Running the C4D route

Running the C4D route

I have to give it to the people who organize seminars.  It is not easy and it may be disappointing and frustrating.  I have tried a few seminars myself and I am getting to accept that getting an audience may not be that easy.  I have learnt the trick of first listing the invited guests then taking an honest assessment of their likelihood to attend.  If this is not possible, I usually just work with 20% attendance.  These numbers do not disappoint me since they turn out to be the actual.  I shall however conduct a study that shall give me the authoritative numbers, but for now, work with 20.

It was therefore no surprise when I have the run-in with C4D (computers for development) seminar at the Savora Stanley and expected maybe a different picture at the meeting of stakeholders to discuss strategy on cloud computing.  Seven tables, each with seven seats on a circular format and hardly 20% members on any of the table, 30 minutes after due time.

Introductions
One of the members of my table makes an introduction, “Am Tonny”
“WB,” I say, only to realize am talking abbreviations.
“Am your student at School of Computing Chiromo,” I add.  It should be more like ‘former’, but I feel good that way.  “Am currently working on a new smartphone app at your C4D lab, that shall change the way we use the gadget,” I hesitate to add.

“Oh, you mean?  And which sector are you in now?”
“Running,” says my mind.  “Technology… Engineering, but my interest is ICT,” I am taken aback.
I struggle with the wifi that does not connect despite the notice at the head of the room reading, “Wifi password microsoft”.  I give up on the wifi and head to the blog story, even as the room fill up disappointingly slow.

I recall getting the notification for the meeting about a week ago from the UON C4D project.  I expected this to be a seminar overflowing with participants, especially the ICT enthusiasts in Kenya.  Surely, it is the strategy on cloud computing – the current big thing – that we were to formulate for Kenya!  FCOL!  Later I recognize other familiar faces from Chiromo – Prof. Waema, even as the meeting room finally fills up and am more proud to be part of the team that shall make history.

Scholars
When the seminar started at about 9.15am, Tonny introduced the subject matter and recognized the presence of those in attendance by forcing a self-introduction.  The scholars from UON were there – faculty and students.  MS was there – the cloud computing, attorney and corporate affairs.  The internet society was there, was as Jamii, Red Cross, Natural Disaster Management Authority, Elimu TV, Technobrain and MKU students.

C4D had done a baseline study where they confirmed that there was no regulatory standards for cloud computing in Kenya, hence the essence of this start-up discussions.  They hoped for a draft cloud computing strategy paper by end of year.  On their part, MS educated us on the various cloud computing approaches, where they marked themselves as the leader in all.  The move from traditional on premise ICT has moved to IaaS, PaaS and SaaS i.e. Infrastructure, Platform and Software as services.  They mentioned Azure as the solution to all.

More or less
All was going well, until around the lunch break and end of session, when MS provided us with a ‘less is more’ overview by their presenter who epitomized the saying ‘clothes that start late and end early’ – both top and bottom.  The things that we men are exposed to!

There was nothing special about dining at the Stanley, in fact, I could have forgotten the experience had it not been for the starter butter that delayed forever, forcing those on the same table to just give up.  On my part, I told them that I shall wait, “for as long as it takes” – which turned out to be about 15-minutes after the soup and three reminders to their serving staff later.

My day could have been perfect, had it not been messed up by my stockbroker.  I had just passed by there to change a dividend disposal bank account when I experienced a new message translation system at my very face.  To start with, I had to wait without service for about 30-minutes, then later I had to explain the same issue to about three staff and finally, they exposed me to third party messaging a.k.a. translations.

Translation
I was just seated outside an office door, when this took place:
“Tell him to wait for the refund from NSE,” I heard from behind the open door.
The lady then came to where I was, “Eh, Just wait for NSE refunds, since the cheques are not ready.”
“But I did not come for the cheque.  I have come to change the bank account for dividend disposal.”
The intermediary went back, and started explaining to her two fellow lady colleagues, “He says the bank account need changing.”

“Tell him that we shall deposit on the account that he gave us.”
She was back, “We shall deposit to the account that you gave.”
Mad is less than what I felt.  However, I counted ten to one and started the explaining all over again.  By the time they had given me another form to fill, to replace what they ‘could not trace’, despite having filled it not so long ago, I was totally moodless.


Big
Then again, I still had to prepare for the C4D project proposal of the following day, where Thomas and I are inventing the next big thing on smartphones, but let me not say yet, since when we finally presented the idea to the group of about ten inventors and students at UON Chiromo C4D lab, the questions were fast and fast…

“This is too good to be true,” a student started, “Are you sure you shall get this going?”
“This shall be the biggest thing on smart phones.  I have been frustrated by this problem myself and I shall be ready to buy your solution.  But are you sure it shall work?”
“How shall you get the money?  Do you want to rely on the same Telcos to give you back the money?  Those MFs shall keep all the money!  Am most, expect a 70:20 deal,” he paused, “70 for them!”
“Who shall program for you?  Are your good at coding?” a student asks.
“We generally expect to manage the top level issues of the project.  We shall provide the use cases, flow chart and AI logic.  We shall get a programmer to code in C# and translate to Android,” I clarified.
“Refine the idea incorporating the views expressed and let us have the revised proposal for our approval.  You can work with C4D on this,” the C4D coordinator finally put the matter to rest.
Quite an eventful 48-hours – but just the adventures of running.

Barack Wamkaya Wanjawa, Nairobi, Kenya

Running with the Belgian PM - quite a secure experience

Running with the Belgian PM - quite a secure experience

“This is the highest ranking European visitor since Kenyan elections 2013,” the organizer of the event, Ally Khan Sachu declared, as he welcomed Didier Reynders, the Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, who also doubles as the Minister for Foreign Affairs.  To be politically correct, his other docket is ‘Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and European Affairs’.  Ally has a way to ensuring that a statement sinks.  I tend to think that he was so excited being next to such a dignitary that he even forgot to introduce the sessions with the usual, “Welcome to today’s session of Mindspeak”.  But who cares, we were holding our breath waiting for the main address.  I was looking forward to a presentation like none before.  I was already fixing my eyes on the big projector screens.

But strange things happen, and the first was this other guy standing with a Mac laptop on the aisle, just about 7 metres from the podium.  He was standing to the left of my sitting position, two rows from the podium, almost at the centre of the big room.  The guy with the Mac just stood there, laptop open, laptop screen facing the speaker and... just standing.  I could not make out what this was all about.  Could it be that this is one of those high level protocol things?  How can they just punish this poor guy by having him hold the 5kg of laptop in mid-air for that long?  A few faces in the room turned, followed by whispers.

Amid all the uncertainties, some answers started trickling in, when he finally, after about 10 minutes, moved with his laptop to the back of the room, whether the audio visual mixing table was located.  I glanced back, and could see a video display on the laptop screen.  He must have been capturing a video of the podium using the inbuilt laptop camera… but why would he do that?  Why would he have to hold the laptop?  Could he not get a laptop stand?  Could they not use better video capturing equipment or technology?  But there were already expensive looking camcorders, located at the front and back of the room - was this not enough, I have never been so confused.

Speech
A second oddity was the fact that the DPM did not have any presentation or notes.  He just stood up, walked to the podium and started talking.  I believe that being a diplomat must have enabled him to just have a speech within his system.  In fact, during Q&A, one member of the audience deliberately congratulated him on being “the only speaker without a speech”.  Lack of a written speech or presentation meant that he also could not speak for long, unless this was part of the script.  He was on the podium for a record 25 minutes.  All speakers during previous sessions ensured they utilized the one hour time slot allocated between 10.00am and 11.00am.  A Q&A session would ordinarily take the next hour.  Finishing early however gave the audience over one and a half hours of questions in this particular occasion.

And the audience did not disappoint, as they asked about anything they thought was worthy of a diplomatic redress.  The DPM did not disappoint either.  Most questions were on the role of Belgium in the DRC, one of the counties that they colonized in Africa, though an almost equal number was about the relationship between the EU and China.
“What is your view on China?”, someone asks bluntly.

University
The topic on the lack of skilled manpower generated some debate, with the CEO of Safaricom, Bob Collymore diving in and stating that, “Universities are getting out of date”.  While the audience was about to give a sigh of discontent, he added that, “Last year’s technology is not relevant this year”.  To ensure he remains the talk in town, he finalized, “… That is why not everybody should go to the university”

On democracy, the diplomat said that democracy should not only be stated, but must also be seen.  He drove this home by comparing the elections in the US where two candidates were vying for the top seat and those in China where there was one contestant.  However, by mentioning ‘China’ more than twenty times during his speech and answers, it was evident that this was a country worth paying close attention to.

Just around mid-day, the session came to an end and the podium once again was taken over by the men-in-black.  As we milled out of the five star hotel, we had a few moments to reflect on the events of the day, and how high level diplomats operate. 

Reflection… when I arrived, I noticed some smartly dressed gentlemen strategically positioned near each of the doors.  Of course, the promised breakfast was not available by 9.00am when I arrived.  Piled up cutlery alluded to a sumptuous breakfast earlier, but who could have benefited, if by nine there was nothing?  For a meeting whose reporting time was nine?  Could it be that our fellow stocks investors now come to these meetings at 8.00am?

Chicken
Reflections... In the meeting room, it was business unusual.  Ten minutes to ten, while the wiring of the audio-visual system was being finalized, three smartly dressed Kenyans moved to the podium and almost literally ripped the carpet apart, looking underneath for... for what?  As two of them crouched near the wires, to scrutinize them, a protrusion could clearly be seen forcing itself towards their backs from under their coats, just above the waist line.  That was the easiest “chicken leg” that one could ever notice.  It was that evident.  The observable trio also tested and looked through all doors and emergency exits.  With such a treat, it was apparent that this was high level function, even as the guests arrived about five minutes to ten.  The smartly dressed guys had surely every reason to be armed.

Back to the street, I mingled with the masses and soon was running into a matatu to carry me back to Central.  “Kwaheri, rudi tena,” the signboard read, as I lighted from the matatu and walked to my residence.  It was just another Saturday in mid-August and life was full of its usual Kenyan hustle.

WWB, Nairobi, Kenya, August 17, 2013