WHAT ARE PERSONAS?

Personas are fictional, generalized characters that encompass the various needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns among your real and potential customers. Personas should be informed by research, ideally qualitative and quantitative. Personas should be used as a tool to summarize and communicate research results. Building personas can help improve the way you solve problems and speak to your customers. Understanding your customer and the pain you’re solving will allow you to create a better user journey and product for them.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF PERSONAS?

The purpose of personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and some quantitative studies.

Your personas are only as good as the research behind them.

WHAT DO PERSONAS DO?

• Represents a major user group for your product/service
• Expresses and focuses on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups
• Helps put you in the mind of the customer you want to attract
• Gives a clear picture of the user’s expectations and how they’re likely to use the product/service
• Clearly articulates your customer’s challenges and pain points
• Aids in uncovering universal features and functionality
• Describes real people with backgrounds, goals, and values

BENEFITS OF PERSONAS

• They help add a real-world layer to conversations and decision making
• They offer a quick and inexpensive way to prioritize feature decisions
• They help stakeholders and leadership evaluate feature ideas
• They focus information architecture and interaction design
• Visual designers can focus their initial design rationale on the personas
• Based on user behavior, the system development/engineers team can begin to approach the challenge
• Copywriters can also tailor their content to the appropriate audience
• They can help uncover gaps and misalignments between a solution and user needs
• They can synchronize your team’s efforts and get everyone on the same page

BEST PRACTICES

It is good to focus on only the main audiences you are targeting.
The aim of personas is to highlight major needs and give enough insight for action.
3-4 key personas are enough per project.

HOW

1. CONDUCT USER RESEARCH

This should help you answer the following questions as a bare minimum:

• Who are your users?
• Why would they use the system?
• How are they solving that problem now?
• What behavior, assumptions, and expectations would influence their view of the product/service?

2. ANALYZE THE RESEARCH

Identify themes and characteristic that are specific to them, relevant, and universal to the system.

3. BRAINSTORM

Organize elements into persona groups that represent your target users.

4. REFINE

See if any of the rough personas can merge. Organize the personas into primary and secondary personas.  Aim to have 3-4 personas and their identified characteristics.

5. MAKE THEM REALISTIC

Describe background, expectations, and motivations. Avoid making it too personal. Include only relevant information.

ELEMENTS OF A PERSONA

A persona should generally have the following information:

• Persona group (e.g. system engineer)
• Name (fictional)
• Demographic info (age, education, family status)
• Job title
• Main responsibilities for the job
• Their social environment
• Their physical environment
• Their technological environment
• A quote that sums up what matters most to this persona
• Casual photo representative of this persona group

PERSONA TYPES

Narrative

This is suitable for stakeholders who are not particularly interested in the technical details of the user needs.

Tabular

This is particularly useful for designers who want an easy way to compare user needs with their design work.

Hustler Quick and dirty

This is normally when there isn’t enough research to create a persona.

RESOURCES

Some persona resources to check out include:

1. 21 Best User Persona Template To Achieve Business Goals
2. 7 Free Online Persona Templates
3. Identify Your Ideal Marketing Personas

There are many ways to approach personas. It will normally depend on the context. Personas are living documents and should be reviewed occasionally to respond to any changes in the organization and its target population. With continuous engagement, the value proposition should be refined based on experience and engagement with users.

I recently had an opportunity to represent BRCK in the largest design conference in the world, Design Indaba. At the conference, I had a chance to represent BRCK’s work, but perhaps more importantly, what the work represents in relation to a wider African perspective.

Africa has for the longest time endured a perspective and narratives that belie the potential, ingenuity, and drive within its borders. The structures of media messaging that still portray Africa in a certain light don’t help.

From a practical perspective, people living in Africa have for the longest time seen western multinational companies that control global resources concern themselves with the huge challenges that face the world, specifically Africa.

Internet connectivity is a case in point. Over 3 billion people in the world don’t have adequate connectivity to one of the most important socio-economic resources, over 800 million of those are in Africa. In Kenya, over 35 million of the 45 million people don’t have adequate access to the internet. A majority lack connectivity because they live in places with poor on no internet infrastructure. Many of those who do simply cannot afford it. Studies show the typical low-income Kenyan can only spend an average of 20Kshs on internet bundles (approximately 20USD cents).

If you think of the challenge of connecting the next 3 billion people to the internet, I wager the first companies that come to mind are the large ones like Google and Facebook. We have an invisible ceiling of what scale Africans and African companies can think of solutions for Africa.

Why cant African companies think of these lion-sized challenges for Africa?

Due to lack of resources and other reasons, we relegate ourselves to scratch the surface on issues affecting Africa and Africans, while we surrender the solutions for lion-sized challenges to the west.

BRCK and BRCK products challenge this ceiling and with good reason. With SupaBRCK and Moja, we have been working tirelessly to establish an infrastructure that does not rely on traditional infrastructure to connect people to the internet. Imagine getting into a matatu and getting free internet connectivity. BRCK is taking ownership of the connectivity challenge and thinking big. We are connecting the unconnected 3 billion, one user at a time.

The same to education. The Kio Kit stands on the shoulders of the predecessors who have come to Africa to try and solve the challenge of providing digital solutions for education in African classrooms. They include one laptop per child from MIT media lab and others. We have taken learnings from challenges these deployments have and built a solution that relies on deep contextual research and design to develop a solution that is pushing digital education even further.

Presenting real examples of how BRCK is taking on lion-sized challenges for Africa resonated with the well-informed crowd at Design Indaba, and was in line with like minded speakers who embrace a proactive, afrofuturist perspective that is pushing Africa forward in various fields of media, the arts among others.

It also is quite something that the largest design conference is in Africa. Way to go Design Indaba, way to go Africa.

TED Global was held in Arusha Tanzania recently. BRCK had the privilege of running two UX workshops there, which was an exciting opportunity to interact with some of the greatest minds in the world. This is arguably the most inspiring group of thinkers and doers that gather in one place for the sole purpose of sharing, inspiring, and learning from each other.

We were no different. We went in ready share, learn, and be inspired by these great minds.

As a user experience designer, I relished the opportunity to engage these minds in trying to figure out one of the quintessential challenges of our time: youth unemployment.

How can we use access to the internet to help young people find jobs in a context of a poor/expensive connectivity infrastructure and limited formal exposure?

HERE ARE SOME SOBERING NUMBERS

There are over 3 billion people in the world who cannot afford adequate access to the internet. 800 million of these people are in Africa. If you zoom in closer to home, Kenya has a population of approximately 45 million people. Of these, only 10 million can afford the internet. That leaves 35 million people without adequate access to the internet! This excludes them from massive opportunities across the spectrum of what we nonchalantly enjoy with our suburban connectivity.

BRCK’s mission is to connect African people to the internet. We do this by providing free access to the internet for the masses via our connectivity infrastructure. This is powered by our ruggedized micro server network of SupaBRCKs. For more on this game-changing device, check out brck.com.

HOW DO PEOPLE ACCESS AND ENJOY BRCK CONNECTIVITY?

The model is simple. When a user is within range of a BRCK WiFi signal, they log onto the network and they land onto a captive Moja portal. This is populated with captivating content that includes music, movies, books, and more. They are also able to go online and browse freely or jump onto their social media networks. The only requirement is that they watch a 5-15 second advertisement every once in a while. This is a pretty good deal, especially considering most will not spend more than 20 Kshs (about 2 USD cents) per day on the internet. This service is called Moja, Swahili for ‘one’.

The response to Moja from users has been overwhelmingly positive. We typically have users between the age of 18-24 as our core audience. One of the places we installed a Moja is a youth hangout and betting lounge where they bet on football matches. The owner occasionally has to turn off the service to the over 70 strong audience crammed into the space so that they can get off and bet first.

WHY THE EMPLOYMENT CHALLENGE?

One of our tenets as a company is centering our users and being as responsive as we can to their needs. While our users enjoy all the trappings of BRCK connectivity, our user experience research consistently yields one overlying content request: jobs. Young people want access to jobs.

The interesting thing is that we have different services online that seek to link job seekers and vacancies. A case in point is during the workshop, the founder of Duma Works was there decrying lack of candidates for 300 jobs they are trying to recruit for. So what is the disconnect? This must be easy! Right?  Not so fast.

The challenge placed before these great minds was to help us think through how we can leverage the power of the internet that BRCK is making available to these young guys to help them find jobs. It was a healthy cross section of people from different contexts, expertise, and worldviews.

A lot of good ideas came through, some more novel than others, from aggregating job platforms to creating a tinder experience for jobs. We are all back in Nairobi now, ready to get our hands dirty away from the spotlight and really give these ideas a true human centered go. Who knows? Maybe we’ll iterate into an idea worth spreading while we give unemployment a permanent black eye.

The African adage it takes a village is poignant. The idea of community and doing things together places African communities in a unique position for effective human centered participatory design. It also places a special emphasis on context. Our various contextual deep dives into different communities have illuminated just how diverse the context in Africa are, and how these can influence the effectiveness of design.

The theory of change (in a nutshell) maps expected outcomes and the elements that need to be in place for these outcomes to be realized. Recently, we did a user experience deep dive in Kiltamani primary school, a school on the edge of the grid in Samburu county. We donated a Kio Kit to this school some months ago. Other that provide updates on new features we have since developed as a result of user experience research, we also wanted to reconnect with the community within which the Kio Kit was being used.

For this 5-night visit, I cast my user experience net wider than the Kio Kit classroom situation. We needed to understand what makes the ecosystem work or fail. What the perspective and attitudes of the community were towards education, what the socio-economic factors were at play and the key factors towards improving the education level of these students. I also was keen to learn how design and the Kio Kit fits into this equation.

To realize this, the details were important. From where we pitched our tents, how we interacted with community members, teachers and students.

The change agents that complement the technology we deploy included the following;

1. The community leadership
2. The community (parents, neighbors)
3. Teachers
4. Students

The Pastoralist Context

The Samburu people are nomadic; this means they move from place to place looking for pasture for their animals. The children are the main labor force when it comes to taking care of their livestock, primarily goats. This means for a boy or a girl to go to school, their parent has to really believe in education, because they have to take over and walk for kilometers into the mountainous terrain replacing their children in taking care of the animals.

It is not easy work, taking livestock far into the dry area seeking pasture. A case in point is when elders were suddenly called for an emergency meeting because Hyena had killed 30 goats. One day a child was fighting for their lives after being attacked by and elephant. It is a tough grind, especially in the desert landscape where the school exists. Going to school is a serious commitment both on the parent and the students, often walking 20-30 Kilometers just to get to school.

The school has been performing very poorly in national examinations, with hardly any students from the school qualifying for secondary education. We set up a meeting between the community leadership and teachers to discuss school performance and how to improve the education of their children.

Community Leadership

There is a board of management for the school (formally school committee), that comprised elders from the community, primarily parents with their sons and daughters going to this school. Interestingly, for a patriarchal community, the leadership was mostly comprised of women, especially because they had their children in the school.

The community leadership’s role is to make sure the school is well run, the teachers are doing their work and any support that the school needs from the community is provided. The leadership is essentially the link between the community and the school.

The biggest challenge for the leadership is the fact that they are mostly illiterate. Therefore, it is hard for them to ascertain information coming from the school. Their biggest complaint is that the teachers often would say they children were doing well, only to realize they were not when national exams are held and their children don’t qualify for secondary education. This has greatly undermined the confidence in the teaching staff, with the community feeling that they are sacrificing their children’s time away from the livestock only to be let down by the teachers.

The Teachers

The school has 8 classrooms and only 7 teachers, some of whom suffer from alcoholism. This means absenteeism from class by the teachers and sometimes ill prepared delivery of content to the students. This is exacerbated by the fact that one class is always without a teacher since there is only 7 of them.

Teachers also feel demotivated by severe absenteeism by students. When it is dry, the family moves further from the school to find pasture, therefore an even longer walk to school or absenteeism to find pasture.

The Samburu also marry their girls off very young. There was only one girl in standard seven, with none in standard 8. This is a huge source of frustration for the teachers because sometimes their best students are girls.

Students who perform well are also often transferred to other schools for upper primary studies, meaning they are left with few well preforming students.

The school is also far away from social interaction, meaning the teachers are confined to a non existent social environment for months on end.

Teacher training, materials and compensation is also an issue, meaning they are often ill equipped and poorly prepared to deliver quality education to the students.

The Community

Parents are frustrated by the lack of good results from the school. Their lack of literacy and education means they also have limited commitment to education vis-à-vis their socio cultural practices of marrying their girls young. Some parents however demonstrate a real passion for education for their children, some even taking adult classes themselves to be able to cope.

Without education, we are blind. We are only seeing out of one eye, we want our children to go to school in order to lead us out of poverty and ignorance.

Resolution

The community leadership passionately appealed for the teachers to work harder and produce results that made the future of their children brighter and the community proud of the school.

The teachers asked for more support in ensuring that students are available for class consistently including girls in upper primary. There was a memorandum of understanding signed between each stakeholder with specific commitments towards the success of the school. This was an incredible contextual journey that gave us amazing insights into how the Kio Kit and design can fit even better into this context. For example;

• Designing automated attendance registers that send an SMS to the community leadership and the specific parent when a child is absent means the community is aware and is able to respond in a timely manner. This can be built into the Kio Kit.
• In a context where there is shortage of teachers, more self-learning content for students in the class where there is not teacher would be helpful instead of leaving students completely on their own.
• Materials to support the continuous education of teachers in their skill and practice in order to keep them motivated and progress in their own careers can help counteract the feeling of stagnation and perpetual routine methods.

Many have the mindset that illiterate communities would care less if their children performed poorly because the value of education is nascent. The contrary proved to be true.

I sacrifice the labour my child provides for him to go to school. I am 50 and have to go up the mountains in the heat to take care of our goats so that he gets an education. I have no other investments but my son. All my hope is in him. That he may do well and take us out of this extreme poverty we endure. With him, all my hope lies
Samburu parent.

The stakes are in fact higher, and confirm what I have always said and used as my guiding ethos.

Africa cannot afford un-contextualized design; the stakes are simply too high.
Mark Kamau

As we design for African context, I am glad a work with a company that understands this and is willing to invest in this kind of deep dive to better understand and design with people in their contexts.

Wajir county has a population of 661,941 and an area of 55,840.6 km². Wajir County has only one local authority: Wajir county council. Somali people who are Muslim in culture and faith predominantly occupy it.

The purpose of coming here was to deliver a Kio Kit, our digital literacy kit to Wajir library in Wajir town. It is a Kenya National Library Service (KNLS) knls.ac.ke funded by Book Aid International. It is a community library serving over 20 schools and an immediate population of about 90,000. It is a vital source of knowledge, especially for school children who need revision time after school and on weekends.

The experience was definitely surreal from the beginning. We flew from Nairobi at 7:30 a.m in a small plane and arrived in Wajir an hour and a half later to a totally different world culturally. At the airport, we taxied in next to a fighter jet and a military land rover on one side; not too far ahead was 2 UN relief and medevac helicopters. Clearly an environment seemingly tense in the wake of terror attacks by Al shabaab given recent intelligence of possible attacks here. After a self-service language sorting experience, we grabbed the Kio Kit and were off in the back of a military style land cruiser pickup packed with more of us than it should carry with luggage space an afterthought. It clearly was normal here given how much ease the locals seemed to accept the arrangement. They are the only vehicles allowed into the airport. They ferry you out of the airport where your host or a taxi takes you into Wajir town.

When we arrived, we were received by Mariam, a nice lady in full Muslim attire in 36 degree Celsius heat. She shook my colleague Nivi’s, hand, but declined to shake the outstretched hand of my colleague Reg and I, (a religious and cultural no-no, we learnt). We clearly had come to a different cultural context, another extreme in our efforts to spread digital literacy across Africa. Every time we get to our new location, especially one far away from Nairobi, I think of the BRCK education vision and the fact that we are walking the talk.

‘‘Our vision is to enable millions of children in schools across emerging markets to access digital educational tools for better learning’’.

KNLS

The Kenya national library service sets up libraries countrywide. It is a noble unit of the government given the importance of access to knowledge for all. Book aid international complements these efforts by providing additional support to the libraries, this can be in form of books and in this case, the Kio Kit: the digital literacy kit from BRCK.

Digital literacy

I am old school. I like the smell, tactile feel of a physical book. But my sentiments are subjective. There are some generational interactional elements we cannot ignore when dealing with a multifaceted clientele, especially the youth: The influence of technology, aspirations, perspectives, and attention spans- the list is long. Even as deep as Wajir, the youth readily embrace technology and those who haven’t are likely to be curious about it. The question becomes;

1. What does this mean for educational experiences we provide?
2. What does this mean culturally and the economics of providing education in the 21^st century Africa?
3. What does this mean for how we are shaping the current generation to cope with the future as society evolves?

There are some basic arguments for inclusion of digital literacy right off the bat worth considering;

It makes sense

The amount of knowledge you can store in a tablet is simply amazing in relation to a traditional library. It is much easier to store, much easier to index and find and definitely, much easier to manage and reproduce this knowledge; It simply makes sense to complement traditional libraries with technology.

Informational bias

The informational landscape has changed immensely with the World Wide Web. The informational realities have evolved. The transfer of knowledge, sharing and enriching its intelligence has become almost instantaneous. While physical books are a valid custody for knowledge, they simply are no longer a sufficient custodians in today’s world. There is too much happening too fast for the medium.

Socio-cultural bias

One of the interesting observations in Wajir was the fact that being in a predominantly Muslim area, Christians have to study Islamic religious education since they don’t offer Christian education. This means you take IRE (Islamic Religious Education) classes. I couldn’t help but think it must be awkward to hold a bible here. The opposite is probably true in predominantly Christian areas. What then happens when a young girl needs to learn about ‘taboo’, sensitive or potentially embarrassing issues A physical book with a title giving away what you are reading can be a bit disconcerting. A tablet on the other hand presents an opportunity to easily deal with this subtle but important issue. You could easily read the Bible, Quran, puberty books without the same level of fear, especially in a public library where all the community go and come.

Intelligence empathy and experience bias

The traditional book library, noble an idea as it is, belies the fact that different people learn in different ways. The typical point of view is that if you are not good at sitting, cramming and chewing books you are academically challenged; an idiot. Imagine the effect this has on a young child. They grow feeling inept, self-doubtful and this severely limits their potential.

Studies show that with some; visual, auditory, or tactile/kinesthetic methods of learning significantly out-perform book and paper. This especially makes sense in African cultures where the practice of passing knowledge by fireside narratives, acting, dance and music still prevail. Imagine the limitation for students better suited for these methods when they are exposed to only the method of learning they are least equipped to deal with.

The Kio Kit provides an opportunity to combine the different ways of learning; visual, auditory, or tactile/kinesthetic. The kit becomes a crucial pathway for the many who can explore alternative ways of learning empathetic to peoples’ dispositions. Imagine the opportunities this creates for the education experience as a whole. This is a chance to truly revolutionize the education landscape in Africa, one school at a time.

A year ago, I coined a phrase that grounded my passion for human centered design and is the reason I wake up every morning. “Africa cannot afford un-contextualized design, the stakes are simply too high” never is this so true than in education.

One of the reasons I joined and love BRCK is because BRCK dares to go where others won’t. This week we’re in northern Kenya, a remote place with many challenges. Many don’t go to these extreme environments because of the geographical, social and economic constraints. However, we at BRCK hold a different point of view, that they matter and it makes both social and economic sense to design for the real Africa.

Mark Kamau taking quick notes as the teachers learn the Kio Kit

Tirrim Primary School is a good example. It is school in the desert, a long way up from Isiolo town, and has been the top primary school in testing in Marsabit County since 2008 sending their graduates to the most prestigious schools in the country. It is a charity school paid for by missionaries and has 620 pupils. Their dream, according to one of the teachers, is to become the “RVA (Erik’s former school) of the desert.” It is a lofty and worthy goal, especially considering people of Korr think on themselves as ‘Kenya B’ because of the sense of isolation and neglect of this desert folk feel from the rest of the country. Despite their limited access, these kids are expected to sit the same national exam and pitted against the same yardstick tablet wielding, smartphone trending students in Nairobi.

As a human centered designer with a passion for Africa, this is amazing territory. The Kio Kit sets out to answer a fundamental design question. ‘How can we convert any rural classroom into a digital classroom?’

In tackling this difficult challenge we made some assumption and learnt some lessons these are specific to this expedition.

1. CONTEXTUALIZED GUIDES

We set out to create guides for using the Kio Kit is English as it is the national language upon which all examinations are taken, but the role of local language in education, even when explaining technology is simply too effective to ignore. Today I observed a nuanced but interesting example. One teacher was trying to explain to a class of lower primary kids what the back button was on the tablet using conventional English and it took him a while to get them on board. Another said please click the “Khonjor” and all the students understood it immediately.

Some Rendille children on the Kio tablets

In the Rendille language Khonjor is a sickle, one the kids grow seeing their parents use for cutting plants. This shape allowed them to understand the reference as the blade points “back”. I also observed that even a few miles apart, the nuanced pronunciation of the same word meant the difference in understanding of things. While it is means more work, we have to contextualize the Kio Kit guides in localized videos.

2. COLLABORATIVE EXPERIENCES

With tablets, the idea is that students each get a tablet and are able to access content individually. In this construct, it is easy to diminish the importance of collaborative learning. The younger students are, the more they learn from observing and collaborating with each other. The content and games on the Kio Kit that we tested emphasized the need to have even more experiences in the Kio Kit that take advantage of this collaboration.

A teacher with the Kio tablet

2. AUTHORITY CHALLENGE

The typical construct of a normal Kenyan school is that the teacher has the authority, they dictate what happens in the classroom and assume leadership, responsibility and authority. The tablet presents a different paradigm because with the tablet in their hands, the students have more responsibility than listening and writing. They play a more active role in their own learning. Handling this shift is challenging to teachers and their usual classroom control skills don’t directly apply. We therefore need to invest more time on classroom management training with technology.

There are many more lessons we have learnt from technical centered challenges to human centered challenges that energize us as we ride back home to make the Kio Kit work even better. Most of all, interacting with people motivates us to want to do even better.

We had a long 17 hour day on the road yesterday. We did this to compensate for over 10 hours lost fixing the Land Rover in Johannesburg. We started at 4:30 in the morning and stopped at around 10p.m. But that has become normal.  Covering over 820km a day is something we have stopped noticing too much. Something else was noticeable getting into Zimbabwe from South Africa. There was a surreal binary switch from Africa-lite to the real Africa.

Right from the border, after the South African side, you drive into this huge frenzy of hundreds if not thousands of people, busses, trucks and people offering to fix the border process for you so you clear in a few hours and not take the whole day. I understood why Beitbridge border in Zimbabwe is considered one of the worst crossings in the entire continent. One experienced traveller told me it took him 3 days to get through once.

After 3 hours of Erik’s quick thinking and some local help, we were lucky to go through. Once inside Zimbabwe, there was a surreal feeling on former optimism and progress. A restaurant that was once nicely done, now a shell of its former glory. A mall with half the shops in business, roads that must have once been beautiful to drive, but slowly withering from the edges in, making driving and riding on them quite dangerous, especially coming against wide load trucks in blinding full lights in the pitch black wilderness. We were back to real Africa.

We tried to get a local SIM in a mall and this too was a surreal experience. We have done this in every country to test the BRCK. Once a full mall now with only a handful of shops.  This on the other hand had formed the perfect breeding ground for hustlers. Local fixers who could get you anything you had come to buy from the mall. They have SIM cards, airtime, you name it.

The cell connectivity is the worst we have found so far. Even with a multi directional antenna, we could only connect sparingly across the journey, which was not surprising since along the road down, there was nothing. Long stretches of amazing scenic natural beauty but little signs of civilization.

One thought I had as we drove from village to village was how could access to information affect the situation in Zimbabwe? What if these school kids, vendors, villagers had access to the internet? How would that affect their situation? Their country? Thats fascinating thought.

We spend the afternoon at BongoHive today interacting with the tech community in Zambia.

Who was there?

We had product based start ups, some service based start ups, education based programs, some designers and developers. It was cool to meet these young entrepreneurs thinking of hardware

DEMONSTRATING THE BRCK

First Reg Orton and Phil Walton from the BRCK spent some time demonstrating and talking to the community about the BRCK. They spend a quality 45 mins with the community speaking not only of the genesis of the BRCK and why it was awesome, but some of the challenges of building hardware in Africa; from lack of quality human resource to manufacturing and customs challenges. They also spoke of lessons learnt from expeditions and putting the BRCK though tough situations. I for instance learnt the dust proof and secured lighting on the be BRCK was as result of the Turkana expedition which had sand storms, rain and other challenges thrown at the first version BRCK.

HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN

I spent some time sharing some thoughts on Human Centered Designs and some examples of why this makes sense, especially in a resource-constrained environment. It was based on practical methods, pros and cons of each. It was particularly nice to have some of the startups come up to me later and say they have been inspired or learnt from the presentation and will be making efforts to talk to their users.

CREATING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS

Erik Hersman has been around the block. He did a really open Q&A with the startups around building a business, securing investment and growing a business. One of the most insightful things that came out of the discussion is that there are people willing to invest in startups, but there far too few startups that are investment ready, speak the right business language and have prepared their business side of their tech. Another insight for me was the fact that having a great idea and a great team is not enough. He emphasized the value of a good network, which is often not well taken care of as people spend time building products and services.

It was quite interesting to me to observe the quality of individuals in the room. While the community is still nascent, the right people seem to be in the space. Hungry, motivated, willing to learn and that is quite refreshing to see. I think BongoHive is heading for big things.

STARTUP WEEKEND

It was the first time I saw Erik Hersman and Juliana Rotich share wisdom with startups about founding companies, building great team among other inspiring stories. While a lot of the startups had come to hear about product, capital and such, most of the talk was insights about people. Erik described people as the most important asset you will have. They also spent time on culture; the culture you build and defend should be unique to you and embody what your collective attitude is. Finally, the courage to do hard things. Doing hard things mean you have less people to compete with and more interesting things to do.

A great  day of sharing and learning happened at BongoHive and I’m grateful to have been there.

One of the challenges while traveling across Africa is connectivity. The experience of getting connected is often quite slow and unpredictable, especially when you are transiting through countries with places to be before  dark. Yesterday was a case in point. 

We were trying to get an MTN Line in Zambia so that we could connect the BRCK and test it while on the road across Zambia. It took over an 2 hour to get a SIM, have it registered, activated and ready for use. With over 960KM to cover, it is simply time we couldn’t afford. A the MTN shop, just getting the SIM took over 40 mins,. This took away precious time and even after an hour, we had to drive away without registration, which meant we could use the SIM. The instruction was to dial 111 every 10-20 mins until we were registered. This took another hour before we were good to go. 

The second challenge was the data bundles. We are going to be in Zambia for 2 days. We needed a plan where we could be online, unlimited, for 2 days. This does not exist. We could either buy 1GB each time and do the process all over again when it ran out, or buy a month-long unlimited plan, which was quite expensive. We are having to load 1GB each time. The system doesn’t warn when about to run out, it just cuts off. Its up to you to figure out if you are too far in the bush and therefore with no service, or whether it is your bundles that have run out. The instruction to check are nowhere accessible at the moment. I am sure if I called I would get them, but I shouldn’t have to. There is need for companies to consider not just the ability to connect people, but the experience of doing so to. It is not enough to have branding and cool premises, it is actually the service experience that primarily counts.

Eventually we got it going and I think the BRCK does a remarkable job, especially with the omni-directional Antenna. We steadily got 90+ connectivity whenever there was a signal, even when the signal was pretty weak out in the bush.