Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Safaricom Cloud. (Pic: http://myusbport.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cloud-computing.jpg)

I know. The net is down. Is your business down too? Well, don’t blame the NET. Or the FibreCut. Blame your disaster-unpreparedness.

Everyone is wailing on Twitter and facebook as if Mark Zuckerberg will send over some KBPSes.

The internet is slower than ninii ya nanii. Sitasema nini.

But typical of Kenyans, we will talk about LOCAL solutions, but not actually USE them.

I believe a big percentage of Kenyan websites and setups are ‘in the cloud’. But a REMOTE cloud. Ofcourse. We love foreign. We worship foreign. But that is not the point today. The excuse was always that ‘AccessKenya is too expensive’, ‘UUNET are too rigid’, ‘KenyaWeb are too local’. Etc.

So, many people, RIGHT NOW, cannot access their BUSINESS WEBSITES. Uploads cannot be sent. Changes to sites must wait 3 more weeks. What a pity.

Ofcourse, Salim and Co are online. TumaSMS.com is up. All my sites are up. Why? Because we have a local hop. A local pop. A local Colo. Costs like a maffaka, but ensures 100% uptime. No matter what. All a client needs to connect to all Symbiotic Services is a connection to the Local loop of the KIXP.

Do this, Call Safaricom today and get a piece of the cloud. Or contact me and I host you locally. Amua leo. Get a local pop. No Internet required.

Ni hayo tu.

Back to code.

Wazi.

Kenya. Yep, Kenya. Made in kenya.

Hata sijui nianze wapi manze. For once, I knoweth not where to start.

But one thing is for sure. If you expect a GV-rated censored post written by a journalistic pussy, you have come to the WRONG blog. Hii ni blog ya Salim. I run this bitch. I blogeth the way I wanteth.

And thats whats up! Ita polisi.

Nimeaka leo ngware since leo from 10am nitakuwa kwa a certain server room doing some IPSec manenos. So I decided to peep on twitter and see what the lonely, sad and idle low-lives are saying/doing. Twitter is the only salvation to 9 out of every 10 tweeps in Kenya. Everyone is a celeb and their ‘opinion matters’. But then I see my home Lan’s SNMP-run Disk Full lights flicker. How can my 2.8 TB Home storage be full in a night? I wonder to my self.

But ohh, no! This dude right here was not to be left dumbfounded and all panicky. Not this dude from Isiolo. Not Idd Salim. I have seen stranger things happen. So I start investigating what could have filled my disk. Usual cuplrits first. I slip my hand inside my boxers and, yes, jibaba lao was still in there. Sleeping. So it could not have been the one filling the Disk. Then I realize it was the dust from Jammu. I shook the disk and bam! 2.5 TB Freed. Talk of the Teke-nology.

Kwani hii blog post itaanza saa ngapi? Over to Bwana Mwai.

You see him at iHub. Among the people GutterPress would describe as ‘iHub Drunkards’. Typing code all day and deep into the night. Testing, banging the tables. Pressing CTRL-A and Delete. Redoing the code again. Testing again. And again. Seeing Mac-touting and iPhone-waving Kids running on Daddy’s money and a ‘Knowworamseng Accent’ come over to the iHub as tourists and making noise laughing like retards on heat while sipping Capuchino from Pete’s coffee.

Getting annoyed by this. “This is a TechSpace. Can these fuckers go to a Bowling alley or something”, He wonders silently. Covering the ears with loud headphones playing undecipherable Metal and Kwaite. Covering their entire being with FOCUS and an EYE on the PRICE. Looking at the laptop and whispering to it : “It’s just you and me baby!! Just you and me!!”

Nothing else matters to this breed of self-driven and self-actualized beings. One thing only. Code. For the love of code. Code, for what code used to be and still should be. An Art. A way to express your inner genius. A way to show mere mortals what can be.

AroundMe version 1. 250, 000 downloads. No revenue. AroundMe version 2. Tried a failed Ad Model. But the lessons were many. As I spoke to him, I could see a winner. And now, the whole world sees one. The list of Winners is CLEAR and Out in the Open. A single Kenyan coder getting all Nyeri-female-ish on the world and BEATING them to pulp in a Code compatition.

Made in Kenya, for the world

Eur 75, 000. Yes. 75, 000. Si 700. Hapana. Ni nini wewe? Meza mate. Si 7, 500. 75, 000. Repeat after me. 75, 000. Biatch!! 8M + richer.

Na wewe bado uko employed.

Endelea kuwa na job security.

Fala.

Aki leo nanunulia mtu Lunch. Nani ana roho? [And by Nani simaanishi yule shoga wa ku-dive].

**Whistles away**. The virginity has been broken. Finally, a REAL CODER wins big. Achana na corporates winning. Under-the-table deals. Etc. A Coder has won today. And today, is going to be a good day. No matter what.

All hail Mwai for making the rest of us proud.

Back to code.

Wazi.

I had the grand pleasure of meeting the top brass in the ICT sector today at InterCon.

The breakfast meeting was scheduled to run from 730am to latest 9am.

Ofcourse, as the formal occasion demanded, I needed to look business-person-ish.

Apart from being 90% coder, I am also 10% businessman.

So, I put on my Zara suit. I then thought twice. This was so much an overkill. Keep it simple. So I removed the coat and just put on a v-neck sweater, a simple tie and my Ethipioan leather shoes. Simple, presentable and as Nzioka of Safaricom described it, dapper.

I once asked my good friends GM and PM why they decided to get an office just a stone-throw from iHub, whereas they were ‘Green Members’ and could save on the rent. “Kuzoeana na watu.”, they told me. “You hang around people long enough, they start thinking you are friends, or the same, or equal. They start thinking they can say anything to you.”, GM continued. “You lose respect”. “You dress well, and it becomes an issue. ‘Leo umen’gara buda’. As if they always expect you to remain stagnant. A scruffy techie always coming to toil at the iHub”.

For once I thought they were just short-fused and could not take a joke, until you come with a serious client to the iHub, well-dressed for a meeting, then guys start applauding you until the client wonders, “Did this guy dress up just for me?”. Such childishness. Such un-professionalism.

Enough about me. But kuna limit ya utoto na kazi.

So, I went to the meeting and met the usuals. The eloquent Lewela, the pulchritudinous K Kobia, the meticulous Kukubo, the mellifluous and straight-to-the-point Bob and, ofcourse, the one and only Osumba.

Safaricom reiterated it’s undying commitment to support the Kenyan ICT Sector and paid up KSHS 5M towards sponsorship of the event this year. Bob also explained that TEAMS cable, that carries 60% of Safaricom’s data was cut and they switched to SEACOM which could not handle the capacity. Mpesa has since been switched to a dedicated Satellite link, a VERY EXPENSIVE move, in terms of expense, but reliable to make sure Mpesa works 100% of the time, without delays.

Brilliant. Bob gave me 52 more seconds, and I took him through the ground-breaking concept of harnessing the potential of ‘Computing Power as a Service.’ I explained how the CLOUD setup gives people availability and redundancy, but ignores the 30% of the market that needs POWER. And this was the positioning of the ISIOLO cluster. He expressed interest and demanded to SEE the setup in action when done.

Ofcourse, one thing that was missing in PK’s and AL’s speeches was WHAT we had ACHIEVED after last year’s ConnectedKE conference. There was no review of the objectives of last year. And this is one of my grievances. Of course, I say this with the hope that if I speak out about what I think is not working, I will not be castigated. That it will be taken positively and used to improve the engagement as we move on.

PK talked also about todays BBC’s airing of Tuskees Systems, SchoolSMS product. Nothing new or innovative, but Tuskees were the first ones to do it PROPERLY.

And this is a good lesson for local entrepreneurs. No matter how many people have done a solution, if no one has done it RIGHT, then the opportunity is there to be seized. Simple as. Kudos Tuskees.

Ofcourse, as always, there has been no move from the ICT board etc, to put Tuskees on the map. I believe in the power of a mention, but I think unrelenting people like Tuskees need more that just words. I am sure they would not mind a grant to push forward what is CLEARLY a working and NEEDED solution.

But, ohh well. Welcome to Kenya. I think we should finish Konza first. Then support akina Tuskees. Au sio? Ohh, the priorities!!

Well, code no mob leo. Na sijajam saaaana leo. Na kwa hayo machache.

Back to code.

Wazi.

Utadhani City ni code

Ok. Nimerudi sasa.

Sam ameandika blog post moja professional sana about Startup Weekend at the NaiLab. Obvious mlijua si Salim ameandika hiyo. Coz that ngoso joo!! Sijuagi ngoso. Na sijaligi. Sijui grammar, diction ama kama nitajamisha msee.

Ukijam, ita karao. Nitamkanja.

Ok. No foreplay today, honey. Straight to Konza. Leo nimewaka kiasi. Na code. Twende kazi.

Konza city is a noble initiative. This  I will not deny. Only a fool would. And there are many fools online nowadays. I pray daily that they don’t breed. When I write about an issue, I give credit where it is due, then write about what I don’t like. I still retain my hard-on even when corrected and I accept if I am ever wrong. As I sometimes am. So nikikosea, nishoo tu “Salim, you were wrong there. It should be ABC, not CBA.”

Locus Standi

Keyword: Technology.

A country of hypocrates, pretenders, wannabes and second-rate realists when it comes to REAL issues.

What is the BEST technology Kenya has produced since 1963? Apart from Bonoko and Ngeta-echnology? Okoa Jahazi? NO! This was copied. Zap/Mpesa? No. These were copied (ofcourse, executed to the best result, not model, in Kenya.). Maybe Pearl Omega. But does Obel get any support, recognition or funding to continue with his Kenyan version of ‘Umlingo WamaNgcolosi‘, Hell NO!! Maybe a super-awesome car-control-system via SMS. But does Mbetsa get the right guidance and support? Hell NO!!

And that’s whats up. We kill and hide our geniuses while we get all wet when talking about foreign systems. Aki nimeanza kujam. Fuck!

Kenya is slowly becoming Arsenal. Fighting to build BIG stadiums but never invest in producing the best players of the game. And then you wonder why they call you bitch. You biatch!! End result, half-brain professionals inundated in hubris and half-baked coders who think ‘ps -aux | grep idiot’ is a complex linux command.

I will not talk about the Safaricom Cloud here. Saa hii nimejam. Naweza toboa sufuria. I will find avenues to address this. But I am just saddened by what we call innovations. What we call ‘Our own’. How low the tech-scene is in Kenya, while the media keeps making people think we are all that. While there is SO MUCH we can do. We just always seem to focus on the OBVIOUS.

And this is what Konza is. @mbuguanjihia questioned this stance. We have Sameer Business park that has 100% occupancy. Of air and dust. No techies. No one is interested, motivated or given an incentive to go to Sameer, a small business Park, but we want to build a FUCKIN CITY? And we think we can BUILD a TECHNOLOGY CITY. Such hubris. Such belief in our own ability as a country.

Of what purpose? To what end? If Konza City is meant to be a big bar with NyamChom and sluts and faggots filling it, then we have PLENTY of those in Kenya. It will fill in a week. But Technologist? Technologist?  Technologist?  Technologist? Get out of here!

Instead of planting trees and weeding them and watering them daily, we are busy drawing sketches of the Desks and Seats the trees will be cut to build when all grown? How will they grow? End-result, we buy trees from the US and Europe and curse our trees for not growing. What kind of idiotic backward thinking is this?

I will not talk about all these ‘foreigners’ who get funding from their home and become successful here with kindergarten and no-brainer products while our investors and related-bodies watch our geniuses with world-beater systems languish in capital deprivation. And this is the fundamental problem. The Entrepreneur support system. Or lack of one. Until you succeed, you are on your own. Once/if/when you succeed, the newsvan parks outside your home.

Then comes the mentality of coders. I have seen coders graduate from keyboard-to-mouth code-for-food coders to machiatto sipping boisterous and loud talking fuckers just because they got a pay-rise or work at a big telco. Code and the BASICS of being a master coder, a euber-techie have been forgotten. Coding has become like accounting or sales. An end-of-month-justification job.

We don’t have enough supply to handle all the jobs at iHub/NaiLab but we are building a City.

And this is what is going to happen.

Konza will be built. It will be completed. It will be empty for 5 years. All the server rooms will be turned to strip joints. Then the russians will come in. Then the chinese. Tough-breeds. Coders and technologists who take no prisoners. With companies and IPs registered in their mother countries. Fill Konza City. Take over the market. Take all our money.

And we will just stand there with our dicks in our hands saying : “Konza City is in Kenya. It is Kenyan”. But the innovations are not. But the money never ends up here. We are just like madem wa westie. Sitaendelea.

Tafakari hayo.

Back to code.

Wazi.