My Six-Week Transformative Journey with TIIDELab PreFellowship Program

Hello, friends! I’m excited to share my journey as a TIIDELab Prefellowship Fellow. Over the past six weeks, I’ve experienced intense learning, growth, and memorable moments. Let me take you through the goods and lows of this transformative adventure.

My name is Sule Abdulhakeem Adoyiza, and I’m excited to share the incredible journey I've had during the TIIDELab Pre-Fellowship program. Over the past six weeks, I've not only sharpened my technical abilities but also gained new perspectives on teamwork, resilience, self-esteem, and personal growth.

TIIDELab is a dynamic innovation hub dedicated to nurturing the talents of budding tech enthusiasts. It offers a unique environment where creativity and technical skills in software engineering are cultivated. By tapping into Africa's vast potential, TIIDELab prepares individuals to excel in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

It all started with an onboarding online class session that felt more like a grand welcome party to all our members. We met the incredible and wise program supervisor Mr. Aderoju Shamsudeen Adedapo famously known as Mr. Shamms, our esteemed guest speaker Mr. Orakwe John MBA. who introduced us to the fascinating world of AI. The combination of words of wisdom from our founder Kadir Salami and guest speaker Orakwe John, MBA were instrumental to the success of the onboarding ceremony.. We all were excited and ready for this epic journey to begin.

First Week at TIIDELab

We kicked off our first class in the program on the 20th of June with “Setting up Your Development Toolkit for 2024” by UncleBigBay, who is one of our mentor, tutor and an Alumni of past TIIDELab Fellow program. during the class he taught us how to setup space, the tools needed and eased the tension of us being a noobie. Our first community event on Twitter Space on held on the June 22nd was super interactive, Impactful and fun. Also we had our TownHall meeting where we normally elect our Class Governor and the Deputy and the elected candidates were Blessing Agu and Abioye Abdul-Lateef. they lead with great resilence and set example for others governors after them to follow.

We were divided into 10 teams to enhance teamwork, competitiveness, trust, reliance, and togetherness. I'm thrilled to be part of Team 3, which we named Team EVO (Evolution). I feel blessed to work alongside my fantastic teammates: Mogaji Bolaji Abdullah (our team lead), Momoh Gbenuade (assistant team lead), Akpesiri Ughe, Grace Akpe-Ushie Divine Jason, Theophilus ,Moses, Adetutu, and our incredible Team Supervisor Miss Abigael Anyanwu who have just been the best mentor one could have. Our first soft skills class we had with Mr. Shamms on “Attitude and Success” reminded us that with the right mindset, anything is possible.

Second Week at TIIDELab

The second week kicked off and we began getting our hands dirty with HTML5 and CSS which was taught to us by UncleBigBay. we began to unravel the idealogy behind HTML5 and using CSS to style it appearance and as usual with each class came assignments meant to help us understand and also test our understanding. This wasn’t just about writing code but it was about turning unique ideas into reality and displaying your talents for others to see. Towards the end of the HTML and CSS class, We were tasked with building our personal portfolio site using HTML, CSS, and any programming knowledge we had. The deadline for submission is July 13th, 2024. You can find my portfolio site link which I created here: https://lnkd.in/dSJjqdX9

Also that during that week we had our second soft skills class taken by none other than Mr. Shamms, who broaden our knowledge on the topic "Presentation Skills" and turned most of us into confident speakers, ready to share our ideas with the world.

Third Week at TIIDELab

Honestly, this was the toughest week for me cause during the third week, were done with HTML and CSS and started learning Python programming language, which has been really difficult for me to grab in the past and to some extend I personally didnt like Python because the first official Programming language i learnt was JavaScript which i enjoyed massively but due to poor practice time and many other selfish excuses i stopped coding for almost a year and half and the developer in me lost it touch but thanks to TIIDELab and some personal friends, i was able to pick myself back up.

we began exploring Python. So far, we've learnt about data types such as variables, constants, strings, numerics, lists, tuples, dictionaries, and loops like for loop and while loop. We're excited to apply what we've learned to our project, In addition it was time to elect new class Governors which happens every Teuday evening and the elected members were Mr. Alabi Victor (Governor) and Mrs. Jacinta as assistant.

GROUP PROJECTS

https://quick-summ.vercel.app/

Each team was assigned a project topic and objectives to be completed by the end of the prefellowship. Team 3 (EVO) which was my group, project is to develop a tool that can summarize long articles or documents into concise summaries. Our objectives include:
- Uploading documents in various formats
- Integrating AI APIs to enhance summarization capabilities
- Providing different levels of summarization (short, medium, long)
- Highlighting key points
- Providing word or sentence counts
- Allowing users to download the summarized text as a PDF or text file

At that time have completed the project planning, research, and design, most of the user interface, and set up the project environment. It's a work in progress, and we couldn't wait to unveil it once it was complete. Our first sprint presentation was both nerve-wracking and exciting. My team and I, working on a Summarizer tool named QuickSumm which goal was to be able to summarized lengthy text into concise format. During this stage they had been elimination of member who didnt performed well in the evaluation sheet and I was among those who had been selected to advance to Stage 3 of the TIIDELab program! 🎉

Fourth Week at TIIDELab

Week four was packed with action. we celebrated the World Youth Skills Day and it was a blast with different teams showcasing their skillset in something aside Tech. also we had second sprint presentation which featured live demos of our projects and how far we've made progress. during the endof that week, we had an AI Seminar session titled “Building Your AI Skills: Identifying Learning Pathways for AI Enthusiasts” featured talks from industry experts like Mr. Daniel Wilson, with the presence of important individuals such as Mrs. Cynthia Shobayo and Mr. Kadir Salami hosting us on the call.

Our python classes were wrapped up with lessons on how to Integrate AI APIs using python strictly, we started by creating a virtual environment for our us to be able to install dependent libraries for our tool, and turning the python scripts into an executable file so we could attach it on our website we developed. lastly we also had another class Governorship election and we elected Mr. Joseph Umunna and Miss Mabel Ezema as governor and assistant.

Fifth Week at TIIDELab

The fifth week was quite challenging with everyone focus on their group project trying to connect their APIs to their Python Script and ensuring it worked perfectly okay before the Sprint Presentation which we were going to have that following Thursday.

On the Presentation our team demonstrated how our Python code works by running on the terminal and inserting our text for summarization, which wasnt perfect yet but it was okay for a demo, though we have a lot of feedback to note down and improve our work. Also the following day we had our first AI class which was mind-blowing, where we learned about various AI models, Large language models (LLMs), machine learning like Supervised Learning, UnSupervised learning and Reinforcement Learning.

Final Week at TIIDELAB (Sixth Week)

This final week has been really intense and challenging with two sprint presentations (one Tuesday and the Grand Presentation on Thursday), preparing us for our graduation. Dr. Aminu’s also held his final class on generating APIs from the Hugging Face website which was enlightening and impactful. We’re now polishing our projects to display for the big day which is Today. Finally Tomorrow we are have our Graduation Party which am also looking forward too, cant wait to see what is installed for us all.

Conclusion

My time at TIIDELab has been a testament to the power of determination, collaboration, and continuous learning. This journey has transformed me into a self-reliant web developer and AI enthusiast, equipped with the skills to tackle future challenges. Thank you for joining me on this incredible adventure.