Dreams Come True Once You Follow Them

Tales on UbuntuNet Conference from Safari Park Hotel, Nairobi November 26, 2011

Well, if it said in words, the number might not be enough to express everything. Tens of booths for exhibitions and still counting is not such a small number. On top of that the exhibition area is inside a conference hall; shielding the exhibitors from the morning chilly bites of Nairobi, but instead curdling them inside the warmth of an African traditional house set-up.

All these guys with delegate tags was just an awesome sight to see. Then Dorothy Wawira comes to me smiling so broadly; do you guys know Dorothy? Well, she is this type of a lady; charming with broad smiles, with just excellent brown skin complexion. I bet the husband must be one happy fellow on this universe. Such fair ladies are rare jewels to come by. Enough of that! If I continue this way, I see myself not finishing up this story.

Then came the part for explaining stuff to delegates. Can you imagine experts behaving like small kids; with a tinge of asking all manner of questions? Of course some questions need simple reasoning; no offense with anyone. Am just narrating what was happening.

There was a chic playing a robot. Just so kiddish but fun. Kiddish because of seeing a grown up person playing with a robot. Of course that should not give you ideas on where I come from. The robot that was in use was actually part of a solution for controlling cars remotely. With the use of a simple phone that runs android operating system, you have all that it takes to control your robot car. I guess here children have a big stake. All work without play makes all boys and girls dull. The solution was designed by Mike, Dennis, Karama and Humphrey; JKUAT’s mechatronics engineering students. Of the four, Humprey is in his fourth year of undergraduate study and the rest are finalists. To everyone finalists is a term used to denote students in their final year of study.

Snacks were served, just at the right time with coffee cups. For the lovers of coffee, this was not just ordinary coffee, but Kenyan coffee. Oh! The smell of well roasted and ground coffee beans! James Njogu started having ideas and salivating. My pocket was suffering from malnutrition that day, and because of that my hand was incapacitated from stretching more inches deep inside the pocket. The Swahili people say normally one can scratch the far his hand can stretch. The good thing is that there is always a next time.  I had to buy time to wait for the free coffee.

I never had a chance of peeping into the conference presentation, but from what I had delegates discuss during the coffee breaks, I think next time there is such an event, I will not accept responsibilities that will deter me from getting knowledge right from the source.

Mbelase Mikhail was presenting on a GPS asset tracking solution. This dude is a final year electrical and electronics engineering student at JKUAT. With his solution you can basically track all your assets. What do you need? Just a tiny gadget and access to the internet and then of course time to track your assets from the comfort of your bedroom.

I enjoyed being given free things; pens and reading materials. It is not frequently that someone gets free things. With the dwindling of the shilling, getting a free pen or a diary is such a memorable event than ever.

WordCamp Kenya 2011 at Crayfish Camp Naivasha November 13, 2011

Crayfish Camp

If I had a choice, I wouldn’t miss this one. WordCamp Kenya was a conference about the most popular blogging and content management system; WordPress. WordPress has a 15.3% stake in world websites according to statistics. The WordCamp conference presented a great chance to meet up with people of like mind and learn. This was the first time the conference was coming to East Africa; and was held in an actual camping site – Crayfish camping site. The camping site is on the shores of Lake Naivasha. Participants of the conference were drawn from the Kenyan techie and blogging community.

The participants traveled from Nairobi on the November 12, 2011 to Naivasha for the conference. On arrival introductions were done; participants got to know each other. There after there was health break and the conference started with opening remarks from the Kenya ICT Board. Moses Kemibaro, one of the top Kenyan bloggers made a presentation on his journey into blogging and experiences so far. Francis Waithaka made a presentation on search engine optimization and why it is important to bloggers. Kelvin Jayanoris, a Kenyan techie, gave a success story on wordpress plugin and theme development. There was a monetization session; a dialogue of all the participants led by Njeri Rionge. The Ushahidi crew were not left behind; they made a brief presentation on their products and interfacing with wordpress. With all that done day one ended with a poetry session in the evening by Kenyan Poet and others. All was just fun. More such like events should be held often in the future.