So the much talked about Road Trip got focus in today’s meetup and the first steps to making it a reality were taken. Basically, the the main purpose of the trip is an outreach campaign in Kenyan Universities in a bid to have contributors spread over across the whole country.
With the magnitude of this project, this is the first of many meetups dedicated to the planning and implementation of the Road trip. In attendance were 11 Mozillians with a new recruit – so that’s +1 to our contributor base 
– and the ideas began flowing….
Collaborations
So still fresh from Wikimania and the just concluded Kenyan tour of Asaf Bartov, (Head of Global south Relationships, Wikimedia Foundation) collaboration between Mozilla and Wikimedia has been in the minds of many. GlobalMelt has fostered this where both Mozillians and Wikimedians meet to innovate and ideas such as Sparklez become a reality. With the local Wikimedia group looking to have a similar outreach campaign (Road Trip), we thought it would be best to combine our efforts and do the Road Trip together
So What Next…
In order to make this a success, the following suggestions were put up by attendees – 3 of which are both Mozilla and Wikimedia contributors, my self included:
- Setup activities / projects that new contributors can participate in so as to avoid a situation where new recruits gained from the trip would join but have nothing specific to do. In short, plan to receive new contributors.
- Have different people coordinate specific aspects of planning eg: Website manager, Swag wrangler, Universities contact etc
- Big Outreach campaign as a build up to the actual Road Trip. This would involve:
- setting up a website specifically for this, backed up by social media channels and frequent updates in preparation for the trip
- Pre-visit to universities across Kenya
- Printing of outreach materials such as banners, fliers, t-shirts etc
January was mentioned as a suggested date for the trip, a time when most universities would be open and either in the middle or beginning of a semester. A final decision is to be made in a combined meetup between Mozilla and Wikimedia.
In conclusion, the main Mission for the Road Trip would be to get an even distribution of contributors across the country (Kenya) with a Vision of carrying out similar projects not only in Africa but Worldwide.
Strathmore ICT Conference
Also discussed was the presence of Mozilla in the 12th Annual Strathmore ICT Conference – 2nd and 3rd September – which Mozilla has sponsored. If you are interested in being part of Mozilla’s presence for this, comment on this thread or get intouch with me directly: alex[at]mozilla-kenya[dot]org You can follow the planning page for this over here: Planning Page
