Dagmawi Babi's Dev Meetup Notes, Lessons & Vibes

I’ll try my best to cover every event and session in these notes. If I missed something, forgive me ..the day was packed and my brain was running on inspiration overload.

Overall Impression

Honestly? This was one of the best dev meetups I’ve ever attended content wise, speaker quality, flow of sessions and especially the networking. It didn’t feel rushed, boring or repetitive. Every track had substance and the energy in the room was unreal.

I met incredible developers, designers, founders and community builders. Deep conversations, shared struggles, shared wins .. the kind of meetup that reminds you why you started building in the first place.

🤖 AI Track

1️⃣ Building AI That Ships - Biniyam Daniel

The first session was around AI fine tuning and real world deployment, presented by Addis AI.

🧠 Key Ideas:

• Fine tuning isn’t about building flashy demos it’s about solving painful, real problems.
• The speaker emphasized: “Find people with fire on their head.”
• Meaning: find users who desperately need your AI. These users will test everything, break everything and help you improve fast.
• Be like Luke .. survive with any tool, any setup, in any harsh condition. There are no perfect environments.

📊 Data Reality:

• There is no excuse when it comes to data.
• If datasets don’t exist, create them.
• Example shared: recording 500+ hours of studio audio to build high quality datasets.

🔮 Addis AI Direction:

• Addis AI is working heavily on fine-tuning large language and speech models for local languages and real applications.
• Future plans include many open-source projects for the community.
• Their platform: https://platform.addisassistant.com

This talk was a reality check: success in AI is persistence + data + users who actually care.

2️⃣ Community-Driven Tech & Products - Gemechis (Horan Technologies)

Gemechis from Horan Technologies delivered one of the most inspiring talks of the day.

🌱About Horan Technologies:

• do outsourcing contributions.
• Building problem solving platforms for the community, with the community.
• A brilliant team culture that values learning and impact.

🚀 Upcoming Product: Hotspot

• A travel agency like app that brings every destination into one place.
• The problem: travel info is scattered across TikTok, Instagram, blogs and random posts.
• Hotspot aims to centralize destinations, experiences and insights.

This session was proof that tech + community first mindset = powerful outcomes.

3️⃣ Lucy AI - Accessibility to Enterprise Solutions

Lucy AI started with a beautiful mission: making chatbots easy to use for blind users.

🔄 Evolution:

• What started as accessibility-first AI evolved into full customer service AI solutions.
• Voice first interaction.
• Multilingual support.

🗣️ Real Example:

“You can literally call the AI and say: Talk to me in Amharic and it will.”

Lucy AI feels less like software and more like a friend on the other side of the phone.

💼 Jobs:

• For opportunities, check: 👉 https://zemenu.org (Contact Us section)

🎨 Design Track

1️⃣ Concept and Functionality- Etsub

Etsub opened the design track with a powerful question:

Which is worse?

• Beautiful UI with no functionality ❌
• Ugly UI but fully functional? ❌

🧩 Core Definitions:

• Concept → Why this design exists. The story, vision and intention.
• Functionality → Usability, comfort, clarity.

✨ Good design = Concept + Functionality

One cannot survive without the other.

Concept vs functionality ❌

concept and functionality ✅

📌 Key Lessons:

• A design should stay true to its original mission, even as it evolves.
• Example: Facebook originally about simple communication, now overloaded with ads and promotions.

📏 Measuring Design Quality:

• Emotional impact
• Practical effectiveness
• User satisfaction

Examples of good design mentioned:

• Chatbots
• Swiss International platforms

2️⃣ Designing Visuals That Move- Eyuel Zero

Eyuel Zero made motion design feel alive.

🎭 Design as a Family:

• Graphic
• Product
• UI/UX
• Motion
• Industrial
• Sound
• Visual

👉 Everyone is a designer - even backend devs design systems.

⏱️ Motion Design Explained:

• Static design → focuses on space (composition, balance)
• Motion design → focuses on time (rhythm, continuity, flow)

📱 Where Motion Lives:

• Apps
• Social media
• Films
• Music videos

🎥 Motion Principles (Highlights):

• Easing:
• Linear (robotic)
• Ease-in (slow start)
• Ease-out (slow end)
• Ease-in-out (natural)
• Pacing - how fast things move
• Rhythm -visual timing and repetition

Motion design = communication over time.

3️⃣ Bespoke UI- Robi

Robi covered what we have to do inorder to make a platform an "experience" instead of an app. 

Read his Canva presentation link here: https://www.canva.com/design/DAG_Ie2RSGU/oTAl9y1qL-oAgBz7VWusEg/edit

because:

• It’s incredibly well structured
• Packed with practical examples
• Definitely worth reading fully

🎨 Don’t skip this one.

🐞 Debugging

Debugging- Ezra Ashenafi

🧠 Act 1: Establish Facts

• Question assumptions
• “You can’t improve what you can’t measure”
• Different error = progress
• Avoid Yak Shaving

🎯 Act 2: Investigation

• Rubber duck debugging
• Fresh starts help
• Retrace steps
• Minimal reproduction
• Ask the Five Whys

📝 Act 3: Postmortem

• What failed?
• Why?
• Document causes & solutions
• Undocumented fixes = fragile systems

🌶️ Act 4: Spicy Tools

• VS Code: conditional breakpoints, profiling
• Browser DevTools
• Accessibility & contrast checks
• Performance tab
• Speedscope.app
• VisBug
• Axe DevTools
• Remote debugging
• DNS tools: dnsrecords.io, dnschecker.org, mxtoolbox.com

This was one of the most practical sessions of the day.

🎮 Everything is Broken- Yohanes Fikru

Fun and interactive presentation btw.

What Makes a Game?

• Player interaction
• Unnecessary Obstacles
• Goals
• Mastery

Mindsets:

• Programmer → perfection
• Scientist → truth
• Engineer → solving problems

Examples like Celeste and Train Hat were used.

Community Showcases

Exam Buddy

• Major updates are shown

Stark

• Solves the inspiration problem when designing platforms
• Community-powered learning
• 👉 https://stark-01.vercel.app

DBStudio

• Built by an incredible girl.such an inspiring
• Clear problem, clean execution
• Great presentation

🎙️ Talks & Podcast

• Afriwork CEO speech
• Devtopia Podcast -live with Addis AI CEO
• 30 minutes of raw, honest discussion

🧠 What I Personally Learned

• There is no excuse .. start with what you have
• Everyone has different skills ..so follow your curiosity and interst
• Age doesn’t matter ... consistency does
• Be active in communities (CodeNight,channels)
• Share your work, get feedback, improve
• Build in public

Final Thoughts

If you missed this meetup… yeah, unlucky 😅 .. but good news: organizers said recordings are coming.

Can’t wait for the next one 🚀