Life at Ushahidi - Reflections from Q1

The team got together for our annual retreat earlier this year. This year's venue was Cape Town, where the scenic landscapes easily enamoured us of this beautiful city. For a Remote-first team, opportunities to meet are priceless. Many ideas that have shaped the organisation's trajectory (Ushahidi is now fifteen years old!) came to life at a retreat, such as the support week and even this poem. 

The focus at the retreat was, first and foremost, to build up the working relationships that will be crucial to get us through the year. Having friends for colleagues is not a must, but it sure helps get through tough days. We also got to chart out our year using OKRs. We’ve spent much time learning how to get better at using OKRs, and it feels like we’re making progress. 

Our goals for this year come from our 2022 - 2026 Strategic Plan, in which we’ve detailed how we will continue to use technology to raise underrepresented voices and improve outcomes for communities globally. These are in the following impact areas: Good Governance, Humanitarian & Disaster Relief, Human Rights Protection and Climate Change. To this end, we are working with mission-aligned partners to raise voices and create real-world impact, investing in making our technology even more accessible and building our community. Internally, we will execute plans to ensure the organisation’s sustainability and improve productivity.

While in Cape Town, we had to contend with inconveniences caused by electricity outages occasioned by the ongoing load-shedding program in South Africa. This was a reminder of the challenges that users of our platform have to surmount regularly and reinforced the need to design our products for use in demanding environments. Unfortunately, some team members could not make the trip despite the relaxation of visa requirements. It’s a shame that it’s still generally tricky for Africans to travel within the continent.

Finally, we were pleased to welcome two members to the team, Mary and Tim. Mary started as an intern, and we’re glad to have her on full-time as a developer. Tim’s Product Management expertise is a welcome addition to our tech team. We’d like to thank our hosts in Cape Town and Allen Gunn from Aspiration, who facilitated this meeting.

We look forward to what Q2 has in store. Some highlights include participating in the RightsCon conference in Costa Rica (holla if you’ll be there too), the Nobel Prize Summit, Innovation in Politics Convention, among others. We also look forward to unveiling the work we’ve been doing to enhance our platform and hearing your thoughts on it. And finally, we look forward to welcoming a new Board member and Senior Software Engineer. Look out for those announcements on our team page.

Check back for updates on our blog and social media channels. May you thrive in Q2!