ARC at Africa Gathering, Nairobi

By Ernesto Gluecksmann, Infamia, January 6, 2010

“What is your big dream?” That’s how I started out my workshop at the Africa Gathering conference in Nairobi, Kenya back in December. “What do you want most to accomplish right now, no matter how crazy or unattainable it seems?” 

Africa Gathering, a conference for social entrepreneurs and innovators who are passionate about technology and development in Africa, was a perfect venue for introducing my concepts for what makes a great start-up business. I traveled to Kenya along with the National Peace Corps Association’s Africa Rural Connect (ARC) Project Manager, Molly Mattessich, to meet people like us who were interested in and impacted by the ARC website and wanted to make a difference in rural communities in Africa.

Similar to the collaboration platform that I helped to develop for the National Peace Corps Association’s Africa Rural Connect community, I wanted to get the Africa Gathering workshop participants thinking about networking with other people and offering any advice that they could to assist someone else with their project or business idea.  We did what I like to call “low-tech social networking,” and shared ideas on notes that we posted on the wall in the conference room so that everyone could see them.

Also at the Africa Gathering conference, Molly presented the story of the Africa Rural Connect community and told how we were able to build the site with a tight budget and even tighter deadline and still achieve our goals for getting lots of people from around the world to participate and helping them to collaborate, meet each other, and generate creative and practical project plans. 

It was great to meet so many people interested in ideas for Africa, and see the presentations that others gave, like Kenyans for Change, Access Kenya, Essential Africa, Movirtu and Kenya Imagine. Of course, I enjoyed meeting those folks with whom I’d only interacted with on Twitter prior to the conference. I’m glad that I was able to make connections with people in Nairobi because my company is passionate about helping out great startups that can make a difference in people’s lives.

Africa Gathering is coming to my hometown, Washington, DC, in April 2010, and I’m looking forward to getting people together again to discuss innovative tech ideas for Africa.

Ernesto Gluecksmann, an ARC web developer from Infamia, presented at Africa Gathering, Nairobi with Molly Mattessich, ARC Project Manager, on December 21, 2009.