When young professionals meet in Yaoundé
When introducing the meeting, Stephane Menada, a young consultant said that the amount of genius per square centimeter was really exploding. He was probably right.
It was June 27th in Yaoundé, just after 6:00 PM, and a group of about 20 IT professionals had just gathered in our little communication center near the University of Yaoundé I. They first heard the story about the interesting and sometimes challenging discovery of the virtual evangelism told by Augustin Tchenkoua, the Global Media Outreach coordinator for Francophone Africa.
After him, Patrick Mba, the Digital strategy leader for Cameroon painted a very simple but compelling picture of the need for the present hour : IT professionals, just like the ones gathered in that room who could consider themselves as more than employees, but see themselves as missionaries. Yes, just like Jesus could use a donkey to enter Jerusalem, he can, and will use developers, web-masters, video technicians and…you name it !
One of the IT professional present at the event was lamenting the fact that he did not find any encouragement in the church anymore. As a team of christian coders, they had painstakingly created a church management software, but the project did not even interest the leadership of the first church where the testing had to take place. At the same time, a student Pastor explained that he had a hard time getting a supervisor for his end of studies dissertation on the use of IT in the church. Someone suggested he instead choose a topic on homiletics… You can imagine how both can now be an encouragement to each other !
There was an immediate brainstorming and , even though he was discovering the Indigitous concept, the young consultant serving as MC delineated the issues to be discussed after the brainstorming : he said we had to deal with three main topics : The collaboration platform, the content creation, and the marketing and/or targeting. Three groups were formed and they started discussing the possible solutions.
That night, 10 of the participants have clearly indicated their decision to be part of the local Indigitous team, and 2 more have opted in just after hearing about the event a few days after.
We ended with a nice meal , just as a proof that we will definitely have fun being Indigitous.
Patrick Mba takes the initiative to host this lite event connect with him on Facebook