On a
chilly Thursday morning I woke up to something interesting on Twitter; a
discussion fronted by @PaulaKahumbu
CEO of Wildlife Direct. She posed a rather
intriguing question and got me tweeting for the next one hour! Social media has
changed and continues to shape the way we exchange of information, share
content and add to it as well as pass it on and discuss ideas.
In the past we
have seen #KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) come together for various good reasons, we
had #CarpoolKE, #KOTagainstMpbonus, #PeremendeMovement, #KenyansForKenya,
#KOT4Conje among other great initiatives meant for the good of the society.
We’ve
also popular TT’s such as #TurkanaOil, #SomeoneTellCNN, #BudgetyaMasuffer,
#MiddleClassProblemsKE and customer service oriented #tags; the
popular #TwitterBigStick and #TwitterThumbsup. As some of us do well (right,
good & social stuff) on social networks some tribalists have been
publishing hate messages something DR. Bitange Ndemo has been talking about
weekly since late last year in the Wednesday Media Monitoring briefings at the
Infocomm Ministry.
Late
last year we had #SGSNairobi by UNDP which brought together tech-preneurs &
social innovators whose ideas, initiatives and campaign have had massive
success and huge positive social impact and we should have more of such events often. (Methinks)
Recently
(yesterday) we had #SomeoneTellBotswana, #SomeoneTellCNN & #SomeTellKenya
which shows a growing sense of pride in our nation and demonstrates our
patriotism. I am more than happy to see the number of hate pages and Twitter
handles reduce in Kenya, we managed to pull through the election peacefully
with minimal cases of hate tweets and propaganda. What this tells me is Kenyans
are now taking social media seriously and it’s time we scaled that up to unlock
the full potential on social media.
How
about we have weekly sessions on Twitter on to discuss various issues/topics?
Karani Mutonga, CBI 360 and I started #BusinessWedKE; a
1 hour long discussion to share insights, opinions and information related to
Biashara and various things affecting the industry sometime late last year but
the hashtag didn’t gain traction. We used to invite online panelists to tweet
and respond to some questions or give feedback on our topic of the week.
Due to
the feedback on Dr. Paula Kahumbu’s #ThinkTank and #PowerHour we could dedicate
an hour per week to discuss various topics/issues affecting us. Could be tech,
politics, health, governance, corruption, education etc.
For
purposes of having something relevant, the tech community can say come use
#TechThinkTank, education players can use #EducationThinkTank na watu wa
Biashara can have #BizThinkTank in our weekly #PowerHourKE. Or should they be uniform? Remain or use #KEThinkTank? You tell me!
So say this kicks
off next week we can maybe start with education, the other week we go to
governance or democracy like that et;al. I would also like to volunteer to coordinate
the think tank debates/ chats, to come up with topics in partnership with
players in different industries and raise them for discussion every Thursday 9
am to 10:00 am.
Well if
you have any contribution to this post please follow me @KenyanMarketer & share your response with me and other
#KOT.
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