Community Day at kLab

On Wednesday, August 12, we spent the afternoon at kLab to impart our business, technical, and design knowledge. The 'k' in kLab stands for "knowledge." kLab provides an open space for IT entrepreneurs to collaborate and innovate in Kigali, Rwanda. It is an initiative of the ICT Chamber, RDB, and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

"As Rwanda strives towards establishing a knowledge based economy and achieving its Vision 2020 goals, fostering innovative ICT based SMEs becomes critically important. kLab (knowledge Lab) is a unique open technology hub in Kigali where students, fresh graduates, entrepreneurs and innovators come to work on their ideas/projects to turn them into viable business models. The growing kLab community is also made of experienced mentors who provide both technical and business assistance to needy members. At kLab we also host events, workshops, bootcamp, hackathons and networking sessions to promote collaboration/partnerships, investment and financing.

kLab's mission is to promote, facilitate and support the development of innovative ICT solutions by nurturing a vivid community of entrepreneurs and mentors."

A week earlier, Rod and I had volunteered to meet with Claudette, the General Manager of kLab, and Happy from the ICT Chamber. Claudette shared with us the raison-d'être of kLab and the makeup of its tenants, as they were called. The 203 tenants benefit from free tenancy at kLab for one year. They consist mostly of entrepreneurs and students, in the 18-35 age range, most being in their 20s. (Sidebar: we had learned at some point that "youth" in Rwanda, as in Ministry of Youth and ICT, meant anyone aged 35 and under :D) Some are doing mobile apps, some web apps, some PBX (phone systems). Their projects are mostly in the areas of agriculture, transportation, health, and tourism. There are not many ladies; "they tend to shy away" (from ICT or from such knowledge hub?).

According to Claudette, the key areas of interest to the tenants included technical skills, tips on business skills, tips on new technology trends, and soft skills such as communication. Upon some brainstorming, some ideas were Marketing, Commercializing their ideas, Design Thinking (they had a session with the Sydney Center for Innovation two weeks earlier), Project Management. We decided that there'd be 3 groups of 20 participants. The sessions should be very hands-on and interactive. During past events, the audience have tended to not talk much during the sessions, but they'd go to the presenters afterward with lots of questions, and they would later write to them and keep in touch.

"If it's something that's going to make them more money, they'd be interested."

Upon meeting with our larger team, we settled on Technology, Communications and Marketing, and Design Thinking. We each selected which group we wanted to belong to. It worked out to be 3 groups that were different from our project sub teams. I was in the Design team of course. Having decided to take a break from his usual technical hat, Kiran was with me. He had some exposure during our Design Thinking workshop for the Smart Rwanda Dashboard. This gave us the chance to work with Erica and Rod. Erica had recently been doing Design Thinking exercises in her role as a Consultant in Global Business Services (GBS - IBM's consulting arm), so this was a natural fit for her too. Rod was open to anything, and I think he looked forward to working with me ;)

We all sported our IBM Rebus t-shirts for the occasion. I brought the t-shirts from California specifically for such events. Thanks for the t-shirts, Janet! ;) Everyone loved them. Claudette wished for one too. Unfortunately, I had already distributed the 16 t-shirts among the team, our interns, and DOT folks. We did bring to the event lots of IBM goodies that Jamie from Corporate had shipped to Erica, Doug, and me in the US. Thanks, Jamie! There were shopping bags, drawstring bags, flashlights, luggage tags, sticky pads, and more. We gave them to those who participated actively in the sessions. Folks came up to us afterward asking for more!

Claudette opened the afternoon with everyone together in the large room. After an introduction by Violette, the 12 of us and our interns, Paul and Alain, each introduced ourselves. Naoyuki elicited roars and applause around the room with his delightful intro in Kinyarwanda :D For the first few seconds, I couldn't really tell whether he was speaking Japanese or Kinyarwanda. The intonations tend to sound similar to me, as do some of the local names (think of the President's last name). Naoyuki had learned from his Kinyarwanda mentor, Paul, and had a cheat sheet on his hand, but he never once peeked at it. We were all very impressed!

Naoyuki blowing away the audience with his Kinyarwanda intro :D

For our Design Thinking session, we all sat in a circle to keep things very casual. We went around the circle to introduce ourselves. Most of the participants in our session were working on a project that could benefit from Design Thinking. Many were students and had school projects in the area of education. After a short video about IBM, Erica introduced our topic of interest. I talked about the IBM Design Thinking methodology. Then, we jumped into the hands-on portion. Kiran kicked off with an empathy map for Paul, a kLab tenant. The scenario was around collaboration, which was suggested by Claudette. Alain followed with pain points, then Rod with Ideation. Lots of ideas were generated - some expected, some surprising. After the session, Claudette came to read the post-its and took notes for consideration - how to make kLab more conducive to collaboration.

We gathered that the other 2 sessions went equally well. There was genuine interest in each of the sessions. Afterward, we mingled with the participants. Some played foosball. Some engaged in deep discussions. One participant even took the opportunity to have an expert (aka Rodrigo) to debug his code! There were snacks and drinks, which the 12 of us had funded. The participants were thankful for the afternoon we spent with them, as they expressed on post-its at the end.