On October 31st, 2026, over 115,000 developers around the world celebrated the close of Hacktoberfest. In Yaoundé, Cameroon, we gathered at the Ubuntu Creative Hub for Cyberfest / Hacktoberfest Hack Day Yaoundé x Modulis.
I had the privilege (and the intense adrenaline rush) of being one of the hosts, teaming up alongside my co-hosts @freddy_yanchoudjatadzew, @juvenal_sinengkengni_d3b, Stephan Danwe and Josias Aaron Akana Signing.
If you have ever organized an in-person tech event in Central Africa, you know the unspoken rule: what can go sideways will go sideways, and yet the community spirit always turns it into something unforgettable.
Here is the real, unvarnished story of how our Hack Day went down — from finding a venue to cracked phone screens, an eleventh-hour Starlink rescue, and two inspiring winning AI projects.
🏛️ 1. The Venue Quest: Finding Ubuntu Creative Hub
Long before the first hacker checked in, the biggest hurdle was simply finding a roof.
Securing a venue in Yaoundé with adequate space, tables, and power for dozens of developers is notoriously tough. We eventually set our sights on the Ubuntu Creative Hub. The space was perfect, but the rental rate was well beyond our initial budget.
After several rounds of discussions, the Ubuntu Creative Hub team generously agreed to sponsor part of the cost, bringing the venue within reach.
Finding the hall was only step one; next came logistics. Together with @freddy_yanchoudjatadzew, @juvenal_sinengkengni_d3b, Stephan Danwe, Josias, Kris, and an incredible crew of volunteers, we set up the event infrastructure. I arrived on site at 7:00 AM sharp. Together with the team, we spent the next two hours running cables, testing audio mixers, positioning lighting, calibrating cameras, and hanging up the official photo backdrops and banners.
By 9:00 AM, the room was prepped, tables were laid out, and the first attendees started trickling in.
🛰️ 2. The 9:00 AM Crisis: Two MTN Boxes vs. 30+ Developers
As participants sat down eager to grab the challenge prompts and clone repositories, our primary bottleneck struck immediately: the internet connection.
We initially relied on two 4G MTN boxes. Within ten minutes, dozens of laptops and phones overwhelmed the local cell bandwidth. Nothing was loading. Git commands timed out. Between the hosts coordinating schedules, volunteers managing check-ins, and hackers unable to pull project dependencies, the tension in the room was palpable.
Then, about 45 minutes into the standoff, Starlink arrived.
Setting up Starlink completely flipped the script. The high-speed satellite link absorbed the entire room's traffic effortlessly. Within minutes, packages were downloading, IDEs were lit up with code, and the hackathon officially roared to life.
🎙️ 3. Dual-Track: Hacking & Open Source Workshops
Our event wasn't just a heads-down hackathon; it was a hybrid gathering designed to welcome both experienced builders and absolute newcomers:
- The Hack Track: Teams huddled in their corners architecting AI tools around open-weight models (specifically Gemma 4, powered by @google and @mlh).
- The Workshop & Webinar Track: A dedicated stage where invited speakers shared sessions on open-source licensing, submitting first Pull Requests, and collaborating with global developer communities.
While hackers were deep in terminal buffers, other attendees spent the morning learning how Git actually works and why open source matters for African software engineers.
📱 4. How a Broken Screen Sparked Pixel Control Center
Right in the heat of hosting — running back and forth between the AV table and the stage — disaster struck: my phone dropped and the screen completely shattered.
I couldn't touch the display, yet I urgently needed to coordinate with co-hosts and check event channels. Standing there with a dead touch panel, I grabbed a USB cable, plugged the phone into my laptop, and relied on adb and scrcpy to keep communicating.
That stressful moment directly sparked the project I later built and wrote about on DEV: Building Pixel Control Center: High-Performance Android Mirroring with Flutter & Scrcpy. Sometimes the best open-source ideas come from the exact moment your hardware betrays you!
🥖 5. The 14:00 Dip & The Final Sprint
By 2:00 PM (14h), mental fatigue and hunger had settled over the room. The initial caffeine buzz had worn off, and the silence told us everyone was running on empty.
Fortunately, the casse-croûte (lunch snack) arrived just in time. Everyone stepped away from their keyboards, grabbed food, chatted across tables, and laughed about the morning's network scramble.
Re-energized, the teams dove into a furious two-hour sprint to finalize their demos, commit their repositories, and prepare their pitch decks.
🏆 6. The Winners: Agri AI & OS Control AI
Late in the afternoon, the jury, sponsors, and hosts gathered to review the projects. Two standout teams took home the premier prizes:
🥇 Best Use of Gemma 4: Agri AI
An intelligent agricultural assistant designed to leverage Gemma 4's multimodal capabilities to assist local farmers with crop diagnostics, local farming conditions, and actionable advice.🥇 Best Open-Source AI Project: OS Control AI
A clean, open-source automation and system control interface leveraging lightweight AI to orchestrate desktop and operating system tasks.
Our partner OSS Cameroon also took the stage to recognize the community's top open-source contributors of October, rewarding them with custom T-shirts, stickers, and swag packs for their commits throughout the month.
The closing ceremony was pure energy — cheers, high-fives, and a sense of collective accomplishment that filled the whole hub.
🧹 7. The Host Reality: Pack Up When Everyone Leaves
When the music faded and the participants headed home with their prizes and swags, the host's job was only half done.
While everyone else was celebrating, the host crew (@freddy_yanchoudjatadzew, @juvenal_sinengkengni_d3b, Stephan Danwe, Josias, Kris, and myself) and our volunteer team stayed behind until late evening:
- Dismantling lighting rigs and camera mounts.
- Packing up extension cords, sound monitors, and microphones.
- Conducting an itemized inventory to make sure no borrowed or rented gear was missing.
- Handing the hall back in spotless condition to Ubuntu Creative Hub.
It was physically demanding and mentally exhausting. But looking around the empty hall knowing that 30+ young engineers in Yaoundé had just shipped real AI projects and joined the global open-source ecosystem made every single second worthwhile.
đź’ś Heartfelt Thanks
A massive thank you to:
- Major League Hacking (@mlh) for believing in local Hack Days and providing global backing.
- DigitalOcean (@digitalocean) for presenting Hacktoberfest 2026 worldwide and empowering open source communities.
- Google (@google) for the Gemma 4 open-weights track and developer tooling.
- Modulis for their steadfast sponsorship, support, and encouragement throughout October.
- Ubuntu Creative Hub for welcoming our community and co-sponsoring the space.
- OSS Cameroon for supporting local open-source talent and bringing the swag.
- My fellow co-hosts @freddy_yanchoudjatadzew, @juvenal_sinengkengni_d3b, Stephan Danwe and Josias Aaron Akana Signing, and our stellar volunteer crew, without whom this day would never have been possible.
Did you host or attend a Hacktoberfest event in your country this year? What was your biggest unexpected challenge on the ground? Let's connect in the comments below!
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