BOOT CAMP UPDATE- DAY 1

The day was very chilly in the morning but nothing could stop the techies from streaming into Strathmore school for the annual Mobile Boot camp. First day was basically meant for keynote addresses from various known industry players.

Brief Summary of the Talks.

First was, as usuall, an introductory and welcome talk from Dr.Seville. He is the current head at the faculty if IT at strathmore and I must say he is really doing a commendable job.






Then came, Andrew Meme from Safaricom who gave a very enlightening talk on the growth of mobile applications and how to monetize your applications. Talked a little bit about Safaricom's plan on growing content on M-PESA. He also gave us the full structure of the IT stuff at Safaricom which I will blog about later in a separate post.

Secondly came, Daniel Southern from MIT who gave a talk on Mobile Web. He eventually doubled up as the facilitator in the Mobile Web class. He quite an interesting geek. Quiet in his talk but very effective. Knows a lot about Kenya and the technological events here than many of us who actually stay here.

Then there was Michael Wakahe from Shujaa Technologies. He did a presentation touching on the general mobile app development. His was quite simple and straight forward, giving the do's and dont's while creating mobile websites.

Before the lunch break we had a final presentation by Kaburo Kobia. Not really a presentation as such but an open session that solely dwelt on the ongoing "ICT grant". She tells me to remind you that everyone should apply for this and that the deadline is so soon. Both individual and Company grant are welcomed. For more information about the same visit their website .





After the lunch break we then had a couple of presentations. Most interesting were from, Amos Gichamba from Strathmore who presented on M-KULIMA.His project seeks to solve dairy farming record keeping and processing. He has designed as system that enables communication between milk processors and farmers.

Finally, came the most interesting 'show' by Paul Kukubo. Mr.Kukubo(in the photo) is the CEO of the ICT Board here in Kenya. The guy is a tough talker. He speaks so much sense in a very polite way. I can assure you, he has the passion for technology and would do anything to help Kenya's ICT grow as a sector. Meanwhile, he is asking developers to get marketers who can get their work to the market in a suitable business model. He really speaks for the non-techies but smart people coz he said he is the type. That he even has no idea of how code is written yet has so much stake in code written in this country.

Kevin and I also kept our cool at the same venue as we took in whatever we could. Here are some of the pics. We had a good time. For more live tweets follow me here on my twitter account.