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Storymoja Hay Festival – many stories, one world

admin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:00:29 +0000

A three day international celebration of stories, ideas, writing and contemporary culture through books, storytelling, skits, music, live discussion forums, demonstrations, workshops, open-mike sessions, debates, exhibitions, live performances and competitions.

The festival is modelled on The Hay Festival held in the UK every May in which up to 100,000 people attend – ranging from presidents to authors to fans. The Hay Festival organises several festivals in Europe and South America. The Storymoja Hay Festival will be an international festival held in Nairobi, organised as a partnership between Storymoja and The Hay Festival.

The event will be held in a temporary ‘tented city’ at the Impala grounds and will include a main stage for live performances and competitions, and twelve themed tents in which multiple one and a half hour-hour events will be held concurrently. The range of 100 or so events are intended to generate public debate around critical issues facing East Africa including Climate Change, Diversity, Microfinance, Literature, Entrepreneurship, Gender, IT, Self-Development, Music, Film and Education. They will be headlined by star guests in each particular field. Music (our headline act is Seckou Keita) and various competitions will ensure a mixed crowd in celebratory ambiance, and attract extensive, positive local and international media coverage.

Simply put, the Storymoja Hay Festival is a celebration of ideas expressed in many forms. It is part of a longer term campaign to get East Africa reading, writing and discussing ideas.

What are the highlights?
An array of forty plus African and international writers, thinkers, filmmakers will participate in various events at the festival including – Wole Soyinka, Hanif Kureishi, Vikram Seth, Wangari Mathai, Kate Adie, Petina Gappah, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Monica Arac, Nick Broomfield, Jan Blake, Daniel Morden.

Who is invited (audience)?
Day-long fun for the whole family with multiple events targeting men, women and children. Programmes will be distributed with tickets.

Where and when?
Venue: Impala Club, Ngong Road, Nairobi
Dates: Friday 31st July, Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd August, 2009.

Event Schedule
The session on Mentoring is scheduled for Saturday 1st August 4pm-5:30pm in the Enterprise Arena. Feel free to involve Vital Voices and or any partners you think might add value to the event.

What is the purpose of the Storymoja Hay Festival?
The festival hopes to encourage Africans to ‘own’ their problems by exploring our situations/stories, and search for solutions by generating platforms for discussion and debate. To achieve our 2030 vision, we need to read widely, discuss ideas, and exploit our diversity of stories/backgrounds for nation building.

Who are Storymoja?
Storymoja is a publishing company formed by five writers committed to spreading the gospel of reading, writing and thinking has held two previous annual festivals to promote books – dubbed Storymoja Nyamachoma Fiesta. The 2008 event attracted 2200 people. The 2009 Storymoja Hay Festival will utilise and build on that experience, and is the next step in achieving our Storymoja mission of getting ‘A book in every hand.’

People making a difference in the african tech and dev circle

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:21:34 +0000

We want to start highlighting people making a difference in the african tech circle…african or not. To put up their profiles, where possible have interviews with them to see what their vision for africa is, and what they are doing to get us there. From ceo’s who are willing to experiment with technology, government officials adopting tech for increased efficiency at their ministry, developers doing great work, leaders of interesting initiative…the full hog.

Now to track them down and get their stories…done during the 20% hours we will need your help…any guys doing great work that you know of or would like to know more about…just drop us a note.

Standard Investment Bank launches Easy Hisa, with Symbiotic deploying the messaging fuctionality

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:40:27 +0000

Over the last year, Symbiotic Media has been working on EasyHisa with Standard Investment Bank to implement the our robust messaging technology and gateway to realize the vast benefits that EasyHisa has to offer including diaspora access to their accounts via sms from their country of residence.

It is great to finally have EasyHisa out. Standard Investment Bank have come out strongly as being forward thinking and early adopters….but most importantly I commend their support of local talent and competence…they did not import technology from outside our borders but chose to engage local qualified companies and individuals such as ourselves to make the product a success.

Time and again at different forums I advocate for firms to engage local developers to develop the industry as well as set Kenya apart in the African region for software development.

More importantly, the current extensions under development will see the stock trading business overhauled yet again with real-time bank account access and plugin to all major available money transfer services to allow investors take full advantage of real- time information and trading.

Here is an excerpt from SIB chairman’s speech, more pictures and video to come…

Every few years, there is a leap in technology that changes how we do our work, how we invest or how we live our lives. The cellphone changed our lives in ways we never imagined. In the Capital markets there was the Central Depository System and the Automated Trading System, which improved the efficiency of the trading cycle from weeks to 5 days. The wide area network further enabled stockbrokers to trade from the comfort of their offices.

We need to keep our market intadem with the innovations coming through information technology.

We introduce EasyHisa, as the next leap in technology that will change how we trade on the Nairobi Stock Exchange once again. This is an important milestone in our Capital Markets.

Easy Hisa is a new sms service from Standard Investment Bank that allows an investor to rade shares from the comfort of their home or office. The service is so efficient that certain paribus, an order sent is processed and delivered to the exchange within one hour.

Let us ask ourselves, how much it costs to trade on the exchange currently? Along with the commission to the Stock broker there are other extra costs to you the investor.

There is the cost of transportation in which our customers, through our research, have informed us to be between KShs 100 and KShs 1,000.

There is the cost of time away from your employment, business or family. A lot of customers cannot leave their employment or business during the week and sacrifice instead to come in on Saturday when they could have been taking care of other personal matters.

The third is the cost of opportunity. This cost, suffered by some investors, is one that is very important when trading in shares. Profits that you could have made may be lost if you cannot trade instantly.

With Easy Hisa these extra costs are greatly reduced or eliminated altogether.

For instance, remember that Safaricom went as high as Kshs 7.80 before going down to the current prices we see today, Now imagine that a simple SMS would have enabled you to lock in such a profit as you continue with your day to day business. That is why you must have Easy Hisa today.

This service enables you to, among other things, place orders, check the balance in your account or the value of your shares and even hold an order if the price has moved in a way you did not expect. As you can see, there is true control over your shares with this service.

In conclusion, our esteemed customers continuously call for us to improve our service beyond their expectations and we continue to accept the challenge.

The Chairman of the Capital Markets Authority, Mr Cheserem during the University challenge, also asked the industry to face up to this challenge and offer mobile trading among other services and therefore this Launch of the SMS trading is also an answer to that call.

Easy Hisa,

Trade shares anytime anywhere via SMS.

Google’s Africa Strategy: Search And Trade Via SMS

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:36:12 +0000

Google goes the SMSoko way

Not only does Google want to organize all the world’s information, it also wants to make all that information available to everyone in the world. For the majority of the world’s population, that means making it available on a cell phone, and not a fancy iPhone or Android with a Web browser either. I’m talking about $10 cell phones with not much more than voice and SMS capabilities. If Google can reach people, especially in developing nations, with SMS, it can reach everyone with a cell phone.

In Africa, it is launching a suite of SMS services today, including SMS search, Q&A-style tips, and an SMS-based marketplace.

Device compatibility is paramount

admin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:10:55 +0000

Over one billion new mobile devices are sold each year. Each mobile device model has unique characteristics and performs differently on different mobile networks.

Handset fragmentation makes it difficult to provide a mobile service for the mass market. The proliferation of mobile operating systems and environments – Symbian, BREW, Java ME,Windows Mobile, Mobile Linux, BlackBerry OS, iPhone and, most recently, Android — creates additional complexity. It makes mass deployment of a wireless service extremely problematic.
In view of this dilemma, vendors of proprietary mobile email software have purposely restricted offerings to a limited set of devices. A prime example is Research In Motion (RIM). Its proprietary push email solution runs only on a handful of BlackBerry devices. This may work when the addressable market is made up of a relatively homogenous group of enterprise users that primarily require access to one system (Exchange). But when the target audience is a large varied mix of consumers and prosumers, then an all-inclusive approach – one designed from the ground up to work on a multitude of devices – makes better sense.
Leveraging a solution that runs on as many phones as possible is an recipe for success that enables mobile operators and service providers to address their largest possible market.

2.2 It pays to be open… source
For this reason, an open source approach is ideal to address the market for mobile email. In contrast to proprietary software, open source is furthered by the parties that contribute to its development. What’s more, all parties are encouraged to change and improve it.
As a result, the quality, ease-of-use and performance of open source software now rival that of proprietary software. A prime example is Linux, software that benefits from a large and loyal developer community. Against this backdrop, mobile operators and service providers are increasingly using open source software, from operating systems to infrastructure and, most recently, extending that up the software stack to mobile apps and services. It reduces their internal complexity and
cost and levels the playing field.
When it comes to mobile, the primary value that open source provides is broad device compatibility. Take the case of Funambol, which is the largest mobile open source project in the world. Its software has been downloaded more than two million times by a community of 50,000 developers around the world. Their community tests and improves the software
running on a wide range of devices and mobile networks. Because developers can access the code, they can quickly pinpoint and resolve issues. This world’s ‘largest virtual mobile development and quality assurance team’ enables Funambol to support 1.5 billion mobile handsets, including the latest mobile devices much more quickly than proprietary approaches.
It is the only proven and practical way to address device fragmentation. Another value of open source to mobile is that it provides the maximum control for deployments. This is crucial because mobile is inherently complex and there is no substitute
to having source code as the ultimate flexible safety valve. Open source also provides superior value because its economics are significantly different than that of proprietary software. This is why industry analysts and users view open source as a disruptive force in the industry. It involves significantly lower development, QA, sales and marketing costs, which translates into cost savings which ripple throughout the value chain.

In summary: Using open source allows mobile operators and service providers to successfully deploy compelling new services such as mobile email to the mass market.

3. An offer they can’t refuse – free
While open source makes it possible to deliver mobile email to a mass market, the new key to success is to make it free.
A recent industry survey of mobile phone users in the U.K., Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. conducted by Vanson Bourne, a specialist research-based technology marketing consultancy, reveals that 79 percent of respondents would accept ads attached to email messages if the mobile email service was free. The survey also found that a whopping 98 percent of respondents cited cost as a reason for not trying or using new mobile data services in the past.

3.1 Ad-funded drives results
How does an ad-funded mobile email model work? And would it benefit the business ecosystem of service providers and advertisers? Do the math, and the following example proves ad-funded services drive positive results up and down the value chain.
Consider the following scenario: Advertisers are willing to pay 20 euros per CPM (1,000 ad impressions). A typical email user receives 10 emails per day, which exposes them to 300 ads per month, which is .3 of a CPM per month. This user generates 6 euros of value per month. This must cover the cost of providing mobile email to the user, including the data traffic for the service, with the balance shared by those in the value chain. This can enable a service provider to net one to two euros per user per month. When multiplied by hundreds of thousands or millions of users who are attracted to free email, this represents a lucrative new revenue stream.

Service providers clearly benefit from offering an ad-supported service; but they can achieve a sustainable competitive advantage only if they are also first-to-market. Indeed, a review of free and paid mobile services shows first-mover advantage can literally pay dividends. Specifically, a free service that is also the first to market can chalk up an adoption rate of
between 10 and 20 times that of a comparable paid service. In the case of mobile email, a service offered as part of a paid subscription model might typically achieve a modest 1 to 3 percent uptake. In contrast, a first-to-market ad-funded
mobile email service might be adopted by a mass user base of 10 to 20 times that amount. In a nutshell, the first to market can cash in on mass market demand for ad-supported services. A first-mover advantage is enjoyed by the service provider that understands this trend and – more importantly – acts on it.
Connect the dots and there is intriguing evidence that an ad-funded or ad-subsidized go-tomarket model is the only approach that will drive service adoption among cost-conscious mass market users. Put simply, an ad-funded business model is the only approach that gives people the service they want at minimal or no cost, while allowing mobile operators and service providers to generate significant revenue.

3.2 Relevancy rules!
The success of an ad-funded mobile email solution is dependent upon the propensity of users to accept and act upon the mobile ads they are shown. Studies show that users are more likely to pay attention when the brand messages are genuinely useful and relevant. Put simply, consumers welcome advertising that is in tune with their own lifestyles and life stages.
Indeed, a series of recent reports indicate ad-funded content and services models are set to gain serious traction if the advertising presented to consumers can be tailored more to their needs. A survey of consumers conducted by global market research firm Ipsos Mori, for example, found that over a third of 16 to 34 year-olds who own a mobile phone are happy to
receive mobile advertising in return for free content such as music, games or video. However, the study cautions that effective advertising must be “creative, relevant, and non-intrusive.”
Anything else is spam.
What is a useful service? Interestingly, there is mounting evidence that consumers place location-aware advertising, such as coupons from local stores or special offers from shops nearby, at the top of the list. To be sure, relevancy – and hence useful advertising – must leverage the clues an individual leaves behind – including demographic data, preferences, past purchasing history, browsing patterns and location. However, it is paramount that such systems respect individual privacy.
One way to ensure that advertising is not perceived as intrusive is to offer users the option to opt-out in return for a small monthly fee. That way, the consumer is empowered to accept advertising on their terms only.

3.3 The Right Stuff
Spoiled by the Internet, where the price of bandwidth and storage have dropped dramatically, mass market users expect the majority of Web content and communications services to be free. Indeed, the Web has become the land of the free and the impact of the companies whose businesses touch the Web has been profound. “There has never been a more competitive market than the Internet,” Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired magazine and author of the milestone book The Long Tail, writes in his new book FREE. “And every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing.”
Put simply, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Artists such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails offer music for free – and make a profit in the process; the fastest growing segments of the gaming industry are free-to-try massively multiplayer games; and Google and Yahoo! cleverly offer every service free to consumers.

adapted from Free For All:The Untapped Opportunity for Mass Market Mobile by mSeach Groove

The corporate diary…keeping track of where we are from

admin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:23:34 +0000

We have often said over those coffee meetings at Java (god bless them and their wonderful steak) that we need to document every step of our copmanies growth. Pictures, videos, notes…whatever. Why?

I personally tthink its important because seldom is the story ever as real, once true success has been achieved. This I have experienced first hand from having talks with persons I kinda look up to as having achieved success. (Perhaps i should go back and do interviews for posting here) Thing is, there always feels as if some magic has been lost through the years as success becomes the norm, with the sweat blood and tears having been forgotten. The way up is what draws inspiration as what the world expects is excellence, so its the journey there that matters….for now at least.

East Africa has fiber-optic cable — now what?

admin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:08:10 +0000

In the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, traditional dancers gyrated to tunes, as is common in all functions that involve the president. It was a big day for East Africa because The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS) was home.In the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, traditional dancers gyrated to tunes, as is common in all functions that involve the president. It was a big day for East Africa because The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS) was home.After a year of hype and threats by the notorious Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, the ship laying the cable docked at the landing station earlier this week, escorted by a French navy ship.

The region has been waiting for TEAMS to light up because it has been billed as the most affordable telecommunications option, given the combination of government and private sector ownership. Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Northern Tanzania and Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have been busy finalizing their national fiber backbone to get ready for the cable’s arrival.

In west Africa, there hasn’t been much dancing or celebration even though the Africa Development Bank has invested US$240 million for a 7,000-kilometer fiber-optic cable from Portugal through Ghana to Nigeria. The investment by ADB will bolster the South Atlantic 3/ West African Submarine cable, which connects western and southern Africa countries.

The lack of celebration in West Africa may be rooted in the fact that SAT 3 has been operational since 2002. It has been underutilized, the cost of connectivity remains high and the region is still dependent on satellite.

It was therefore understandable that west Africa was not as excited as east Africa. The people in the region have been there and have had their hopes dashed.

The infrastructure investments and developments in the continent therefore raise several questions: Does the problem lie in infrastructure? Content? Policy? Access and pricing?

One major expectation is that the cost of connectivity in east Africa will decline. Businesses have been promised a drop from US$2,500 per megabyte to $400 per megabyte. But how will the cost come down when the market is dominated by the private sector?

“Most of the regional telecom infrastructure initiatives are dictated by commercial agreements between private telecom suppliers; the governments are always caught in the middle between the private sector motive of increasing shareholder value and reducing price for user[s],” said John Walubengo, acting dean of ICT at the Kenya Multimedia University.

The most complicated part is that the big telcos such as Kenya Data Networks, Access Kenya, Jamii Telecom, Safaricom and Telkom Kenya are also the major owners of TEAMS, while the rival SEACOM cable project is wholly private. No company has come up with ways to bring prices down, or said what will happen to those with business contracts for the older technology.

“Cables alone will not bring prices down. Cables plus competition will bring prices down. In instances where cables are controlled by the incumbent operators, prices will be slow to come down,” said Steve Song, telecommunications fellow at Shuttleworth Foundation.

The investors have maintained that the prices will come down, but have not talked about how open their business models would be to people who have not invested but would like to lease the infrastructure.

“The companies that bought shares in TEAMS have invested heavily and will need to recoup those costs before any significant cost savings can be realized by the consumer,” said Mbugua Njihia, CEO of Symbiotic Media, one of the companies that has invested in online products for the youth.

The case of SAT 3 has shown that for the cable to have any meaningful effect on the common person, there must be awareness and open access. The people in urban areas will go online to access e-mail, but rural folk with no prior Internet experience will have to find a relevant reason to go online.

“A lot of people (business people and the regular people) still don’t see the real value that connectivity brings, especially concerning access to information,” said Njihia. “The government and ICT board should shift focus to awareness, otherwise people will have no reason to use the digital villages.”

“No content, no motive to go online, but 80 percent of Kenyans live upcountry,” said Walubengo. “The rural community will only get online once government services (health, agriculture, education, registrations) get online.”

The debate about online content has been going on in the region for some time, and the World Bank has approved content grants that are yet to be disbursed. Content localization has also been an issue, with some people arguing that the sort of content that would add value to the rural community is different from that which would be valuable to an urban user.

“There is no use in having agricultural extension service videos and lessons in English to a group of farmers who do not understand English and would not make sense of it. Currently I don’t think there is sufficient content to serve to the more rural populations that would add value to their lives,” added Njihia.

Bandwidth may be the most popular reason why Africa lags behind as an investment destination, but there are other factors such as legislation, politics and corruption.

“Besides bandwidth, we have to show the world that Africa is the place to invest by demystifying stereotypes and improving governance structures, [and] embracing democracy and issues relating to competitiveness,” said Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication.

“Africa has to shorten the red tape, make it easy to establish a business, operate according to rule of law and deal with corruption,” said Song.

The east Africa community will face the ultimate litmus test when dealing with costs among countries and policy harmonization. For instance, one of the challenges facing SAT 3 is a discriminatory tendency among regional operators, which charge more in one country compared to others even when the infrastructure is the same.

Though Ndemo insists that the region is working on policy harmonization to ensure nondiscriminatory provision of services, the EAC is not known for its speed in debating and passing policy documents.

Whether the issues are resolved or not, it is clear that access, content, reach and availability, quality of services and ICT literacy are just as important as the bandwidth cost.

Meeting with rep from Naspers…

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 11:45:17 +0000

Met just for a polite coffee at the Junction

The leaner you are, the easier it is to change

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:35:06 +0000

Lessons from Keeping it Real by 37 signals

The more massive an object, the more energy is required to change its direction. It’s as
true in the business world as it is in the physical world.
When it comes to web technology, change must be easy and cheap. If you can’t change
on the fly, you’ll lose ground to someone who can. That’s why you need to shoot for less
mass.

Mass is increased by…
· Long term contracts
· Excess staff
· Permanent decisions
· Meetings about other meetings
· Thick process
· Inventory (physical or mental)
· Hardware, software, technology lock-ins
· Proprietary data formats
· The past ruling the future
· Long-term roadmaps
· Office politics

Mass is reduced by…
· Just-in-time thinking
· Multi-tasking team members
· Embracing constraints, not trying to lift them
· Less software, less code
· Less features
· Small team size
· Simplicity
· Pared-down interfaces
· Open-source products
· Open data formats
· An open culture that makes it easy to admit mistakes

Less mass lets you change direction quickly. You can react and evolve. You can focus on
the good ideas and drop the bad ones. You can listen and respond to your customers. You
can integrate new technologies now instead of later. Instead of an aircraft carrier, you
steer a cigarette boat. Revel in that fact.

Forum Nokia Calling All Innovators contest – Sembuse takes to the world stage

admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:50:00 +0000

After taking Sembuse through the paces and incorporating some of the feedback we have received, we are taking Sembuse to the world stage to compete with the best at the – Forum Nokia Calling All Innovators contest.

This is our chance as Symbiotic to showcase homegrown talent, creativity and innovation on the world stage, and even (fingers crossed) see Sembuse on millions of Nokia devices around the world.
Forum Nokia, Nokia’s global developer Programme, challenges mobile and web application developers worldwide to submit best-in-class applications for use on Nokia devices.

We are submitting Sembuse under the Emerging Markets and Mobile Necessities category, where developers are to create innovative applications across mobile technology platforms – ranging from SMS through Series 40 and S60 device platforms. All applications will be considered, including those developed using Java, Python, or open source.
These additional areas reflect the desire to identify applications and services which enable Nokia mobile users to be in control of their busy lives and easily manage their frequent interactions with family and friends. At the same time, the applications are not just about personal productivity. Think entertainment and fun, too.
Some examples of the types of applications that the judges will be looking for include:
• Communications – Innovative applications that span mobile technology platforms – ranging from SMS through Series 40 and S60 device platforms – to improve communications for people in rural and semi-urban areas worldwide.

• Emerging Markets – This includes applications designed to meet the needs and improve the daily lives of millions of people living in rural and semi-urban areas worldwide. It can include applications for education, health care and more.

• Entertainment – Applications for social networking; gaming; music and media services to create, edit and share content with friends; recommendations for things to do, such as concerts or movies; or perhaps premium services where individuals can discover and share new ideas and information with one another.

• Life Balance – Applications that support individuals in their choice to live a healthy life by suggesting ways to improve physical and mental abilities.

• Personal Information Management – Applications for things like time management, navigation, information search.

• Personal Security – Applications that provide solutions to you and your family, such as how to get back a lost or stolen device, or an alarm system for your mobile.

• Social responsibility – Applications that guide individuals to make the right ethical choice and lead a sustainable lifestyle.

And we believe that Sembuse fits the bill on more than one of these fronts. If it were to be decided through a user vote, we are sure we would win the 30,000 $ coz you would all vouch for us, but unfortunately its sheer innovation and talent that will see us through this one
Haya basi…twende kazi