe to my newsletter. Get my cheat sheet: “Android Studio keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet”.