Newsletter #31
2023 is coming to an end but we haven't been slowing down. Read about what we got up to in December!
Salaam to all 👋!
Welcome to the December edition of the DD Newsletter - the place to go for your round-ups, updates, and everything in between. Here we'll round off what has been happening in our community and look ahead at our upcoming events and initiatives!
As usual, the newsletter is jam-packed with updates, lots of stuff to share, and a few cool things worth checking out. This edition includes information about upcoming events and campaigns, a Community spotlight, interesting reads, and our favourite meme of the month. You won't want to miss it.
Stay safe and in good health!
Deen Developers at Amazon 📦🤖
This past month we spoke with the Muslims in Tech community at Amazon in a session at their London headquarters.
We had a chance to speak to the techies at Amazon for their first public event and explain the Deen Developers mission and story - how we’re working to change mindsets and instill an understanding that donating your skills and time is just as important as donating money.
It was a great evening with networking, refreshments, and talks from other organisations. The evening was capped off with a talk on GenAI from Ahmed Raafat, Principal Solution Architect at AWS, who was able to give us a glimpse of all the cool things that Amazon are working on.
A big thank you to the Amazon Muslims in Tech community for hosting us, Anam Mohsin for helping to organise, and everyone else involved in making this event happen.
Deen Developers events sell out quickly so make sure to follow us across all our social platforms to stay up to date with our latest events and activities
Additional Highlights
We’ve passed 8,000 followers on X (Twitter)! 🥳
Deen Developers attended various collaboration sessions with other Muslim orgs this past month - keep an eye out for announcements coming to social media on some important products we’ve been working on.
The Deen Developers team would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the entire community for your continued support and commitment throughout a very challenging year. Deen Developers wouldn’t be what it is without our partners and members and we look forward to continuing to build tech for good in 2024.
Women in Tech Brunch 🍴
Our Women in Technology community has grown to over 500 members 🎉
To celebrate, we held our inaugural Women in Tech event this past month to allow everyone to come together and meet up - creating a space to engage in inspiring conversations and network with like-minded women in tech. 🤝
We held our brunches in 2 separate locations, London and Manchester, allowing more of our members to get together. Tickets sold out instantly and it was amazing to see women from diverse roles and experience levels connecting, exchanging insights, and enjoying great food. 🥐
We’re so pleased to see this come together and for both events to be such a huge success. A huge thank you to all organisers who helped facilitate this event and all attendees who contributed to making it such a great occasion.
Stay tuned for upcoming events and initiatives tailored to our women's network, including a book club that is launching soon. If you're a woman yet to join our private Slack channel, reach out and be part of the conversation!
Community Spotlight
NewsCord
This month’s spotlight is focussed on another product that was built at the Hack for Gaza. Check out NewsCord!
NewsCord identified the existing difficulties of gaining objective truth from the news that we consume. With a prolifieration of media companies, all optimising for clicks and engagement, we need to take extra care when developing opinions based on cherry-picked articles and sources.
The team are using Generative AI to find similar articles to the one you're interested in and then summarising/comparing content to establish points where the articles agree, and where they disagree.
The benefit of being able to rapidly absorb multiple viewpoints is that it helps you stay vigilant and less prone to becoming influenced by a singular point of view, while also highlighting areas of bias within the media.
NewsCord will officially be launching soon so stay tuned for the announcement. In the meantime the team are also looking for a UI/UX designer to join and help them optimise the product to help users quickly identify truths and biases within the news!
Other Spotlights
Moustafa launched Hoya - a fun, simple recognition slack bot to get your team motivated and help create a culture of recognition and celebration.
Mohammed is looking for users to help test Meet App Cards which is a set of thought-provoking questions aimed at stimulating deeper conversations with a (potential) partner.
Sims for Gaza has officially launched after securing a distribution partner. Keep Gaza connected by donating an eSIM.
The Community Spotlight section is an opportunity to share announcements, job openings, and anything else that’s worth highlighting.
Post on the #03_show-and-tell channel if you have something to share.
Slack's Digest
Interesting Articles Shared
Meme of the month
But we have to keep up the appearances 💅
Have you got a funny meme? Post it on the #08_memes channel!