A fair amount of the work we do at REFUNITE takes place in refugee camps, where we work with communities to build our family-reconnection platform and mobile application.

But building our global platform and multilingual apps also requires pulling an occasional late-nighter in front of the computer. If there’s anything we take (almost) as seriously as our mission to reconnect families, it’s our ability to communicate quickly with our colleagues – which sometimes means it sounds as though we’re speaking in code.

To give you a glimpse into the geeky and often-abstruse language of our team, we present a list of typical REFUNITE words that have very particular meanings for our crew at the office.

+1

What it means to you: You get to bring a date to your friend’s wedding.

What it means to us: “Agreed!” Always in the business of shortening anything we can, the REFUNITE team has adopted a quick “+1” in our online chats so that colleagues can indicate agreement without wasting precious typing energy.

Dogfooding

What it means to you: time to feed your pet!

What it means to us: Tech slang for “YOU try the product!” At REFUNITE we communicate through the platform. After all, if it doesn’t work for us, it will never work for a family living in a refugee camp.

Sprint

What it means to you: A bunch of people running short distances really fast.

What it means to us: REFUNITE’s goal of connecting a million refugees by the end of 2015 means we have to work fast. To keep us on track, we have three-month “sprints” to keep us focused.

Sawa Sawa

What it means to you: Swahili for ”okay” and ”fine.”

What it means to us: Yes, there was a power outage. Yes, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Yes, the application crashed for a second. But everything is going to be okay.

Deep Dive

What it means to you: A dream vacation. Scuba diving. Water.

What it means to us: We’ve spent all day staring at this Excel sheet and we still can’t understand why numbers aren’t adding up correctly! Time for – ugh – a data deep dive.

String

What it means to you: Must fix my guitar. Or, if you’re into quantum physics, the origin and matter of the universe.

What it means to us: “Damn, we forgot to translate the SMS strings into both Sudanese and Standard Arabic!” Strings are short lines of text that help us stay in touch with separated families . This is no easy task, since our users come from all over the world.

Agile Retrospective

What it means to you: A finely executed vinyasa-style yogic backbend.

What it means to us: Our ability to come together as a team, assess progress and areas for improvement – with observation, and optimism. Agility, in this case, is all about good, honest, open communication.

Innovation Lab

What it means to you: Showered, well-dressed professionals in white coats carefully working with test tubes.

What it means to us: Trying to save administrative costs by working in a refugee camp in a dirty tank top and hiding under the bush if your boss tries to video conference you into a call.

USSD

What it means to you: Slightly misspelled reference to the former Soviet Union.

What it means to us: Agonizingly complex to our team but infinitely easy for our users, these four little letters mean separates families can search, connect and communicate through our mobile platform, without access to the Internet.

High-level

What it means to you: Taking part in important discussions in an airconditioned conference room, and getting a free goodie bag after your keynote speech.

What it means to us: Conference room bureaucracy is not really our thing.

KPI

What it means to you: Key Performance Indicators.

What it means to us: “I can, I will!” Nearing the end of each “sprint”, you can feel the collective tension mounting as the team eyes the list of KPIs and results they will be expected to deliver. No one is doing anything but fighting off a looming mental breakdown.

Friday

What it means to you: After work relaxation.

What it means to us: Tusker and… 

UX

What it means to you: Your cat stepped on your keyboard.

What it means to us: The difference between user confusion and user engagement; from how we phrase our copy to how we organize the registration process to keep people active on the platform.

Family

For all the different shapes, sizes, and traditions that define families, we believe in ties that bond – whether it is the separated families we aim to reconnect, or the family of colleagues in our offices.

Join us! 

By Carolyn Nash and Ida Jeng

CONTACT

Carolyn Nash, Communications Coordinator for REFUNITE (cn@refunite.org)