This year Mozilla
Community of Kenya hosted the first Africa Mozilla Reps Meetup, the first of
its kind on 16th – 17th May 2015. The meetup brought
together about 30 Mozilla Reps from various Africa states. The meetup was held
at Pawa254, a workspace that offers workshops, trainings, forums and events in
Nairobi – Kenya.
Mozilla Reps from Africa together for a group photo
The 2 day meetup
was aimed at equipping the Reps with Mozilla’s vision for Africa and as well as
training them to how to organize and execute events with focus on creating
impact for the years ahead.
Additionally,
it also focused on helping establish a real connection between the Reps in
Africa; Reps shared their personal experiences and challenges encountered as
they mobilized communities in their respective countries.
Mozilla Community Uganda Team
There has
not been an opportunity where all Mozilla community Reps in Africa come
together And since this was
our first meetup, below are three things I liked most.
Working together on
common goals
During the
workshop, we all agreed to have some common goals and objectives to work on as
a region. This initiative would not only drive our communities towards success,
but would in-turn a great sense of direction for most of the communities.
The Event Impact Chain Model Session
This was a session on how to organize community events and
have impact led by William Quiviger. As opposed to the usual approach of
organizing events or activities where we start with inputs, activities, outputs,
outcomes and last Impact, this time round we reverse the order. And we had to
start with Impact.
This
got most of our brains working especially when we broke out into groups and were tasked to do a mockup event and identify
what the impact, inputs, outcomes, outputs were.
This was one of my best sessions because most of the times
when we get to organize events, we usually find ourselves getting caught up
into the nitty gritty of logistics that sometimes Impact is the last thing we
think about.
With this new insight where you have to focus all your
energies first on Impact and then work backwards, I believe is going help me
become a good events’ organizer. Not
only in community events but also in my personal life as well.
Networking and building of relationships
During the meetup, since we were all staying in the same
venue and working together most of the times, we got to network and build
relationships together. It was really nice and fun because of the diversity of
the people.
The stories, experiences, and challenges people
shared were really nice. We all learnt something from one another given the
various cultures and traditions we were all coming from.
Even after the meetup, we have continued to keep in touch with
each other. And I believe with some of these relationships created, they are going to
strengthen our communities in Africa.
I guess you’re wondering was it all work,work and work? No! We had fun too. You can always
bet that where there is Mozilla involved, there is always fun too. You
just have to be there in person to experience it.
One of the many highlights of my meetup is that not only is
Kenya endowed with great wild life, but we also had the privilege to tryout
some of the wild game meat at Fogo Gaugo, Nairobi’s authentic Brazilian
restaurant.
As the meetup came to an end on Sunday, it was nice
listening in to Brian King give a presentation about the future of Mozilla and the Firefox OS, Mozilla Mobile platform. With some of these mobile devices coming
to Africa, I believe they are going to strengthen Mozilla’s presence in Africa,
as the best browser continues to promote innovation, openness and opportunity
on the web.
Link to additional photos by Brian King. Mozilla Africa Reps Meetup Photos
