Tech, Coding, Community and Covid-19 Maps by Janique-ka John

My academic journey into tech started when I contacted the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill to change my degree to Information Technology, upon receipt of my acceptance to start a degree in Biology. To this day I don’t know exactly what changed my mind, but I do know it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. 

But truly, my real journey and the spark that ignited my love for tech started as a child, where my father would sit me down at an available computer while he taught computer classes. He himself is a trained I.T. Professional, and made the decision to teach what he knew to adults in St.Vincent and the Grenadines in 1995. From there, my natural curiosity and love for tech blossomed, even as I studied natural sciences in school. 

This brings me to the point where I am at now, working as a Software Engineer at a company called MEDIAGENIX in Brussels, Belgium after pursuing a Double Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science (I later changed to this degree) at UWI Cave Hill, and a Master’s Degree in Applied Computer Sciences at the VUB in Brussels. I have a love for coding, most likely fueled by my obsession with problem solving. I’ve always loved problem solving, and software engineering empowers me in a way that it can go from idea to reaching the public in a short period of time. 

This is essentially what happened with the Caribbean COVID Map. A Caribbean journalist by the name of Clydeen McDonald reached out to me in the earlier stages of the pandemic - “Hey, do you think you can build this?”. He lamented the fact that as journalists, seeking out an overview of the COVID-19 situation in the Caribbean region meant manually counting the figures on the (now extremely popular) Johns Hopkins map for the relevant countries. Fortunately, Johns Hopkins University published and updated these figures daily on the popular code hosting site Github. I looked over the format and let him know that it was definitely possible. 

I had previously worked on a Twitter bot for fun that does a similar task of parsing data from Vincentian news sites, and outputting them as tweets, and I immediately recognized that I could apply similar functions here. I got to work that same Monday night and sent him a link to a quick proof of concept that I had done up. He let me know that this was exactly what he needed and was surprised that I was able to show him a working version of the idea within a matter of hours. 

We discussed some changes to improve the website, and I got to work! 

Since then the website receives a daily influx of visitors, with the highest so far being 500 people in one day. The most surreal experience has been a video clip that was sent to me of the map on live television during an English broadcast by Telesur Television Network! Thereafter, I realized that a wider network of people were using the site, and purchased an official domain (It had been sitting on the same temporary free domain that I used to show the first POC up until this point!) I continue to improve the website even now, with the most recent feature added being overviews of active COVID-19 cases in the region, as well as per country. I realised that as the pandemic wears on, an outlook on active cases is more pertinent, which differs from early March where the number of confirmed cases were the figure everyone in the region was keeping an eye on. I also added a new page, where case evolution graphs per country can be seen.  

It was important for me to open source the code behind the map. Some news sites have described what we’re facing as not only a pandemic, but also an infodemic. I strongly agree with this,  as we struggle globally with getting accurate information out about the situation. Having the code behind it being open source means that developers can open issues, and even suggest and write code for the map. It also means that they can spin up their own instances of the map, using the code available as a basis. Among many other things, I would love for a vibrant open source community to develop within the Caribbean region.

Since moving to Europe, the value of community became clearer than ever, as it was through community I was able to settle, find my own footing and even secure a job as a woman in the Software Engineering space. I had become a member of the Google owned Women Techmakers European Community within a few months of moving and had the opportunity to attend summits in Paris, Munich and most recently had an opportunity to give a lightning talk at Google London earlier this year! I found myself searching for a central place to send out women-focused opportunities they would share, as well as jobs, scholarships events etc. and after I couldn’t find an active central place I decided to create my own, which is now known as the Women in Tech Caribbean Community.

 I am a strong believer of not only the need to empower those in STEM in the region, but also in the need for us to connect to fully unlock all that STEM has to offer the Caribbean region!

Janique-ka John is from St.Vincent and the Grenadines and has lived in Belgium for the past 4+ years, where she works full-time as a Software Engineer, on the front end of a web application for a company called MEDIAGENIX . She is an advocate for Caribbean women in Tech and as such founded the organisation - Women in Tech Caribbean Community