Thread by @OrtegaTalks

Two months back, I made a post on my Facebook account about a personal project to interview 1000+ Ugandan Luminaries having high impact in different fields. I described these as "Great Ugandans" aka @GreatUgandans

A THREAD::: 👇👇👇

The post was easy to write. Then it hit me two weeks later that I was yet to carry out a single interview. I panicked. I hate making promises I don't keep. Worse still, I detest being dishonest to myself. I am the last person I want to lie to... so I sent out the first requests.

The first person to formally accept to be interviewed was Amos Wekesa, the man behind Great Lakes Safaris. His story from zero to high impact in tourism awed me. That first interview pushed me to the next.

In the same week, I interviewed @RugyendoQuotes the founder of @RedPepperUG and @YoungEngneersUG. I interviewed Rugyendo on Friday evening. Saturday morning, I was interviewing Kenneth, the man looking after 1000+ Ugandan grandmothers.

Then it hit me that I had been interviewing only men. I decided to hold onto interviewing any more men. The next person to be interviewed was a Ugandan Yogi, Cissy Nansera. I had not met a Ugandan Yogi practitioner as awesome as Nansera, she's conquered her body.

On Friday this week, I interviewed Jaffer Aita Joel, the man behind Joadah Consults. He is the man behind the new Mulago Specialised Maternal and Neonatal Hospital. When opened, it will be the best in the region. All the projects he's done have come with a touch of excellence.

One thing I have learned is that things are easier said than done. When I said I wanted to interview people, it seemed too easy. But it takes more time setting up an interview, preparing for it, holding it, transcribing the recordings and finally publishing the interview.

I would like to scale the interviews we are doing. We want to be publishing an interview everyday lest we get into the Tesla walls. And if we are to have an interview every week, then we need to build a system where individuals can conduct most of these interviews.

We have a template of questions to work from. The output and the deciding factor for questions is anything that gets us to deconstruct a person, their core principles, values, drivers and lessons learned, mental models and the things about them that produce the results.

As such, we want to crowdsource these interviews. Anybody should be able to conduct one such an interview. We can then get to build a single aggregation point for all these interviews, being conducted by different people but all using the same methods of inquiry.

We publish these interviews on our website: greatugandans.com. We are also glad a number of partners are coming on board. One of them is Jaluum Luwiiza Herberts, the man behind Young Treps. He's recording videos of every interview.

Other people have also expressed interest in being part of this project that started off as a purely personal project. I am also awed at the numbers of people who confess they had a similar idea. Most of them have offered to interview their own Great Ugandans for the website.

What is the end goal of all this? I get asked this a lot. I have one answer. We can't know yet, the best is to focus on hitting the first 100 interviews. That dataset can allow us to pivot better and decide where next. We have some ideas in mind, but 100 interviews first!

How can you get involved? You could become one of the interviewers. You could set up some of these interviews with those personalities that fit the criteria. You could do infographics of these interviews. You could animate the interviews. The possibilities are limitless.

One of my friends @kyambadderoger designed our logo. That was his contribution. You could have your own contribution as per your skill set. A Ugandan Reverend based in USA offered to make a $100 contribution. We are going on an exciting journey.

For now,
You can follow us on Twitter: @GreatUgandans
Subscribe to our Youtube Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCBPt3…
Visit our website on: greatugandans.com
Or Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/GreatUgandans/

We look forward to your inputs, suggestions, ideas and contributions.