Our top product communities in Nairobi; plus other notable mentions
Looking to connect with peers, get a break from everyday office work or even sponsor a local community?
Let’s face it, sometimes events can be a great waste of time, well I’ve been to a couple that were. From unprepared speakers, events hosting the same speakers year in year out to having biased panels. At the same time, ignoring events completely can be a big mistake too. If you are planning to attend one, make sure you identify those that will be most helpful to you and are the best use of your time.
When leveraged well, these meet ups can bring you important value as a product person. This does not only apply to attendees but also companies who want to recruit or market themselves. Are you a company looking to partner with product developers in Kenya, you can work with these communities as a sponsor! Sponsorship range from event hosting, snacks provision or just helping organizers with logistics.
Notice that we have mostly focused on product management, UX and design communities, but there are other communities tackling the software engineering part of product development if you are interested in that specifically.
Below are our top 3 local communities in no particular order(because we have personally attended and we enjoyed) where you can meet like minded individuals, share your learnings, pitch your business or just gain a fresh perspective on the product development industry in Kenya. We love that these communities are focusing on speakers who are not mainstream and that they cover unique and varying topics.
1. ProductTank Nairobi
This is the local chapter of the larger ProductTank community present in over 185 cities globally. They hold monthly meet ups (they are the most consistent of the three) at different product spaces around Nairobi and have frequent webinars with local and global product specialists. ProductTank has had over 15 events and they have others lined up for the year, check them out! Their topics range from design, research, business and everything product management. We love that they host a wide range of experts, share their plans way ahead of time and always have a great breakdown to catch up on if you missed their event.
Follow them on socials here— twitter, meetup,medium
2. UX Kitchen
Started last year, this community has held over 7 events. UX Kitchen discusses everything user experience. From design processes, user psychology to business design. What started out as a small intimate UX community now has over 1000 members on their meet up page! The community is big on networking and always encourages members to network and get to know each other after an event. We attended an event where the host intentionally made sure there was time left for each attendee to introduce themselves, share what they are curious about and we thought this was super cool!
Join them if you want to master UX or share your experience. They currently have a call for people to propose topics they would want covered for the year, fill this form.
Random: We really love their name
Follow them on socials here — twitter, meetup
3. Nairobi Design Community
This community brings together product designers, UXers’, startup founders, UI designers, and any other people who have an interest in using different design thinking methods to solve our day to day life challenges.
The NDC has an interesting mix of event hosting from open mics, lightning talks, fire side chats to panels. We like that they are always welcome to having contributors share their stories on their medium page. They also share a breakdown recap of their events there so do check it out.
The oldest of the three, NDC has supported the rise of other communities. They are keen on partnership with like minded communities as seen in their partnered events with Figma Africa and Devcraft.
Notable mentions
We have not been to these two community events yet but from what we hear and what we have seen on the online pages, we will definitely try them sometime.
AI Kenya Community — They have the most members on their meet up page, over 3,000!! They also have held the most events so far. All their activities can be found on their website including events, trainings, video recordings and podcasts. AI Kenya is definitely not just a meet up community but have several other offerings.
Agile Kenya —They focus on spreading the Agile gospel.Agile Kenya is for anyone interested in the continuous improvement and sharing experiences of the best practices of agile, lean principles and values, as well as the different frameworks to support scaling agile.
Special cameo:
Unlike meet-ups that are more frequent, conferences happen like once in a year. We attended these two conference last year and thoroughly enjoyed the discussions. Looking forward to what they have planned this year.
We hope this list gives you a good start on how to be part of the UX, design and product community in Nairobi. What community did we miss? Do let us know and tell us why it’s a must attend!
