Next.js 2020 Conference and A Story About How a 17-Year-Old from Nigeria Changes Kids' Lives With Next.js and Agility CMS

Next.js 2020 Conference, an online event hosted by Vercel, was created in partnership with experts in frontend development, and sponsored by Agility CMS, Amazon, BigCommerce, Contentful, MongoDB, among other major software players. 

The Next.js User Conference presented frontend developers and software enthusiasts with an opportunity to share best practices, and user stories. Yet above all, the main aim behind the event was to show what Next.js is capable of and the amazing community of developers behind it. Sponsors and supporting companies were able to show off their latest and greatest and even launch some products at their virtual Expo. 

To sum up in numbers,

• 70,000+ Registrants,
• 34,500+ Attendees
• 66 Speakers
• 46 Presentations
• 14,000+ Discord Members

The highlight of course was a keynote presentation from Vercel's CEO Guillermo Rauch:

Guillermo and his team introduce exciting Next.js 10, featuring:

• Built-in Image Component and Automatic Image Optimization: Automatically optimize images using the new next/image component
• Internationalized Routing: Start internationalizing your Next.js applications with built-in primitives
• Next.js Analytics: Measure and act on real user performance
• Next.js Commerce: An all-in-one starter kit for high-performance e-commerce sites 

How Agility CMS and Vercel support essential education in Nigeria

In this conference, Olga Voigt, our Marketing Director had the opportunity to talk with Nifemi Dahunsi, a Nigerian teen leader and Founder of Teens World Empowerment. His organization teaches other teenagers and kids how to code and build websites using Vercel and Agility CMS. Keep reading to find out more. 

Or if you’re a visual learner, take a look at our presentation video here where we share the story about Nifemi's school tours: 

To support the school tours, Agility CMS donates partial proceeds from Standard Packages while Vercel team created a wonderful merch store you should check out - all proceeds are donated to four charities including Teens World Empowerment. 

Nifemi Dahunsi and his mission to teach kids essential digital skills in Africa

While growing up, Nifemi realized that other kids didn’t have as many opportunities as they should, and after witnessing some of his childhood friends fall prey to drugs and crime, he felt like he had to do something. After finding out that 10.5 million children in Nigeria don’t have access to quality education, it dawned on him that the lack of quality education was one of the reasons behind unemployment. Thus, TWE was born as an initiative to visit schools all over the country to teach children digital literacy as a way for them to escape poverty and get a proper education. 

Today, Nifemi uses Agility CMS to teach coding skills and introduce coding into the syllabus of education systems to build a digital future for the Nigerian youth. In the future, Nifemi envisions a world where a five-year-old can use Vercel and Agility CMS to build and deploy a site. 

Nifemi has big vision and big plans for kids education in Africa: 

I'm sure you all are wondering how can an Headless CMS change the world? My question to you is - what can change the world? Well I'd answer that question. We've been told daily that young people are the future and the future is now! But how do we give hope for a future without a platform to guarantee a fairer future? Agility CMS is more than an Headless CMS, it's a tool for change, by introducing children into technology we have opened them to a world where dreams can become realities and where they can translate all they think and want into something the world needs. I got involved in technology and found out I could actually change the world by training more people thereby solving lack of Quality Education by providing young people with digital skills, by harnessing the power of technology.

Bringing essential coding skills to kids with Teens World Empowerment and Agility CMS

Teens World Empowerment (TWE) is a non-profit organization that aims at combating the lack of education among youths from different countries and communities by teaching them how to code, design websites, and gain digital skills. TWE trains young people and, once they’ve gained the skills, connects them with internship and job opportunities. 

In 2020, TWE began touring around Nigeria, visiting schools to teach children coding skills. Nifemi started with the basics of what coding is then introduced them to how to use Agility CMS to design websites. 

Then, he taught them how to deploy those sites using Vercel and Agility starter pack in a real-world environment, so they could learn how to build real sites for real people. Kids were excited!

How to use Agility CMS Next.js Starter: Deploy to Vercel and Manage your Content Easily

Built on top of React, Next.js has been quickly growing in popularity as it provides developers with the tools they need for production. Next.js also allows developers to prefetch and create a hybrid website and application using both static and dynamic server side rendering. Since Next.js is based on React, it makes it extremely easy for developers to use and reuse components to build pages fast.

With the agilitycms-next-starter templates, developers who want to start using Agility and Next.js can save time and effort by using this template to build a website from scratch. The starter pack is a bare-bones template that can give you fast previews and exceptional build times. 

With native features such as Page Management, Agility CMS can be used to structure their Next.js website and focus on the UI components and gain granular control over all the aspects of the digital experience. 

For a detailed overview, make sure you watch our talk from the conference.

If you want to learn more about Agility and Next.js, don’t forget to watch our Dev Workshop: Launching a JAMstack Website with NEXT.JS + Vercel Agility CMS Starter.