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Someleze Diko
ABOUT SOMELEZE DIKO
Someleze aspires to carry on enabling young geeks out there to use the technology at their fingertips and create opportunities for them to grow, attain jobs and make impact in their communities.
In 2020 he picked up a new self-taught skill with a different technology that was new to him, from there he decided to use that technology to make rapid impact within his university by building app for a student organization. This one moment and investment became a threaded needle that would score him a job opportunity a year later (2021) with a local company that was looking for talent that had that specific technology as a skill.
A few short months after that I was able to get a score a full time role with one of the Big Tech Companies, Microsoft and achieving my goal of working for his dream company. With the job opportunities aside, one of the key goals he was to enable his peers and those who come after him to attain the same, if not better, opportunities than he had.
Through the experience he had as a student and tapping into the corporate world he hosted a Bootcamp at his previous university centered around certifying a select number of students, enable them to build their portfolio through building real world solutions with the same technology he used in 2020. Through this bootcamp, the top students were offered internship opportunities by an industry partner (his old workplace) and the proceeded to get more opportunities from the university to build social impact projects that automate their university's traditional system.
The work of Someleze Diko
As part of my work as a Cloud Advocate, he works closely with other teams within Microsoft on initiatives that will enable students, rising developers and start ups to take positive advantage of the Power Platform to build projects, improve the Power Platform Products, boost their portfolio and enhance the start-ups' productivity.
In a summary, the projects that he works on as a Cloud advocate are centered around 30daysofLearning initiatives that enable students, rising developers and start-ups to use new technologies to enhance their skills and productivity whilst getting first-hand feedback that we can use to improve our technologies.
1. Enactus DUT timesheet mobile app – the app automated the timesheet capturing and
management process for Enactus DUT and enable the organization to have a seamless
platform to carry out audits both at University and National level.
2. DUT ENGAGEMENT APP – enables the Durban University of Technology to streamline
projects within the university (by students and staff) in the form of recording project and
activities to allow the University to allocate necessary resources and support to these
projects. The DVC: RIE Office utilizes this app to generate management reports in the form
of Power BI reports to easily form partnerships with mutual benefits and see the overview of
projects/activities that are contributing to the DUT ENVISION2030.
Link: https://www.dut.ac.za/duts-revolutionary-engagement-app-successfully-launched/
3. Institutional Covid-19 App 2021 – with the help of the Power Platform, the frustration of
doing health-checks using a USSD/link led to the development of the Covid-19 App that
students had easy access to do a self-check, receive a health certificate, and present the
certificate at the University access points. For students with Covid-19, the app would send
approval request to the HOD/Course Coordinator to approve/reject the campus access
request. Once approved the app automatically generates a Permit with the student’s details
and sends it to the student to access the campus clinics for assistance.
4. Power Platform Bootcamp Durban – this project introduced a selected number of DUT
students to the Microsoft Power Platform, enabled them to prepare and write 2 Microsoft
Professional Certification exams (PL:900 Power Platform Fundamentals & PL:100 Power
Platform App Maker Associate) for free and enabled them to build Power Platform Projects
with actual industry requirements to apply their newly attained skills. 14 of the 20 students
attained the professional certificates and the top 3 students with outstanding projects
received an internship with one of the program stakeholders, Greenlight Solutions.
5. Water Consumption Project (Open source for a conference) – this solution enabled students
and developers to take advantage and build an End-to-End solution using Static Web Apps,
Machine Learning, Minimal API, IoT and .NET Maui. The .NET MAUI app would utilize the
Minimal API to send data and receive these predictions then display them. This addressed a
scenario on how a human can keep track of how much water they consumed and predict
how much water will they consume in future. The data would be received from IoT devices
that would then send the data to a Machine Learning Model, train it and make predictions
on how much water was and will be consumed.
Link: https://github.com/microsoft/dotnetconf-studentzone?WT.mc_id=academic-81899-somelezediko
6. Inspire SA – he has co-led this YouTube channel with his peers focusing on upskilling those
around them with the relevant tech skills, showcasing/advocating women in tech and
building a platform for students to meet and learn from renowned tech industry experts.