Python: how to handle categorial values in dataset to build models
Yes, your approach seems to be right. The only thing that I would like to point out is that while it is desirable to convert categorical features to dummies but if you don't have enough memory then you can even consider to factorize your categorical variables. You can read about it more here.
Also, just make sure that after converting to dummies, the number of features are reasonable compared to the number of training samples.