In the course of the first two weeks of November 2022, we're excited to share that we managed to make our presence at four different events - in different parts of the world. First up was the GDG DevFest Nairobi on November 5th in Naibori, Kenya. The second was the Interledger Summit on November 12th in New Orleans, USA. The third one was the HACKFEST by Ingressive for Good, and finally, the fourth one was the She Codes Africa SCA Summit 2022, both in Lagos, Nigeria.

A person could ask … what does Chimoney have in common with four tech events? The answer is simple: We're sharing our mission of unlocking economic opportunity for everyone. Plus we kept emphasizing the value of community building. We could say that, within a 2-week period, Chimoney managed to tick off almost every box on the bucket list for fun activities we would love to do with communities. Here’re the stories.

GDG DevFest Nairobi: The importance of community

What did we do at DevFest Nairobi

At the Google Developer Group (GDG) DevFest held in Nairobi, Kenya, our ChiHeroes Anselmo Flavian and Phylis Atieno represented Chimoney for our first official event booth in Kenya.

The event attendees and booth visitors were very enthusiastic to know more about Chimoney. All the swags (100 fliers & 154 stickers) we brought ran out within an hour. We’ll definitely bring more next time - wink. 😉 With the robust solutions we offered: ChiPay (bulk payout app), ChiConnect (super API) and ChiSpend (embeddable crypto shopping marketplace), we got a deep conversation with a bunch of DevRels and developers who were interested in adopting Chimoney products in several areas, especially using ChiPay to send the bulk disbursement for their events and hackathons. Some folks applied to join Chimoney Community for help sharing our story and product knowledge with their own community. YAY!

Social listening through online giveaway — global participants welcome

To make our community stay in the DevFest Nairobi hype, we ran a giveaway on our Twitter asking our community about tech conferences or tech events they’re excited to meet us next. And we just loved to see the participation from several countries. We also sent Chimoney as a reward to random lucky winners, and they could redeem it to anything that’s available in their countries. Smart, right?

What did we learn from this event

Since GDG DevFest events are held in multiple countries and cities around the world, and the GDG global community is truly amazing, we at Chimoney are planning to sponsor or partner with other DevFest in other locations to broaden our connection with inspiring techies.

Interledger Summit: The Interledger Summit: The power of community to create financial inclusion

Why the Interledger Summit is important and Chimoney’s contribution

In addition to recognizing the importance of community building in the payment space, Uchi Uchibeke, Chimoney founder and CEO, joined the 2-day of the Interledger community gathering from 12 to 13 November 2022. While this was a great chance for Uchi, presenting Chimoney to connect with community who push vital work in the financial inclusion and payments space, he also gave a showcase (speaking) on the topic: Financial Inclusion, Accessibility and Monetization. No doubt that all ChiHeroes are always excited about the possibilities of the Interledger protocol when it comes to financial inclusion since there’re a lot of initiatives to do with our mission to unlock economic opportunity for everyone.

Financial inclusion. Let's hear the voices from our commuunity.

During the first day of the event, we ran a live poll on our Twitter asking for voice about the product catalog we should add more for people to enjoy redeeming their Chimoney or spend crypto and tokens on ChiSpend. Most of our community members are people in and want to be in tech space, the result show that they’re ready to invest their time and other resources to enroll in courses. Good news is that, now, the Community Manager or Program Manager could support this movement when they reward or gift their folks with Chimoney, via ChiPay. Then, Chimoney receivers could just redeem it to anything they would love, including online courses on Skillshare. And same goes with Interledger ecosystem to pay and spend from such protocol.

We also enjoyed the social listening practice from our live watch party and a live giveaway asking what’s the favourite quote from Uchi’s talk. Our community was truly excited about how Chimoney products save time and effort when it comes to cross-border payout, and also impressed by our movement to make the Interledger works in all countries.

What we learned and opportunities

Overall, it’s a wonderful time catching up with this vibrant Interledger Community and learned what the others do to create a financial inclusion world. Uchi shared Chimoney’s commitment to reach such goals and here’re the plan for the Interledger ecosystem:

• Pay with Interledger on ChiSpend
• Cash out to Interledger Wallet on ChiPay
• Third-party Interledger wallets integrate offramp using ChiConnect

What else could we do and build to support this movement? Share some ideas and tag us on Twitter (@chimoney_io).

HACKFEST: The beauty of tech and collaboration

This one too! On Saturday, November 12th, Ingressive for Good (I4G) held an annual tech event in Lagos, Nigeria, to open people's mind up to the possibilities in the African tech ecosystem when no techies are left behind. At the HACKFEST or I4GHACKFEST, four ChiHeroes, including Hammed, Ruth, Cynthia and Angel hosted a welcome Chimoney booth for the event participants/booth visitor to immerse themselves into Chimoney’s world — thanks Faheed, our graphic and brand designer who created event standees and cutout photo stand.

The ChiHeroes from both the Client Enablement and Product teams provided a personalized product demo, gave out Chimoney stickers, tote bags and t-shirts, and offered a referral bonus. They said the the time did fly fast on the event date. Yss, everyone got the best day there.

What we learned from I4GHACKFEST 2022 and the next steps

It’s once again we’re reminded how important it is to build and engage with the community in tech space. At the HACKFEST, we’re warmly welcomed and we took all the challenges to make them opportunities. The questions and suggestions, considered as a quest for us, left us with homework to improve the products and plan for extra research for adding new features.

Going to tech conferences or tech events really connects Chimoney with the tech community and the other amazing projects. We’ll absolutely seek opportunities to sponsor tech events to share what we build and gain valuable feedback from the community.

SCA Summit: The happy vibes through community support

Well, there’s actually another tech community we engaged on Saturday, November 12th. It’s She Codes Africa’s SCA Summit 2022, in Lagos, Nigeria, with a goal to gather the members from different states in Nigeria and neighbouring African countries for a hybrid summit themed "Elevating the African Woman in Tech".

She Code Africa is a non-profit organization focused on celebrating and empowering young girls and women in tech across Africa. We at Chimoney always appreciate the SCA community and their mission to promote equality for women in African tech roles, and we’ve been supporting SCA events for years now.

During the SCA Summit 2022, Omotola Omotaya, our Community Management Lead at Chimoney who’s also leading the same role for She Codes Africa, operated the Summit and also represented Chimoney at the event for everyone who might be interested in Chimoney story and solutions.

Exciting initiatives this year? We ran a donation campaign amongst ChiHeroes and managed to give $400 to the SCA community. Here, we sent Chimoney to queens (She Codes Africa community) who attended the summit virtually so they could redeem it to internet data and got encouraged to keep up their amazing contributions.

Final thoughts

We really appreciate the opportunities to do different things and totally enjoy the fun pace in November. And we’re always learning from every new experience and from any communities we engage with. What’s more, as Chimoney continues to grow and reach new markets, we’ll do our best to use our skills, experiences, and key learnings from the community to help keep building and improving to unblock the economic potential for events.

Here, we’re always excited to sponsor, partner and go to more of the tech events since we love connecting with the community. Stay tuned to see more stories on Chimoney's Twitter (aka. The Happening Community).