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xMartin edited this page Feb 24, 2017 · 16 revisions

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Editing guidelines

  • Audience: = Other hackers, plus people from the tech / start-up industry who are interested in Africa - and people concerned with Africa who are interested in tech / hubs, etc. The movie will potentially be shown at re:publica as part of GIG. "Confusing" terminology is therefore ok.
  • Additional photos can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/groups/africahacktrip/
  • Music: tbd
  • Conclusions / general story to be told: It is not so much about us. Hence no footage of packing, airport etc. We went on this trip to find out who is working in the East African tech scene on what and how. What we found were young tech hubs / coworking spaces full of enthusiastic people. It was - and still is - a growing scene, back then with relatively little investment and/or development money (that has changed a lot in the last 2 years, IMHO), but with tech being high up on the political agenda of the countries we visited. The physical infrastructure was and is quite bad, so many people we interviewed talk about that: More investment in people and infrastructure is needed!
    We captured some of these investments that we saw and liked: women empowerment and tech education projects, as well as some cool products being developed (see below). What we also did was organize a 1-day-barcamp and a 1-day-hackathon in each of the 4 cities we went to, together with the comunity managers of the respective hubs. During the barcamps we learned a lot about technology use, developers, designers and their issues in East Africa; during the hackathons, we worked together with East African programmers and designers on their projects as well as on ones that we came up with. The AfricaHackTrip hackathons were quite unique, because most of the hackathons usually taking place in East Africa are competitions revolving around certain topics (e.g. water, transportation, etc..) for which companies or development agencies want local engineers to build solutions. So they let teams compete, and the winner gets some funding for their project. Our approach was different, because we had no aim except for meeting like-minded people. And then of course, there's hours and hours of material like bus rides, mountain climbing, pig roasting.. Stuff we did that may be useful in capturing the atmosphere, but isn't really necessary to bring our points across.
  • To my mind, the editor's challenge will be to not just have talking white male heads - so I guess, many layovers. Then again, that is a good thing for all the footage without sound.

Story line

INTRO (~2-3 minutes)

TRANSITION

BACKGROUND (~5-7 minutes)

  • Lots of interviews: Eric (ginger beard, orange wall 8056 - 8059), Jasper (for example: 1398 = nairobi 8064,8065, 8066), etc..
  • Cables / infrastructure > Hubs
  • 2009: First cable > tech explosion
  • Before: Digital divide
  • After: "Leapfrogging" > skipping a generation in tech, e.g. no landline phones or desktop computers > mobile phones + internet
  • Availability of Internet lead to tech hubs, IT education, innovation
  • Tech high on political agenda

TRANSITION: mention hubs > this is where we went

TEAM / TRIP / EVENTS / META (~5 minutes)

  • main point to get across in this section: connection!! we want connection, connection only really happens when you meet in person (intuitive, rather than rational, part)
  • Discussions before first event > Kenya terrace, iHub Cafe
  • Main points: -Hackers trying to meet other hackers
  • very shortly explain we did barcamps/hackathons to meet them
  • footage from events
  • introduce team?
  • Story line: merge footage from all 4 locations together into one and show "typical" event: team presentation, introduce participants, propose sessions (barcamp board!), projects, hacks, lunch, session recap/presentation, mingling/party

weave main points into that

  • event recaps (from the nights)? > only JEWELS! (Martin:
  • some music / trailer-style sections

Pigs, Volcano?

HACKERS (~4 minutes)

  • people introducing themselves, what they do, how they got there (e.g. phil, boses, akaliza)

TRANSITION: many of those people find space to work and develop in hubs

HUBS (~2-5 minutes)

  • Intro to section: Tayo (demo 9191-9196) - emergence and role of hubs in Africa
  • Interviews with managers of hubs or members > choose best
  • This section should explain the role of hubs in Africa (and what a hub is), why they are important > internet, exchange with others
  • Main points: role of hubs - hubs build communities, , example: mozilla, js user group (vicky jr.)
  • Subpoints: community management, financing (government, private funding), infrastructure, members

TRANSITION: but there is also community stuff happening outside of hubs

COMMUNITIES (~3-5 minutes)

  • show projects including tech communities, education initiatives, girls initiatives like
    • mozilla
    • nairobi dev school
    • akirachix
    • nlab/techno mamas
    • apps n girls
    • GeekGirlKampala

TRANSITION: communities dealing with products/market like ux labs/mark

PRODUCTS AND MARKETS

  • Unique environment > problems / opportunities > products to solve them
  • Payment systems (how do they work?), no credit cards, M-Pesa, Kipochi Interview
  • Low Tech Solutions (SMS, USSD)
  • No legacy tech
  • Problems: Hard to make money, not enough problem/customer focus
  • Examples: BRCK (Nairobi), Charging Service (Dar), Hatchery (Kigali), PingApp (Nairobi), M-Pesa (Nairobi), Kipochi (Nairobi)

TRANSITION

WRAP-UP (~2 minutes)

  • First sentence from scene on balcony in Nairobi: "Come on, wrap-up time!"
  • Random bits we want to show / that are important/meaningful to us (everybody picks something): recap bits, interview snips
  • Eric: It would be cool to have Africans do a EuroHackTrip (video no.??)

TRANSITION: credits start, but film goes on, shows the crazy stuff

CREDITS PIG PIG PIG!! Mt. Longonot: climbing, swings Event Feedback

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