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TechGroups

Planned

TechGroups extends the platform beyond individual innovators to collaborative, domain-specific groups — teams of innovators working together under one shared identity, rather than each applying and progressing through incubation alone. It is one of the collaboration directions named in Future Work, expanded here in full.

Why groups, not just individuals​

The current platform is built around a single actor type on the applicant side: the Innovator, who registers, applies, and progresses through incubation individually. In practice, a meaningful share of DeSIC's most promising ideas come from small teams rather than solo founders — and a team has needs an individual profile doesn't: shared project tracking, a group identity mentors can be assigned to, and a way to communicate as a unit rather than as separate notifications to each member.

How TechGroups differs from an individual Innovator​

CapabilityIndividual InnovatorTechGroup
ProfilePersonal incubation profileShared group profile with a roster of members
ApplicationsApplies individually to events or incubationApplies as a group; membership doesn't require every member to apply separately
Mentor assignmentAssigned one mentor based on domainAssigned mentor(s) at the group level, visible to all members
Progress trackingPersonal progress logGroup-level project milestones, plus individual member contributions
ContentReceives notificationsCan post events and blog updates visible to the wider DeSIC community
MembershipN/AGroup leads manage member roles (lead, contributor) and invitations
ProjectsN/AGroups create and manage one or more projects under their umbrella

Planned capabilities​

Group registration & membership

Groups register with a name, domain focus, and founding members. A group lead can invite additional members and manage roles over the group's lifetime.

Project management

Each group can create and track one or more projects — separate from the group's overall incubation application — with their own status and milestones.

Progress monitoring

Administrators and mentors get a group-level view of progress, aggregating individual member contributions into one picture rather than reviewing each member separately.

Group mentor assignment

Mentors are matched and assigned at the group level, using the same domain-matching approach used for individual innovators today (see Functional Requirements), extended to consider a group's collective focus area.

Blog & event posting

Groups can publish blog-style updates and post their own events, distinct from the notification system — this is genuinely new content the current platform has no equivalent for.

Group analytics

Administrators gain a groups-specific view alongside the existing individual-innovator analytics, so program impact can be measured at both levels.

Data model implications​

Supporting TechGroups means extending the schema described in Data Model rather than replacing it:

  • A new Group entity, holding the group's profile, domain focus, and status.
  • A new Group Membership entity, linking Users to Groups with a role (lead or contributor) — analogous to how Mentor Assignment links Mentors to Innovators today.
  • A new Group Project entity, owned by a Group, with its own milestone tracking distinct from the group's incubation application.
  • A new Group Post entity for blog updates and group-authored events, separate from the platform-wide Event entity.
  • The existing Mentor Assignment entity generalizes to reference either an Innovator or a Group, rather than only an Innovator.

Architecture implications​

TechGroups is planned to live on its own subdomain (groups.desic.ac.ke) sharing the same edge infrastructure as the main application — DNS, CDN, DDoS protection, load balancing, and the Envoy reverse proxy layer — while routing to a dedicated Groups Service in the backend cluster. The full topology, including where TechGroups fits alongside the main domain, is diagrammed in Hosting Requirements & Guidelines.