Yesterday evening we had a session of Dar Blogging Circle at the Innovation Space. The participation was not quite big in number but it was fruitful. It was my first time to attend since i became a new blogger in town and wanted to know what the session was all about.
There is usually no theme for the event so everyone just writes on paper what needs to be discussed. The list on the discussion was about how to monetize, frequency of posting, banner advertising, and the list of bloggers in Tanzania.One of the participants just came to Tanzania and wanted to know the Tanzanian bloggers and get to know how it works around here.
The members want to host bloggers event where any blogger can present anything within 10 minutes in August. If you are up for it just holla at Facebook Page.
Last week on Thursday 7th June, 2011 we had an amazing session of Girls Night Out at the Innovation Space.The event was the continuation of the previous event where the ladies came up with different ideas that they would like to have an app for it.
The session had a mixture of ladies who are students, working in banks, journalists, web designers, HR, communication officers, bloggers, entrepreneurs and more.
We had a visitor from South Africa, Rene Parker who works for Rlabs and she has passion for technology and love people. In Rene’s organization they work with community members with the aim of changing their lives with technology. She introduced to us different training programs they have for mothers and also the women who have been abused. The training was about introducing them to the internet world where they can share their stories using text, videos or pictures. Also how to use mobile phones since there are women who have phones and not aware of how to send messages and other features in a mobile.
After the introduction, she took us through different tools which can be used for creating apps without knowing how to code. These are platforms which are already created and can be used to create apps for Android, iPhones, Nokia, and Blackberry.Here are the links to the tools:
The ladies were organized in groups and each group had to choose the tool and create the app they wanted. You will be amazed with the app ideas that were bought by each group. Surprisingly when each group presented on how they found the tools they used, they all used the same tool but each experienced different challenges.
The ladies were so excited to be introduced to the tools and they wanted more get together like these and decided will be discussing the way forward on our Facebook page.
It’s soon time for another Girls’ Night Out! Next Thursday June 7th at 18.00-20.00 we are meeting again with the Apps 4 Women By Women theme. In this second session we are going to take the app ideas forward from our last session and René will also introduce a mobile content and app production platform that we can use to create apps without programming experience!
Same place as before, Innovation Space at COSTECH. Please register in Eventbrite and be on time at 6pm sharp so we can start in time.
Previous event of Girls’ Night Out was fun, interesting, interactive and knowledge gaining session and all the girls/women agree to have these sessions every month.
This month on Wednesday11th April, 2011 from 6:00-8:00PM we have come up with another Theme: Apps 4 Women by Women to have all the girls in one room once again.
Why should men have all the fun?! Come and join us for brainstorming and Idea session and then the next month event will be on building simplified app where you get to work with developers and see you application come to life since the night will be <Code for Her>.
You don’t have to be a programmer/geek to attend, anyone can attend from mothers, designers, developers, students, product managers, girlfriends, marketers, sisters, business developers. Also you don’t need to have an idea yet that is why we have a brainstorming and idea session just come and join us and we help you find your idea.
Imagine you have this great idea or you have a company that does a certain activity example a development of a certain application that if a telecom company buys it u win big. For instance you run into Innovation Manager of any telecom company in an elevator and you want him to buy your product, what do you do? You have only like 2 minutes to present him about your idea in an elevator, that is what is know an Elevator Pitch. Selling your idea to potential clients in few minutes.
On February 16th we held a Pitch Camp training at the Innovation Space where we had about 7 individuals trained on different tricks on how to do a perfect Elevator Pitch. An Elevator Pitch was defined as an overview of product, idea, service, project, person, or other Solution to a problem and is designed to just get a conversation start and designed to quickly catch the attention of the audience, persuade them to pay attention to what you have to say, and convince them that they want to hear more. An elevator pitch does this by answering basic – but all too often overlooked – questions like
What is it?
Who needs it?
Why do they need it?
Who are U to see the problem and to build the solution?
With these above knowledge on how to pitch and other added information it got the individuals to start preparing their 15 sec pitch with the ideas that they had. Each individual pitched his/her the idea to the group and different feedback were provided after every pitch. Later preparations for 2 minutes pitch were prepared and practiced to be presented to the judge panel and videos were shot and uploaded on YouTube.
The judging panel consisted of Araf Sykes, director and owner of Internet Solutions (2010) and Kristiina Lähde of TANZICT. At the end of the session winner of the best pitch, Anthony Nyagilo, was awarded a book called Rework plus a certificate of training. The rest of the participants were given certificate of training.
Pitch is the process of selling your idea to potential clients of your product and service. During the Pivot East Event the finalists of the Mobile App Competition will be required to pitch their ideas to a panel in Nairobi. So if you interested on how to learn regarding Pitch just add your comments below.
The training was conducted by TANZICT in collaboration with Pamoja Initiatives and we will be happy to organize another pitch training session if there are new people interested!
Finally, here is the winning pitch of the Pitch Camp by Anthony Nyagilo – Congratulations for good work Anthony!
Here are also links to all the other pitches and the photos from the event:
