DEV Community: Gesho Hiri

Learning to Build (and Be Seen) Again: My DevRel Uni Cohort 7 Reflection

Gesho Hiri — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:45:12 +0000

When I joined DevRel Uni Cohort 7, I thought I was signing up to learn how to talk to developers. I came out understanding something bigger: how building, learning, and sharing are all being rewired at the same time — and why putting your work into the world matters more now than ever.

The thread running through every session

What struck me most was how deliberately the whole cohort was framed around one question: what does DevRel even mean in the age of AI? It wasn’t a side topic. It was the spine.

Bianca Buzea opened the cohort with exactly that — building, teaching, and learning when AI is changing all three. Her point stuck with me: the question isn’t if things change, but how fast you adapt. Nader Dabit followed with navigating a tech career in an industry that refuses to slow down, which reframed uncertainty as something to build with rather than wait out. Patrick Skinner showed what shipping at high velocity actually looks like when AI is part of the loop. Hassan El Mghari pushed the idea furthest with “From Developer Experience to Agent Experience” — the notion that agents are no longer just assisting developers, they’re participants in how software gets built. And Francesco Andreoli closed it out on how AI lowers the barrier to entry and changes how developer communities form.

Five sessions, one message: the ground is moving, and the people who thrive are the ones who learn in public and adapt out loud.

How my perspective changed

I used to think of DevRel as a downstream job — you build the product, then you go explain it. The cohort flipped that. DevRel is upstream now. The way you teach, document, and share is part of how the product gets adopted, and increasingly part of how it gets built. When agents can read your docs and act on them, your developer experience and your content quality become technical infrastructure, not marketing polish.

What challenged my thinking

The “Agent Experience” session genuinely unsettled me — in a good way. I’d been thinking about humans as my only audience. The idea that I should also be designing for AI agents that consume and act on what I build forced me to rethink how I structure everything, from docs to onboarding. It connected directly to my own project (more on that below).

How AI changed how I build and learn

This is where the cohort became practical. I built my project, Thinkblock, using AI tooling, and it compressed the distance between an idea and something real I could look at and react to. But the deeper lesson was about judgment: AI did the boilerplate, but I still had to supply the vision, the structure, and the decisions about who it’s for and why. AI made me faster — it didn’t make me unnecessary. If anything, it raised the value of knowing what you’re actually trying to build.

The honest gap I found in myself

Here’s the uncomfortable takeaway: I realized my biggest missing skill isn’t technical — it’s writing. Blogging, articles, clear public communication. The cohort made it obvious that in DevRel, the ability to explain your work clearly and consistently is not a “nice to have,” it’s the job. I can build. I now need to get genuinely good at writing about what I build. That’s the skill I’m taking forward most deliberately.

A personal note

There’s a reason this lesson is hard for me, and I’ll be honest about it. About eight months ago, I was hacked. It made me retreat — I went quiet online, wary of being visible, of putting myself out there again. This cohort is the thing that’s pulling me back. “Build in public” isn’t just a content strategy for me; it’s me deciding not to let one bad experience keep me invisible. I’m choosing to be active again, to share my work, and to stop letting fear of another hack decide how present I get to be. That feels like the real graduation.

Updates on what I built

My project is Thinkblock — an ecosystem bridge connecting African Web2 developers to Web3 through curated, sequenced learning, ecosystem programs, and a vetted job board. The cohort sharpened the whole premise: if agents are absorbing routine implementation work, then the developers who thrive are the ones who understand systems deeply and can move between paradigms. That “bridge skill” is exactly what Thinkblock teaches. It’s live and explorable now.

What I’m taking forward

Three things: adapt faster than the change, write as seriously as I build, and stay visible even when it’s scary. Cohort 7 didn’t just teach me DevRel — it gave me a reason to show up again.

Building Thinkblock: A Bridge Between African Developers and Web3

Gesho Hiri — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:52:32 +0000

What I’m building

Thinkblock is an ecosystem bridge connecting African Web2 developers to the world of Web3. It pulls together three things that today live scattered across the internet — curated learning, ecosystem programs, and real job opportunities — and sequences them into one path. Instead of a pile of Discord links and half-finished tutorials, a developer gets a runway: learn the fundamentals, build through structured onboarding tracks, then earn through a hand-vetted job board and ecosystem grants.

You can see it live right now at thinkblock.lovable.app.

Who it’s for

Thinkblock is built for African software developers who already have strong fundamentals — they’ve shipped APIs, built frontends, debugged production systems — but have no clear, structured way into Web3 careers. It’s also for the other side of that gap: the protocols, foundations, and DAOs that want to hire emerging-market talent but have no reliable channel to find them.

What problem it solves

There’s no shortage of skill or ambition among African developers. What’s missing is infrastructure — the bridges between that talent and the global Web3 ecosystem. Right now four gaps keep that bridge from existing: Web2 developers have no structured Web3 path, companies can’t reach the talent, learning resources are scattered and rarely localized, and opportunities like grants and bounties rarely reach developers on time. Thinkblock exists to close all four.

Why it matters

Web3 keeps talking about “the next billion users” and “decentralization,” but the people building it don’t yet reflect the world it claims to serve. Africa has one of the youngest, fastest-growing developer populations on the planet. If that talent is locked out simply because the on-ramps don’t exist, the entire ecosystem loses. Building those on-ramps isn’t charity — it’s how Web3 actually becomes global.

How to get started with it

Getting started is simple — there’s no signup wall to explore:

1.  Start with the Resources section and pick your level (Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced). The pathways move from Web2 → Web3 fundamentals into Solidity, DeFi, infrastructure, and ZK.
2.  Browse the Job board to see live roles from protocols and foundations open to African developers.
3.  Join the community to learn alongside other builders, attend AMAs, and get mentorship.
4.  If you’re a company, post a role or partner to sponsor developer programs.

What I’ve learned so far

The biggest lesson has been that the hardest part of an ecosystem product isn’t the technology — it’s the sequencing. Developers don’t fail to break into Web3 because the material is too hard; they fail because it’s disorganized and not built around what they already know. Framing every resource as a translation from existing Web2 skills changed how I thought about the whole platform. I also learned how much trust matters: a job board or resource hub is only valuable if everything on it is genuinely vetted, not just aggregated.

How AI influenced my workflow

AI shaped this project at almost every stage. I used Lovable to go from concept to a polished, working site far faster than I could have hand-coding every component — which let me spend my time on the structure and messaging rather than boilerplate. I also leaned on AI to pressure-test the positioning: clarifying who the audience is, sharpening the “Web2 → Web3 bridge” framing, and drafting and refining content like this very article. The effect was less about writing code for me and more about compressing the loop between an idea and something real I could look at and react to.

Where you can see it today

Thinkblock is live and explorable right now at thinkblock.lovable.app. It’s an early build, but the core vision is already visible: one platform, four moves from Web2 to Web3 — Learn, Build, Earn, Grow.