The decentralized world of Bitcoin is always advancing every single day. However, how many Africans are contributing to its development or are including themselves in just the regular discussions about the currency? Btrust Builders (formerly called Qala) is a comprehensive engineering program designed to train experienced software developers in Africa to contribute to Open source Bitcoin and Lightning development.
This was an exciting project to work on, interacting with talented developers from all over Africa, constantly communicating the value of the scholarship program, building both online and physical developer communities called “BitDevs” to further strengthen collaboration and learning from each other.
My role
- Designed a brand strategy, brand voice guidelines and communications strategy that clearly brought the vibrant life of Btrust builders to its audience online
- Engaged with the largely online communities of the program who were Lightning developers and bitcoin enthusiast with value based content, newsletters and creative actions to keep us all connecting like puzzles, Q&A’s, question polls to mention but a few
- Assisted the students on their learning assignments for example proof reading their technical articles before they published them and helped with career guidance as the final goal of the program was to place the graduates in competent Bitcoin & Lightning jobs around the world.
Results
- 60+ experienced developers applied for the 2nd cohort of the program mostly from the West, Central and East Africa.
- Created 2 monthly content calendars that attained 15,000+ social media impressions since the goal at the time was brand awareness and reach plus gained an average follower growth of 45 accounts monthly
- Started the BitDevs Kampala community with the support of the program. Holding monthly meetups, discussing Lightning development & building live projects.
