I’ve been complementing the team (and myself) on a regular basis with how seemingly organized we have become; OKRs, KPIs, Accounts, Team/vision alignment, etc.
But then it struck me how truly innovative companies are in a constant state of semi chaos, and I asked everyone to just act more chaotic,… so that we have more of that “Startup” vibe (I think it’s working.)
Just kidding, I didn’t actually ask them that. — Here’s the report.
WEEKLY REPORT: 17–22 Jun 2019
This has been an overall, rad week.
Monday was a public holiday and Friday was mainly meetings leaving the mid 3 days for quality work.
Main Outcomes:
1. Accounts:
The primary theme of the week was admin — Namely putting nice little proverbial bows and stickers on our FY2019 (Feb18-Feb19) Accounts before submitting a mad mixture of little slips of papers and excel spreadsheets to our patient accountants.
2. Recruitment:
The secondary, or rather, “silver” thread throughout the week was recruitment.
- Looking at collaboration with US-based Fundraisers/Partnership builders.
- Beefing up our awareness/media by a retainer with a local video/content producing agency (which we’ve worked with for a few years). This should enable a constant flow of medium-high quality clips and updates.
- Teacher Training Consultant — Had a meeting with an ex-math teacher/digital curriculum/ Edu (video) Content Producer who will likely be freelancing with us on both course creation and even on how to enhance our projects with pre- (Learning students) & in-service teachers.
3. Development:
As usual, an ongoing flow of tweaks and design mockups, along with a healthy dose of both technical and conceptual misunderstandings.
Recently we upgraded a process for managing development tasks utilizing the boards, lists and tags features in Trello.com .
What I’m working on:
- A community-building feature which allows online learners to showcase their projects in a “Gallery” is the primary dev challenge.
- A detail heavy, over-thought revised homepage which reflects :
- A. Our new academic focus (Vocational Coding* in High Schools),
- B. The in-house curriculum
is the current frontend short-term target. (Hopefully live on Tuesday.)
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Lastly, it’s fair to note that we’ve been revising our eternally over-ambitious goals and have now neatly summarized them into the following 13 words:
Launch in 40 countries in the next 2 years and raise 5 million USD.
In case you’re about to bop me o’re the head with a case of beer ( I know, it doesn’t make sense) or lovingly submit me to one of those institutions with long halls and white robes, here’s a slightly comforting sub-clause:
Create independent #Non-profit or business ( #socent ) entities in 10 countries. The goal of these entities is systemic change in #digital #education for #highschool students resulting practical, hopeful, empowered and amazing graduates with #employable and entrepreneurial digital #skills.
The #vision duration for this in each country: 10 years
The remaining 30 countries will be coordinated through partner organizations, volunteers and/or pilots.
That’s all for now.
In case you think I’m over-communicating, you’re probably right.
Oh yes, and Ramaphosa mentioned Coding in Schools during the SONA (State of the Nation Address.) And it really does seem like the nation’s (South Africa) educational system is emerging from its comatose state of the last 10 years.
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Here’s a rad way to sneak peak on what we’re doing, check out www.codejika.org (not .com) to see our staging site -It’ll usually has features and content that isn’t available on the live site ( but don’t blame me if you see something that offends your color palette or UX appetite.
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You might be asking why I’m sharing my weekly report online? Fair point.
My response: No idea. If you like it, come back next week and find out what I’ve been up to.
