We had our 7th meet-up of the year on the 1st of August 2026. As compared to the previous meet-ups, this one happened online. Yes! you read that right. We had a virtual meet-up!

Why?

That is a valid question dear reader. In the last blog post , we had promised to meet at Mount Kenya University Nairobi Campus. This could not happen.The meeting spaces at the campus were being prepared for students to use for their last semester exams. We got this piece of information late. We tried to get alternative meeting spaces but they were all booked or unavailable. With 16 hours to the meet-up, we decided to have it online.

How did it go?

It was a success. Twenty people showed up. We sent details of the change in less than 24 hours to the time the meet-up was to start. The star of the show was Yusuf Hersi . He did a demo of how NextDeploy can be used to deploy Next.js websites onto a linux server. He also explained the design decisions he made during the development process. The audience was very impressed with the project itself, the effort that went into it and the final product and documentation. Great work Yusuf!

He is looking for feedback on NextDeploy. Any thoughts, comments, opinions or sentiments on the project will be highly appreciated. If you are bold enough, I dare you to learn how to write Next.js, create a website and deploy it with NextDeploy. You also have the option of informing any Next.js users of the project so that they can test it out.

NextDeploy is a tool made to empower Next.js developers to deploy their Next.js websites on Linux servers, AWS and Cloudflare without relying on Vercel tooling or infrastructure. Check out the NextDeploy's Github Repository , star it, fork it and contribute to it.

To better understand the project, read the NextDeploy documentation. It explains how the project can be installed, the commands one needs to run and a technical reference section which highlights ways one can secure their Next.js deployment when using NextDeploy.

Online meet-ups Vs. Physical meet-ups

During the meet-up, attendees mentioned that they would prefer to have some of the meetings to take place online. Some said that they don't make it to the physical meet-ups because they are based outside the Nairobi area. This makes it impossible for them to attend the meet-ups. I agree! Online meet-ups makes it easy for a lot of people to attend. However, nothing beats the interaction that one experiences during in-person meet-ups. The power of actual human interaction.

September 5th meet-up

A new month is here already.

The September meet-up will be held online. We have 5 speakers lined up. They are:

• Benson Muite will kick us off with a talk on possible meeting locations. The focus will be on 2 community halls in Nairobi and American Spaces at Maktaba Kuu. Show up and suggest cool places we can meet! We need you!
• Dorcas Litunya will speak on her experience of contributing to the Linux Kernel. Invite anyone who is interested in contributing to the Kernel to attend her talk.
• Chrispine Tinega talk is titled Hello, IPC - connecting Rust with Zephyr . Check out the cool poster below
• Norman Bii will speak on The modern Linux Developer's toolkit with a focus on AI and agent orchestration.
• Danfold Mosongo is back with Hacking INTO ANDROID: No USB? No Problem. This talk focuses on how wireless ADB can be used by unauthenticated attackers to access root courtesy of CVE-2026-0073 , a critical zero-click authentication bypass in Android's wireless ADB

Speakers will have 25 minutes to themselves and the audience will have 10 minutes to ask questions. The event will start at 3pm and end at 6pm EAT. Check out our event page on Luma.

Community updates

Benson Muite invites you to the 29th XMPP Summit that is take place fully online. It will be held from the 4th to the 5th of September 2026. The event will run from 13:00 - 16:00 UTC. If you are interested in the development of XMPP technologies, show up and discuss all things XMPP remotely!

Benson Muite invites you to an Online Software Carpentry workshop. It is scheduled for the 7th and the 8th Of September 2026 from 9 Am to 5 Pm SAST (UTC+2). It is online and it won't be recorded. Seats are limited therefore do register early. For more information, check out his email on the mailing list.

OpenInfra User Group Kenya invites you to respond to their CFP for the OpenInfra Day Kenya Conference.Talks will be focused on cloud infrastructure, open-source, platform engineering and digital sovereignty. First time and experienced speakers are invited to apply. The deadline is 21st September 2026. Check out their Linkedin post for more information. Cool fact, they have invited us to be community partners. We are coming up in the world indeed.

Pycon Kenya 2026 is scheduled for the 2nd to the 3rd of October 2026. Show up and support the local Python developer ecosystem.

Uniter Nyakerario invites you to join The Good Docs Project blogathon . It is scheduled for the 10th of October 2026 and is open to anyone interested in technical documentation. From the website, it is said to be a hackathon but for doc writers. Attendance is online from anywhere in the world! Show up and write your heart out!

Pycon Africa 2026 is coming to Uganda. It is will take place from the 7th to 11th of October. Guido van Rossum will be the closing keynote speaker. Check out this Linkedin post for more information

Grivine Bala will be speaking at GopherCon Africa 2026. This conference will be happening from the 15th to the 17th of October at PrideInn Azure Hotel, Lantana Road, Westlands, Nairobi. His talk is titled Write-Ahead Logging in Go: The Subtle Bugs That Corrupt Databases. Check out his speaker profile on the conference website! All the best Grivine, we are rooting for you!

Cornelius Emase invites you to participate in Fedora's Week of Diversity. It is scheduled for October and is expected to be a 3 hour event with 10-20 minutes of talks as the primary format. Anyone and everyone is welcome to join and participate.

If you have any news you'd like to share with the community, share it with us on the mailing list or in any of our channels.

Would you like to have your blog appear on this website? Check out our GitHub, fork it, add your content and then make a merge request. You should have it here up in no time.

Thanks, looking forward to seeing you in the next meetup.