Connecting designers across Africa during COVID-19 🇰🇪 Lewis Kang'ethe, The Fearless Community
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Episode at a glance:
GUEST: Lewis Kang'ethe
COMMUNITY: The Fearless Community
HOSTS: Bailey Richardson & Whitney Ogutu
“Let's bring designers together and first talk about your wellbeing. Then let's talk about the next steps forward for you as a designer.” - Lewis Kang'ethe
Show Notes
Lewis Kang'ethe was first championed as a community leader in primary school when his teacher asked him to spearhead the mathematics club. When the teacher asks, the answer is either, “yes or yes.”
Now, Lewis works as a product designer in Kenya. When he’s looking for jobs outside of Africa he often gets asked the question, “are you qualified?” Lewis started the African chapter of The Fearless Community so that designers in Africa can tell their stories. It’s a place for designers like Lewis to find work and a network.
Members from around the world convene in local Slack channels and attend video podcast series with veteran designers. When COVID-19 became a threat, they launched the #StayConnected series first to talk about their wellbeing and then, the next steps forward for their members as designers.
Lewis takes a “servant” leadership approach to his role as community lead in Africa. We talked with him about the attention to details when connecting people across cultures and how the community has adjusted to online meetups.
Just like when building a fire, there’s an order of operations you can follow to cultivate communities that burn bright.
In our book, “Get Together: How to build community with your people,” we take you through three stages of building a community: sparking the flame, stoking the fire, and passing the torch.
Lewis offers insights into the first and second steps of building a community: sparking the flame and stoking the fire.
Shared activity, hosting a virtual meetup.
Lewis shared five elements he thinks about when designing a virtual meetup:
Have fun. Working with clients or an employer is serious. The meetups are meant to feel like home, like you're just hanging out. Designers love memes Lewis tells us so memes are always involved to spark the playful energy.
Don’t host too much. Match the schedule and the hunger of the community. What do they have time for? What do they have the energy for?
Topics come from Slack. Instead of trying to conjure up prompts for the meetups out of thin air, Lewis takes inventory of the conversations happening in slack and brings them to the meetup.
Bring in small surprises. Lewis awards people publicly for showing up and engaging. In physical meetups they use to give out small tokens of appreciation, like a book, but now he simply publicly recognizes someone and thanks them for their contribution.
Say thank you. Make an effort to not only thank those who did come but also those who didn’t. Send a follow up that captures the most important moments leaving people with excitement to come back or join next time.
Watering hole.
Like many online forum communities, The Fearless Community uses content to spark conversation. They team up with people from around the world and partner in creating content.
What stood out were the personal touches Lewis made in the Slack community. He personally DMs new members and asks, “how can I help and bring value to you?”
Attract new folks.
When Lewis is looking to recruit new members, he meets them where they are. Dribble, LinkedIn, and Behance are three popular social sites that designers hang out on. Lewis approaches them with a personal invitation rooted in why this matters.
His message reads:
“Until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” I want to inform the world by creating a space where designers in Africa can tell their stories.
Notice Lewis leads with the pain point, people’s stories not being told. He doesn’t start with the features of the community. This message resonates with many of the folks that Lewis reaches out to. They feel like they are the Lion and The Fearless Community is a place for them to tell their story. They want to be seen, heard and stand out.
👋🏻Say hi to Lewis and learn more about The Fearless Community.
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Get Together is produced by the team at People & Company.
We published a book and we’ve worked with organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider as strategy partners, bringing confidence to how they’re building communities.
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