The award for best corporate blog is awarded to a blog run by a company. This year, iHub emerged the winner.
iHub – Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area based at the Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong Road in Nairobi. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone programmers, designers and researchers.
It is an open community workspace whose aim is to catalyse the growth of the tech community in Kenya. We do this by connecting people, supporting startups and surfacing valuable information to the community, whether they are engineers, web designers, investors, government or academia.
The blog reflects that innovate spirit of the iHub by generating new content on tech in our communities as well as amplifying voices we feel need to be heard.
Here is what the folks at iHub have to say about winning the awards and the future of the blog.
1. How does it feel to have won the Best Corporate blog in the Kenyan Blog Awards 2014?
It is a great honour to win the Best Corporate Blog category, especially given the corporates that were nominated along with us, Crown Paints, Olivia, Story Moja, and Bata all have exceptional blogs. This award is much bigger than an award to the iHub, it is an award to the entire iHub community of over 11,000 members.
2. What are your thoughts on the Kenyan Blog Awards?
The Kenyan Blog Awards are a great avenue to honour Kenyans who use their blogs as tools to share information, to spark conversation and to inspire. Coming up with constant, original and relevant content is no mean feat.
The Kenyan Blog Awards are also a great avenue to put faces to blogs. At the end of the day, there is no better form of interaction than the face to face to communication. Plus, this allows for bloggers to realize that they are ultimately accountable for the content that they put up
3. Who/what is your motivation to blog?
The iHub community is our motivation to blog. We want to catalyse the tech community and what better way to do that than to share stories coming out of the community along with stories that challenge status quo thus encouraging our community to push barriers and constantly come up with new exciting stuff. At the iHub we like to say, “if it doesn’t benefit our community we will not do it” that mantra extends to our blog as well.
4. What should people expect from your blog in future?
We want to share even more stories of new and exciting stuff that is coming out of our iHub community. So look out for lots of amazing, inspiring stories. We will also have a lot more community members as guest bloggers so the blog will have lots of different personalities and perspectives.
5. What are your top 3 Kenyan blogs and why?
• Our sister lab m:lab East Africa http://mlab.co.ke/ – m:lab East Africa is a leader in identifying, nurturing and helping to build sustainable enterprises in the knowledge economy. The m:lab is an amazing space with a growing number of inspiring success stories on how you can turn your fantastic idea into a viable business.
• The Pivot East blog http://www.pivoteast.com/blog/ PIVOT EAST is East Africa’s premier mobile startups pitching competition held annually since 2011 – this is the blog to watch for the hottest new start ups in our region. Pivot East this year is on the 24th and 25th of June.
• Afrilabs http://afrilabs.com/ AfriLabs exists to support the growth of communities around African technology hubs and to encourage expansion of the network by providing tools and resources for new and emerging labs. They do this by providing best practices, mentoring, networking opportunities and other resources for high-potential entrepreneurs. Afrilab is an umbrella organisation of the leading innovation communities and hubs across the continent. Several of Afrilabs members are Kenyan, which makes it eligible to be listed as a Kenyan blog!
6. What advice would you give to upcoming bloggers?
Find your niche’. Stay true to your own style. Remember that your blog is an avenue for you to express yourself so always share your opinion. Remember that you are communicating with human beings.