Work that network

The UM Alumni network is one of the biggest in the world, so it’s not too surprising that you’ll find a lot of us in Nairobi. Even before I arrived, I knew one – my boss is a UM MBA alum – and on the first weekend I ran into two more, a girl that had studied the same program I studied during undergrad and another UM MBA who also happened to live and work for a year in Flint (what?!!?). I went out to dinner with some friends not too long ago and sat next to a guy who had just finished his MBA at UM, and I even ran into a girl that lived in Alice Lloyd, my freshmen year dorm, and is now married to another guy I was fairly close with during freshmen year. We’re everywhere (and we’re cool, good looking, and smart, I might add). But I haven’t quite had to rely on this network until this past week when it turned out to be the handiest thing around.

Next week, I’m launching a test in Tanzania that involves 1000 credit card sized mobile registration cards that will be placed in our pumps’ packaging. The cards offer free mobile talk time (98% of the phones here are pre-pay) to any pump owner that sends an SMS with the code he finds underneath the scratch off box on the back of the card. New pump owners send us an SMS and get free talk time, and we get their mobile number to give them a call at any point to do follow up work – offer additional services, answer any questions they have, learn about where and how they’re using the pump, and better understand if the pumps are improving their livelihood. Because we’re not as much interested in the sales of the pumps as we are interested in confirming that our pumps are increasing the incomes of small scale farmers, it’s critical that we can locate, find, visit, and converse with the farmers that are using our pumps. The mobile registration card, if it works, will be a very cheap and effective way for us to do just that. I’m really excited to test this to see what happens, but since I did all of the design and printing work of the cards in Nairobi, I first have to get the 1000 cards down to Dar es Salaam, Tazania.

 Yes, there is DHL here and I could spend the $110 to ship the cards through their reliable network, but I find their price to be annoyingly expensive and there’s rarely any fun in convenience. So, why not look for a different option? Regular post is, not surprisingly, dangerously unreliable and though danger is usually a lot more fun than convenience, I don't like placing bets on something that's 90% stacked against me. So instead I sent out a few emails and a couple of texts to some friends, and sure enough the UM alumni network came through. Laura, the girl that lived in the same freshmen dorm as I, happens to be heading down to Dar es Salaam this weekend and is happy to carry the package in her bag. She’ll be leaving the package at her hotel’s front desk, and I’ve arranged with the Tanzanian team to pick it up on Monday morning. Cheap, reliable, fast and personal – DHL cannot compete with the East African UM alumni network.

Now if I could only figure out a way this alumni network can help me actually convince these farmers to send me a text.