Skunkworks Blog

The evergreen Aki has started projectskenya.info which hopefully will morph into a collection of various ICT related  innovative solutions and ideas that are going on in Kenya. Anyone can contribute.

pMEETING: TECHINICAL OVERVIEW OF WINDOWS 7
/ppVENUE: TELEPOSTA TOWERS, 4TH FLOOR
/ppDATE: 2nd June 2009
/ppSPEAKER: WILFRED M MWORIA
/pp
 /ppThe speaker was Wilfred M Mworia, Developer Evangelist of Microsoft Corporation who gave a technical overview of Windows 7. The presentation was divided into three sections: Improved Fundamentals, Rich Innovative Experiences and Integration of Windows and Web.
/ppUnder Improved Fundamentals, the compatibility and reliability, stability and security of Windows 7 were discussed. It was noted that Windows 7 builds on Windows Vista hence most software and hardware that run on Vista also run on Windows 7. It is efficient in power application, has increased in speed, decrease in memory usage and can run on a 256 processor. The feature that plays a role in reduction in memory usage is the trigger starting of system services.
/ppRich, Innovative Experiences covered the end user section. It entailed a demo on the possibility of using multi-touch with gestures taken into account. The taskbars had been changed and were lighter in weight. There was improvement in the libraries and previewing of folders is now possible without actually opening the application.
/ppLastly, Integration of Windows and Web which essentially covered the federated search which was searching content across local machine boundaries and the superiority of Explorer 8 to Chrome and Firefox was highlighted.
/ppMore information on Windows 7 can be found in the following sites:
/pphttp://blogs.msdn.com/e7 dedicated to the engineering of Windows 7
/pphttp://channel9.msdn.com for videos on the demos
/pp
 /ppMeeting Recap by Joan Waweru
/p

pimg src=”http://blog.my.co.ke/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/050509-0859-tuesdaymeet11.jpg” alt=”"/
/ppspan style=”color:#4f81bd; font-size:9pt”strong1 Steven Ndungu, who was moderating during the meeting
/strong/span/ppThe last Skunkworks meeting was held at Steers Wabera Street. The meeting kicked off at 6.15 pm. Main aim of the meeting was to brainstorm ideas on how to implement a traffic monitoring system for the city of Nairobi and perhaps how best to go about collecting revenue for the same. Many ideas were suggested, on how to pick up the traffic info, from the now popular crowd-sourcing methods, to camera’s etc. Were was a lively debate on the various advantages and disadvantages of various methods, but most of all, the meeting served to solidify the idea poke holes into the implementation of various methods (Capital etc). Further from this, how to work with authorities was looked at given that for the system to work they must be involved in one way or the other.
/pp
 /ppTowards the end of the meeting, the topic drifted to how to make money from various opportunities that are available, and avoid being over exploited. Meeting went on until 8.45.
/ppIf interested in joining in the project, kindly email Steven, a href=”mailto:ndungustephen@gmail.com”ndungustephen@gmail.com/a./p

<!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>

The meeting on Tuesday was held at KCCT Town Campus. It was led by Alex Gakuru, who started with giving a presentation on the various arms of government. This led to an interesting discovery that of the twenty odd attendee’s only one had been within State House/Parliament and a sparse few had ventured into the High Courts. This brought the point home that Government is essentially working for us, and hence there needs not be a fear of the various arms of government.

The role of government was also explored, with Alex clearly illustrating that government has to necessarily act for common good. He gave a good concise breakdown of how each PS relates with the ministry and minister. The role of the CCK was also touched on.

The “Open Source” nature of government was also looked at. The premise was that government is constantly changing. The only problem is, given the three arms of government required to change laws/policy, it is necessarily going to take long to enact new law.

He illustrated how the nature of government has changed and dared any Skunkworks member to walk up to Teleposta Towers, and go to the PS’s office with a concrete idea, without an appointment, and see the corresponding reaction.

All in all the meeting was quite engaging with very good turnout. It was agreed that there should be more sessions to address this and general government modus operandi. A forum topic has been created http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22#p99 and the discussion will also be extended on the mailing list.

Title: Skunkworks Tuesday Meeting
Location: KCCT Teleposta Towers, 5.45 PM
Description: Meeting on how to Approach/Talk to Government, discussion led by Alex Gakuru
Start Time: 17-45-00
Date: 2009-04-14
End Time: 20-00-00

The last Skunkworks meeting was held at the KCCT Teleposta Towers, 4supth/sup Floor, Nairobi, from 6.00pm. The speaker was Dennis Karanja, East Africa Director for Sybase. The talk was about developing trends on Software Development globally. The speaker had a great depth of knowledge on the history of Sybase and software development in general. He went into great detail on what the trends are in general in software development, right from innovation in virgin territory. He urged software developers to try and figure out emerging trends. He also pointed out errors with the current ERP structure in that there are gaps in data collection which requires for Data Entry clerks. That is where Sybase comes in with the unwired enterprise strategy which allows for real-time data collection and analysis. Further from this software developers were urged to partner with Sybase for mobile application development. Next Meeting: Review of TED Videos: Tuesday 14supth/sup April 2009, KCCT Town Campus, 4supth/sup Floor./p

Figure 1: Eric Magutu makes a point during the meeting.

This weeks Skunkworks meet up was at Google’s Nairobi Offices. Meeting was held on Tuesday the 9^th of December. The topic was Kenya’s university education and whether it measured up to market needs. The meeting was coordinated by Chris Kiagiri, Googles tech lead locally.

Meeting was officially started at 6.30 pm with some refreshments kindly provided by Google. Chris started the meeting off by introducing the Google Engineering Education representative, Miss Belinda Nichols, who was in Nairobi to find out more about the curriculum offered in Kenyan Universities and whether it was responsive to market needs.

Various opinions on the matter were given, with David Kiania being of the opinion that lecturers are totally out of sync with the demands of the market and the student. They are unresponsive to student complaints and have not upgraded their course content in years. Their didactic methods are also not related to course material. Further to this, not much research and research publishing is done by the lecturers. Other views were put forth like the fact that there is a lot of cramming going on in Universities and as this provides an easy exit for both student and lecturers, the status quo is preferred by most. Anyone who seems to ‘rock the boat’ as it were would face unyielding lecturers and a corresponding student body. Another problem is that there are few opportunities in universities, hence, the universities dictate the terms and if one feels that there is a problem with a university, then the onus is on them to find an alternative, but not on the university to change, regardless of who has the problem in this case.

The objective then was to find out ways of getting around this problem, as there is no chance of replacing the entire teaching staff and changing the modus operandi at the local universities, how then does one get to teach the content required to students? One solution that was put forth was competition among students in various universities; this will prod the students themselves to become more proactive. Another solution was having holiday training programs that are not part of the curriculum, but will get interested students going for the meetings and learning. Mentorship, by both professional and senior/postgraduate students was seen as another way to get students working. The initiative by Google, to get in touch with the universities and get involved in curriculum development are seen as positive ways of making the learning environment at local universities more productive and in touch with both global trends and local market needs. It was also suggested that Kenyan programmers need to develop discipline to enable them to better work in team environments.

The food of course was an added bonus; the refreshments were in huge demand both before and after the meetingJ.

Visit Erik’s blog and Alex Gakuru’s blog for more coverage of the event.

(Special thanks to Ngaara Nelson (ngaara (at) yahoo.com) for the logo design)

Part 1 of Demos:

John Maina kicked off the presentations with a talk on Education Tourism. He made the argument that Kenya loses so much money as people seek education abroad (even if its in next door Uganda), yet Kenya has arguably the best equipped educational institutions. However Kenya’s marketing itself as an educational destination is hardly done. Quite thought provoking. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2003 format.

John Maina.View full album online

Kenneth Mwangi, a final year student at Strathmore University next made a presentation on Tulipe, an E-Commerce Framework for Payments. He quoted Isaac Newton - ‘Standing on the Shoulders’ of giants, to refer to how his prototype rides on existing systems that are widely in use, for instance Safaricom’s MPESA and the highly successful Equity Bank. The prototype is intended to be operator agnostic and merchant (bank) agnostic which would indeed be a novel achievement, and something that the market has been waiting for. Erik’s blog also covers this presentation. Download the entire presentation in PDF format. (Image courtesy of whiteafrican.com)

Fabian Owuor and Andrew Ketoyo of Metrocomia EA then made a presentation on an E-Book based solution that aims to ease the collection and dissemination of information. Some of the problems that they identified as being solvable with this E-Book, include national examinations (keeping in mind the number of subjects people study as well as the popularity of past papers), a staff training handbook and publications - for instance the Kenya Gazette. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2003 format.

Fabian Owuor View full album online

Sam Kitonyi (UON) and Victor Murage (Africa Nazarene University) nexted presented Kikwe, a way to send airtime across Africa. Kikwe allows anyone to send airtime to a loved one online from the comfort of one’s desk. It allows sending of airtime to any network and provides an easy to use interface. Some of the challenges that the team has identified include the risk of fraud and the development of partnerships in Africa. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2007 format.

Sam and Victor. View full album online

Ken Kasina started by running a video demo of Wesley Kiriinya’s Game, The Adventures of Nyangi. This was a show case of the talent and potential available locally, especially as game development requires a high level of technical skill. During the question and answer session after this demo, Wesley (who was not present) and other game developers were challenged to enhance the quality of their games to bring them up to par with other internationally available games. Ken Kasina also talked about the  localization of software, particularly FOSS applications. He has been heavily involved in several localization projects including that of KDE. Being also a highly skilled developer, he’s also an active contributor to various FOSS projects. He urged those present to consider contributing to localisation of various software as this would enhance the adoption of information technology countrywide.

Ken Kasina & Erik Hersmann. View full album online

Mugambi Kimathi, CEO of VST Studios made a presentation on Jahazi. Jahazi aims at enabling people who are not familiar with the internet to be able to take advantage of what the internet has to offer from an easy to use interface. Mugambi took those present through the various features of jahazi, which currently is available for Windows based systems. One other key feature of jahazi is its ability to allow any software developer to create applications for any use (e.g. online booking for an airline like KQ, or a stocks watchlist) thus opening up the platform for any individual or user to tap into. The full presentation is available online here.

The Jahazi.com team. View full album online

Charles Gathii, the MD of Microhouse Technologies next talked about his company. Microhouse provide solutions to various enterprises, among them various companies (like the hosts Sarova Panafrica) and educational institutions. Majority of the software development is done locally by local developers. Charles urged students interested in doing database development to learn and master oracle, and get certified as there is a shortage of skilled labour in this area in Kenya.

Charles Gathii. View full album online

Bonn Ndegwa of Unwired Technologies next made a presentation on Time Tabler, a low cost timetabler tat is designed for use by institutions that do not have a large budget for information technology products. Interesting to note was the fact that the company is not based in Nairobi, like majority of IT firms in Kneya, but in Western Kenya. They specialize in developing solutions for rural communities. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2003 format.

Bonn Ndegwa. View full album online

Josh Jingo then made a presentation on  and the possibilities locally. Using tools like blender and having the right amount of skill, one could easily come up with high quality animations (as was aptly demonstated). He however noted that one of the greatest challenges facing them was the fact that many media houses, and those seeking to have animations created for television opt to go abroad (for instance to India and South Africa), yet there was sufficient talent and ability locally.

-

We then broke for lunch, which was co-sponsored by Safaricom, Kenya ICT Board and the Ministry of Information and Communications. (KICTB promised lunches for everyone (skunkworks..) who comes to the next such meeting)
-

After lunch, there was a brief lightning round session of 2-3 minute random talks from participants for about 15 minutes.

Alex Gakuru then came up to talk about the main purpose of the event which was to enhance linkages between software developers and solution providers, and those in need of solutions as well as industry leaders. He then welcomed representatives of the sponsors of the event to give brief speeches. The sponsors of the event where the KENIC, Wananchi Group, Strathmore University, Kenya ICT Board and Safaricom. Many thanks go to them for enabling this event to be a success.

Alex Gakuru View full album online

Alex then welcomed Telkom Kenya CEO Dominique Saint-Jean to make some remarks. Mr Dominique was pleasantly surprised by the ‘positive energy’ he experienced when entering the room, which is a testament to the enthusiasm of those present at the event. He emphasised on the importance of local content saying that it is imperative that more local content be developed. He also promised to listen serious proposals from local developers within a ‘reasonable time frame’. Many thanks to Dominique Saint-Jean for sparing time to grace the event.

Mr. Dominique Saint-JeanView full album online

Finally, the PS, Information and Technology, Dr. Bitange Ndemo made his keynote address. He mentioned that he would have loved to be present from the beginning of the forum but was not able to . He said that more opportunities and forums are needed for exchange of ideas and proposed that every two months, a forum similar to this take place. He also mentioned that there is going to be a huge demand for talent in the outsourcing and software development arenas, something in the region of 5000-10000 new people over the next five years. He challenged local developers to come up with a local game - like ‘ajua’ that is unique to Kenya. Many thanks to the PS for taking time out of his busy schedule to come to the event, and also for the support he has been.

PS Dr Bitange Ndemo View full album online

Part two of demos then commenced:

Ngigi Waithaka of Alliance Technologies got the second part of presentations going. Alliance Technologies specializes enterprise grade solutions for companies, NGO’s and educational institutions. Ngigi has also been at the forefront in promoting FOSS based solutions, and Alliance Technologies also conducts the deployment of open source systems such as ERPs. Ultima Gratis, a grant management system was show cased. Download the entire presentation in Microsoft PPT 2003 format.

Ngigi Waithaka. View full album online

Laban Mwangi, Penguin Labs - An Electronic Top-Up system using a terminal running an embedded version of Linux and capable of connecting to multiple operators by simply switching sim cards, and features a web browser among other things. The aim of this demonstration was to show an easy way of performing airtime distribution. It also show cased a practical application of Linux in an embedded device. Remote top up of airtime is also possible with this device. Download the entire presentation in PDF format.

Laban (centre). View full album online

Steve Mutinda next made a presentation on Mobile Social Networking and a Mobile Finance application. Steve is a talented mobile applications developer and has come up with a framework that allows various applications to be installed on a supported mobile device and range from social networking, chat, news and mobile finance. What he has come up with for the mobile phone is very much similar to what Mugambi has done with Jahazi. He also demostrated his Mobile Finance application which easily plugged in to the framework. Steve is also a member of the ushahidi dev team. Download the Social Networking presentation and the Mobile Finance presentation, both in PDF format.

Steve. View full album online

Mbugua Njihia, CEO Symbiotic Media Consortium next demonstrated some of their products; tumasms, zunguka, kelelemobile among others. Symbiotic aims to converge mobile and the web, and provide services and applications that any ordinary person can use. Some of these include sync services for mobile phone contacts and notes, bulk sms, mobile phone ring tones, and later on, possibly video on demand services. Download his presention here in PDF format.

Timothy Mbugua. View full album online

Evans Ikua representing the LPA Kenya and LANet Consulting made the final presentation. He gave a brief history of the LPA kenya, as well as some of the activities they are involved in. Currently LPA Kenya has been instrumental in constructively engaging the Government, specifically regarding the procurement of software so as to ensure that there is a level playing ground, and thus allow local software development houses, especially those utilizing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to be able to pitch for Government contracts. Government is the largest employer, and offers the largest number of contracts, therefore it is important for the Public Procument process to be as transparent as possible. Download his entire presentation in OpenOffice ODP format.

Evans View full album online

-

Finally, Paul Kukubo the CEO  of the Kenya ICT Board had some final words for developers. He promised that, as an ICT Board initiative he intends in 6-8 months that a CEO s - Skunkworks partnership forum take place. This would go a long way in bridging the gap between developers/solution providers and industry leaders. He also mentioned that a fund to support local content development is being setup. He challenged skunkworks to come up with a Directory/Portal of developers, solutioneers etc on skunkworks for easy access by CEO s, and those seeking solutions. He mentioned some challenges from his experience for ICT startups:

• No framework to govern Venture Capital
• Cultural divide - where no chance is given to young people (developers etc)

Paul Kukubo View full album online

The slides from this session are here.