A week from right now, the second annual SharePoint Saturday Nairobi will be wrapping up. A year and a half ago, there was no organized community of SharePoint users in Kenya.

“I’m the only one in Nairobi using SharePoint.”
—The first 50 SharePoint users I spoke to in Nairobi

In February 2012, when I first started asking people about an Nairobi SharePoint event, the first 50 or so people I talked to told me, “I’m the only person in Nairobi using SharePoint.” Today a core group of enthusiasts is putting the finishing touches on their year of labor: meeting, organizing, planning, inviting, and hosting SharePoint Saturday.

It all started when some family friends—who had recently moved to Kenya—invited us to come for a visit. Since I speak at SharePoint events, I thought it would be great if we could time our trip to coincide with SharePoint Saturday Nairobi. (SharePoint Saturday is a one-day free event hosted by SharePoint User Groups [SPUGs] in cities all over the world.) I had spoken at SharePoint Saturdays in New Orleans, Washington, Houston, and San Antonio, and co-organized the first Austin event the previous month. And I knew that there had been SPS events in many other cities worldwide. Nairobi is a major technical, financial, and industrial hub for that region of Africa. Plus, it’s the home of many NGOs (non-governmental [relief] organization), many of whom use SharePoint, so I knew there would be an event there, too. Right?

So, I went to the SharePoint Saturday website and searched for Nairobi.

Nothing.

Since I had just wrapped up the first SharePoint Saturday Austin, I figured I could reach out to the local SPUG and offer my assistance to help them get an SPS event off the ground in Nairobi.

So, I searched the internet for a Nairobi SPUG.

There wasn’t one.

Next, I turned to LinkedIn.

Establishing connections

I love LinkedIn! It’s a great place to network and find ways to help others. Its original purpose was keeping people in touch with former colleagues. But it’s also a great way to meet future colleagues!

For my Nairobi plans, I simply searched my network for “SharePoint” and set the location to “Kenya.” I didn’t have 1st degree connections in Kenya, but I had several 2nd and 3rd degree connections. There are also several groups on LinkedIn dedicated to SharePoint and so I had a few group connections as well.

LinkedIn lets you send messages to group members, so I sent notes to a few people asking if there was a SPUG in the region and if I could help establish an event. That’s when a heard from several people that there was no SPUG in Nairobi because they were the “only one” doing SharePoint in Nairobi. There was skeptical but hopeful interest from most of them; nothing like this had been done in Nairobi before.

Putting the Pieces Together

With no SPUG in place, I thought if I can get some of the speakers I know to go to Nairobi for an event, it would really make things easier for having a full slate of speakers to help launch a SPUG. So I emailed Alistair, a friend I’d met at the DC event who lives in Cape Town—and helps organize SharePoint Saturday Cape Town—to ask if he would be interested in an Africa tour. (I didn’t realize how far Nairobi is from Cape Town!)

Alistair didn’t hesitate; he was all in! And he brought along Bramley, too, whom I had also met in DC.

At the same time, I contacted a group of speakers who call themselves Sharing The Point to see if I could get Africa on their radar. Sharing The Point is a non-profit organization of SharePoint speakers who travel the globe meeting with, establishing, and encouraging SPUGs in every locale they visit. Sometimes they’re at large events, sometimes it’s four people sitting around a table at a coffee shop. While I was hosting SPS Austin, Sharing the Point was on a South America – Antarctica tour (yes, they actually found SharePoint users on Antarctica). I asked Mark, one of the main organizers, if they might consider an Africa tour with Nairobi as a Saturday stop so they could be involved in a SharePoint Saturday.

“We’ll put it on the list,” replied Mark.

What I didn’t know was that Alistair had talked to Mark in DC about them coming out to Africa. Before I knew it, Africa was happening… we set a date to be in Nairobi; Alistair set Cape Town’s event to be the Saturday before; and the STP team was making plans for stops in Dubai, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Addis Ababa, and a climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

With the date set, I began looking for local Nairobi speakers to fill out the day’s roster, a venue that would offer us space to meet on a Saturday, and various vendors to help with t-shirts, advertising, etc. I found everyone I needed through LinkedIn, organized a few Skype calls, and promoted it through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and EventBrite.

When September 15, 2012, rolled around, thirteen speakers (three from South Africa, six from the US, and four local [well, one lives in the US, but is from Nairobi]) presented to over 100 people, and launched a SPUG that has been meeting every month and is in the final throes of hosting their second SharePoint Saturday event.

Still connecting…

Since Nairobi, I’ve helped find the right connections for Sharing The Point team to have successful events in Guyana, Quito, Caracas, and others. I’ve now added “Community Builder at Sharing the Point” to my LinkedIn profile and continue to make connections in the global SharePoint community, and am looking forward to tagging along on a Caribbean tour in the near future.

How can you help build a community? How can I help?