Our First Bootcamp: How the Sep 2025 Data Science & Machine Learning Cohort Started It All
ProgramsOct 26, 2025 · 6 min read · La cusboonaysiiyay Aug 10, 2026
Our First Bootcamp: How the Sep 2025 Data Science & Machine Learning Cohort Started It All
In September 2025 we ran our first Data Science & Machine Learning Bootcamp — a one-month, hands-on program built to take a complete beginner through the full ML workflow to a deployed project. Here's what we taught, why we built it, and what it set in motion.
In September 2025 we ran our first Data Science & Machine Learning Bootcamp — a one-month, hands-on program built around a simple idea: take a complete beginner through the entire ML workflow, from raw data to a deployed model, in real time. It was our first cohort, hosted alongside Sharafdin Yusuf and sponsored by Dugsiiye, and it became the template every bootcamp we've run since has built on.
Why We Started
We'd spent time building datasets, tokenizers, and models for Somali NLP, and kept running into the same limiting factor: there weren't enough Somali engineers who felt confident in data science and machine learning to contribute to that work. Tutorials and courses existed, but almost none of them were built with Somali learners — or Somali context — in mind. So we built one.
The goal was deliberately narrow: not a semester-long computer science curriculum, but a focused, one-month sprint that gets someone from zero to a working, deployed project.
The One-Month Format
Every lesson maps to one stage of the machine learning workflow: collect data, preprocess it, split it into train and test sets, choose a model, train it, evaluate it, and deploy it. Rather than teaching those steps as abstract theory, each stage got its own lesson, its own assignment, and — for the harder stages, like regression, classification, and clustering — a dedicated "in action" walkthrough where we worked through the code live.
All lessons were recorded and published as unlisted videos on the Goobo Labs YouTube channel, so the material could be followed on a participant's own schedule, then paired with an assignment due before the next session.
What the Curriculum Covers
An introduction to machine learning and how the end-to-end workflow fits together
Data foundations: cleaning, exploring, and preparing a dataset before any model touches it
Sii daynta xogta, kooxo bootcamp cusub, waraaqo cilmi-baaris, iyo cusboonaysiinta shaybaarka — toos ugu socda sanduuqaaga. Spam ma jiro, waad ka bixi kartaa markasta.
A dedicated "Data Processing in Action" session, run live over Zoom
Regression, taught in both theory and a hands-on Jupyter Notebook walkthrough
Classification, again paired with an in-action coding session
Clustering, covering unsupervised approaches to grouping data
Deployment, closing the loop from trained model to something a user can actually access
A final project pulling every stage of the workflow into one submission
We also added two short resource videos — installing Anaconda and setting up Jupyter Notebook — after realizing that environment setup was, for a real share of participants, the first real obstacle standing between them and lesson one.
Learning by Shipping, Not Just Watching
The structure was intentional: watch a lesson, do the assignment, then move on. By the time participants reached the final project, they weren't seeing the ML workflow for the first time — they'd already collected, cleaned, modeled, and evaluated data across several earlier assignments. The final project just asked them to do it once more, on their own, start to finish.
Open From Day One
Every lesson, assignment, and the final project brief live in the public sep-ds-ml-bootcamp-2025 repository on GitHub, released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. That was a deliberate choice: the bootcamp doesn't disappear once the cohort ends. Anyone can clone the repo, follow the videos in order, and work through the same material independently.
The bootcamp was fully sponsored by Dugsiiye, which meant every seat was free for participants — the only cost was the time and effort to show up and do the work.
What This Set in Motion
This cohort was our first, and it taught us as much as it taught the participants. We learned which lessons needed a live walkthrough and which worked fine as a recorded video, where environment setup broke people's momentum, and where the pacing needed to change. Every one of those lessons shows up in the cohorts that followed: a second Data Science & Machine Learning cohort, a dedicated Python foundations bootcamp for people who needed programming fluency first, a third and more expansive DS/ML cohort, and eventually a Git & GitHub bootcamp for the collaboration skills the projects themselves depend on.
We're covering each of those in their own posts. This one is where the series starts.
Our Biggest Cohort Yet: Inside the June 2026 Data Science & Machine Learning Bootcamp
In June 2026 we ran our third Data Science & Machine Learning Bootcamp, and it's the biggest curriculum we've built for the program — eight core lessons on the full ML workflow, plus seven bonus sessions covering deep learning, generative AI, ethics, and career paths.
