Date: Sunday 7th June, 2020
Time: 4:00 - 5:15pm (GMT)
Icebreaker & Welcome note: Aseda Addai-Deseh, the lead for the PyLadies Ghana Data Science community welcomed all ladies to the orientation and made them know how excited the PyLadies Ghana Data Science team was to have them all on board. The ladies were told that they had been chosen because the selection team thought they were all remarkable. On that note, Aseda called out every lady to mention their name and say why they thought they were remarkable. There were a series of interesting answers ranging from those who said they were remarkable because when they put their minds to something they are able to excel at it, to those who said they were remarkable because though they are not in a technological field, they are daring enough to take this challenge in order to apply data science to their fields.
Introduction of the Data Science team and bootcamp participants. Aseda introduced herself, and Abigail Dogbe, the lead for PyLadies Ghana. She went on to give a breakdown on the participants of the bootcamp - 17 mentors from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, USA, Taiwan and Australia, and 50 mentees from the following regions in Ghana: Greater Accra, Ashanti, Western, Western North, Eastern, Volta and Central. The orientation was not compulsory for mentors to attend but mentors Jane Awuah, Salomey Addo, Tai-Ying Lee and Franklin Adjei were able to join in at different times to give a few words of encouragement to the ladies. Martha Teye from the PyLadies Data Science team was also present to inspire the ladies.
Program outline of bootcamp
Ladies have been put into groups of 3 and have one mentor overseeing them.
The program is running for 6 months from June 8the - December 11th, 2020.
Every month would have a topic of focus:
- Month 1 - Introduction to Data Science, Python Programming
- Month 2 - Mathematics for Data Science
- Month 3 - Data Analytics & Visualization
- Month 4 - Machine Learning
- Month 5 - Introduction to Deep Learning
- Month 6 - Individual Data Science Projects and Zindi Challenge.
For every month, there would be links to courses that mentees are supposed to take. Mentees are required to self-study for at least 2 hours a day (12 hours a week) and when they encounter something they do not understand, they would ask their mentors for help/explanations. The mentors are also there to encourage and inspire the mentees so ladies should ask them lots of questions and be informed about the data science industry.
Mentees are required to sign up for the free online courses presented to them each week. For some courses like those on Coursera, students are expected to audit these courses and not to pay for subscriptions. (More directions would be given when it is time to enrol in such courses).
All assignments and projects found within online courses must be completed by mentees.
The main medium of communication for the program is Slack. If there is the need to have a video meeting with a mentor, any video chat app can be used and mentors would notify PyLadies Ghana of such meetings.
In the final month of the bootcamp, mentees would be required to build their individual final data science projects. There would also be a Zindi Data Science challenge for all 17 groups of ladies to compete for a prize.
Expectations of mentees from the Data Science team
PyLadies Ghana expects ladies to be (SHARP):
- Serious
- Hardworking
- Active
- Respectful
- Persistent
The End Goal
The end goal of this bootcamp is to raise ladies who are competent enough for data science internships or data science entry jobs.
Abigail touched on The Python Software Foundation, PyLadies Global and all the initiatives under Python Ghana.
This report was summarized by Aseda Owusua Addai-Deseh.