UGANDA: National Expert writing: A WSA National Contest Showcase

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Daniel Stern, WSA National Expert of Uganda, writing about the National Pre-Selection.

Though I can honestly say that our Uganda WSA Contest was quite a success, you might like to hear how close we came to it being a non-event.

We had posted the first announcements for our national contest in early February. At our MoMo Kampala meeting hosted by Google on 28th February, we passed out fliers and announced that our Uganda WSA Contest would be held at the Hive Colab on 18th March, only one week before the deadline. I knew we had a lot of work to do and it would be a close run thing to get the word out, get developers to respond, send in their product descriptions, and line up jurors and delegates. I was also helping to organize the Innovation Africa Digital Summit and would have to leave for Mombasa shortly after our national contest, and was also organizing a huge Mobile Monday event for the 28th. It was definitely going to be tight.

Managing a tight schedule

I was sending out reminder messages to prospective candidates, and announcing the Contest at several events, handing out flyers. But there had been almost no response. Not a good feeling. By the week before our scheduled contest we had had only one product description submitted. I hadn’t had the faith to invite jurors to what was beginning to look like a non-event. I was seriously looking straight into the face of defeat; there’s only so much one can do, and if it works it works.  I knew I would be speaking at the Summit in Mombasa on 24th; did I dare postpone our WSA event to the day of the deadline, catch a flight that would get me back in the nick of time? Bit of a crazy idea, really.

But that’s what I decided to do. I right away began posting revised announcements of the change in dates and deadline to our MoMo and Hive Colab websites, and circulating the news through other networks. I also requested from the WSA organizers that we be given a one-day extension so that we would have adequate time to assess the jurors’ reports and submit our nominations, which I am glad to say they readily agreed to do. And that’s when things started to hot up. Developers were writing to me asking if it was too late to submit their products and I was giving extensions left, right and center! We then sent out invitations to a good number of high calibre personalities inviting them to be jurors, just to be sure we’d have enough on the day to do the event justice. We got an amazing response.

We were also getting good responses to the event invitations we had set up on Eventbrite and I was gaining confidence that the event would go forward with a good prospect for success. I ended up managing most of the Uganda WSA Contest from the Leisure Lodge Hotel on the south coast of the Indian Ocean, where the Summit was held, over Internet and the odd phone call. By the time my wife and I arrived back in Uganda during the wee hours of Monday morning we had eleven products lined up for the contest to be held at the Hive at 3:00 in the afternoon. The wheels were in motion, and all we needed to do was go with the flow and be there on time.

Products come alive through Questions & Answers 

Here is the report I sent to the organizers: “Our Uganda WSA Contest Showcase that was held at the Hive Colab yesterday afternoon worked quite well, with seven developers presenting products (Presenters of four products failed to show, three of whom sent commiserations.) and fourteen jurors, each of whom are copied for transparency's sake and around fifty delegates in total.

Each product was presented in a five-minute elevator pitch and then I invited each presenter to come back to take questions from jurors and delegates. This worked really well, and I recommend it to other national experts. The elevator pitches are a quick introduction to the product that does not give much time to formulate ideas in the mind of those who have just been introduced to it for the first time, and is one-sided.

But the place really came alive during the Q&A session, with an average of about ten minutes per presentation, with some positive criticism from expert delegates, including jurors many of whom are prospective mentors, some possible investors. I invited mLab's Bernard to give a closing presentation and to announce the Pivot 25 event, with applications closing 15 April.”

Looking back now I think the experience taught me some lessons, of faith and pertinacity, and being ready to change course at the last moment when things don’t turn out as you expected. When you are on your lonesome the burden of not wanting to disappoint others is sometime difficult to bear.

I would like to thank the WSA team for their constant support, the Hive Colab team and the jurors and delegates, and most of all the developers who gave of themselves unselfishly to create a truly wonderful event.

Daniel Stern, WSA National Expert Uganda