Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

You are as backward as you think.

God! I hate sleep. Sleep must be from from Satan. I look at my rolex and the time is right. It is 2011 in Kenya. 1981 in Uganda and 2013 in the US. Yes, biatch! We are catching up in a year or 2.

Who in their right mind would want to sleep, while there is so much to do. So much to code. So much to learn everyday. So much to invent. So many solutions to create for human problems. So many peers to impress with your coding prowess. So many haters to prove wrong. So many doubters to show off to with your new Kompressor. Fully paid for. In Cash.

In some disciplines like Medicine, Law, Agriculture or Martial Arts, you will always be at a disadvantage if you were studying in Africa. The best doctors, lawyers etc rarely come from Africa. Lazima uende majuu ndio ukuwe mnoma. This is because these disciplines depend on structures, infrastructure, the people and finances to get the best equipment etc. One more than the other.

The same sad and colonial thinking and bench-marking used to be applied to IT until 2010. But as we get bigger and more wise, all this goes out of the window. A Kenyan Techie/Coder has THE SAME platform to leverage their knowledge like the best coders from US/K and China and Russia. This is the beauty of the Internet. Such is the beauty of being a techie. Java ni Java. MB ni MB.

Chep, A friend of a close friend of mine, just went back to the US a few weeks ago. It took her 11 days to get connected to the Internet. It takes Zuku 35 Minutes to hook up a new subscriber to SuperFast home Internet. It takes Safaricom 56 seconds to get you on Mobile Internet. Like Marie asks, “Who is in the 3rd World now?”.

An Internet connection that used to cost KSHS 56, 200 2 years ago, and was only available for Corporates now costs KSHS 2, 000 per month and is available in my bedroom. True 4mBps Internet.

We have no excuse not to be as good as if not better than our coding counter-parts out there. Even in Mars.  In the US, they develop products to serve a need for people with full stomachs. In Africa, we have REAL needs that can be solved using technology. Life or death systems. Hence we have more appeal. More opportunities to express and impress. It is no wonder tech-events gets flooded by all these people from US and Europe coming to ‘listen to’ our ideas. We have the BEST ideas.

And so the challengeth cometh in:

Kenya right now is in exactly the same position South Africa was in 2002. Mobile data and Internet matured then, in SA. Finally, we have it all. Samsung bringing in phones that make the Ideos look like a Probox. Internet connections in Kenya Faster and Better than Even South Africa. What more would you ask for?

As a tech community, we have all we have ever wanted now. It is time we rose up to the challenge.

This is the model that I am sharing with anyone who cares to ask me what the next step should be:

1. Understand the Key Concepts of Programming. Understand Software Design. Don’t learn any language yet.
2. Decide to learn a real mature CORE language. [Java, C++, Python or Erlang].
3. Decide on a space. Mobile Apps? Web Apps? Desktop (cringe!!)
4. Understand the language to the bone. Not just to finish a project. In fact don’t have a project in mind. Just Know the language.
5. Understand Optimization, Concurrency, Data Structures.
6. Then now pick a project.
7. Identify like-minded people and delegate tasks.
8. Make a difference.

Let us make sure the NEXT BIG THING comes from Kenya. Apart from Mpesa and Ushahidi, there is really nothing KENYAN to talk about. Infact, there are some claims that Mpesa is Voda and Ushahidi is Harvard. So the ball is in our court.

Back to code…

Wazi.

What do you wanna do, now?

Ok. Normally I would not do this. Ati Explain a victory, or why a Benz is better than a Vitz, etc. But behind every successful man are 5 others who wish they were him, and 17 biatches who want to xuk hiz dzik.

A wise man changes his mind. A fool keeps on digging even while in Quick Sand. And by the way, this is NOT sijui IddSalim responding to some gutter press, etc. I am just blogging my thought. Simple as.

I always tell my peoplez, It is one thing to COMPLAIN about something you are not happy with; totally OK, but it is another totally unacceptable thing to be A-LIER and INSULT people just because you are too dumb to conform and get the big picture.

Then comes the haters, wannabes, trash-talkers etc. Gutter press will always have something to talk about. No matter how good you are. No one is perfect, and if you dig enough, there are skeletons in each one of our closets. So as a mature person, you have to decide. Do you want to be a sad loser and focus on the negative of everything and hate on everyone, or do you look at the tears and sweat people put in everyday and APPRECIATE the effort, no matter how little?

I am in no way a part of Shimba Technologies. I actually came to know about MedKenya AT PIVOT25. “Salim, they did this project behind your back?”, I am asked. Maybe. But I am mature enough to see why. To see the quality. And appreciate it. Even if it is not the work of my own hands. Not hate it and get all bitchy about other people’s successes.

Pivot25 Inauguration had 2 main purposes:

1 – To set a precedence to future ICT Developer Events. Let developers know that there are millions to be made here. Know that there is hope and life in code. Know that all you need is a team of 2 or 3 people. 4+ is a crowd. Then a brilliant product. Not Idea. A working and monetizable product.

You need a Serious coder who will create the app and support it, A serious Business Brain who can pitch and give the Judges a TKO and a ka Serious eKYM. Someone to run around the streets or the net researching and getting the facts to back the pitch up. No more room for ‘HelloWord – Click here to see a Messagebox’ Apps. Lazima watu wawe serious.

2 – To take to Silicon Valley the best we have. This year it was Shimba. Clearly. The product, the pitch, the money-matics. They had everything figured. Finally something good. Fruits of Mutinda spending hours and hours every day coding his finger-skin off. Fruits of Mbugua spending hours and hours every day going through videos and publications on how to pitch. What investors want to hear.

In my own view, Whive,  MobileParking and mFarm came closest. Whive was very niche and had low ARPU. But I talked to the team and the future is bright. mFarm was still young. And also, SMS systems will always be frowned upon. The pitch also was a 4 out of 10. mParking was a good idea. But lacked the snazzy ish like maps and also REQUIRED things like CityCouncil collabo etc.

With the combination of CodeBrains and BizBrains, Shimba had it all. It is a team I would want to join. I will root for mParking, mFarm or Whive next year if they are serious enough and focus on their products.

We can debate this all day, but we need an answer to these 2 fundamental questions:

1 – Personna: Who would you rather go and represent Kenya at the Silicon Valley Pitch? A confident, seasoned, respected, Safcom Innovations Board Member, Chairman of MobileMonday Kenya, Founder of Symbiotic, Founder Member of MMEA – Mbugua … or some shaky,  emotional squealer? Pole. Facts. Kubali yaishe.

2 – Product: A revenue sound, urgently-needed solution, all facts about doctor-patient rations (the need), Vision-2030-compliant app like MedKenya, or some half-baked hacks?

So, the lessons

Jana we had the mLab launch. It was all over TV, Radio and also in Gutter press. mLab has the space, the ecosystem, the mentor, the DEVICES and the willingness to make your IDEA an ACTUAL PRODUCT that makes YOU lots of MONEY.

So, the choice is yours:

1 – Go home and cry to mamma because you did not win/qualify.

2 – Open a blog and tukana people all day for traffic.

3 – Grow some balls and come code with us. I am a USD thousanddaire and will be a HundredThousanddaire by Dec. You want that too? Yes? Then come to mLab. Kuja we skuma some code and make some money.

By next Pivot25, have an answer to the following concerns:

Does your app have the LEAST barriers for acceptance and usage? If it requires input from source A, then B then C before it can monetize, achana nayo.

Can it be used by the MAJORITY of people. If you only do Android, no problem, go on. But don’t complain if you cant win grants. Investors look for revenue potential. They won’t invest ati coz YOU penda and believe in YOUR product. Investor si mama yako, unless ni mama yako.

Does it address an EXISTING need? And can it generate MONEY while doing that?

Back to code…

Wazi

App vs Biz. You decide.

It is a long, tedious and demanding procedure to create a product. An App. A problem solver. Your idea finally converted to bug-less code. It compiles and runs like a hawker from Kanjo. It connects to the server 99.5% of the times of asking and always purrs. People are talking about it. 2, 000 downloads per day. Etc, yadda, yadda.

But then, slowly but surely, comes the sad reality. A Business.

You have an App. But do you have a business? How much has your app made so far? What is the daily/weekly/monthly ARPU? In the last 4 weeks. Ok, Last 4 months. Further? Ok, the last 12 months. 10, 000 USD?.. wait… 5, 000?.. no?…. ZERO? STOP CODING IMMEDIATELY! Get a job.

Unless you have rich parents and alot of pesa-ya-daddy-na-mammi, then you need to CLEARLY define your revenue points before developing an App. It is good to dream. That is what hope is made of. After hope comes faith. Then reality. Sad reality, sometimes. Happy realities, some other times.

But no one will invest in a dream. Unless it is your mother, no one will give you money unless they can see that it will have a RoI.

Before developing an App, decide. Are you doing this for fun? Can you afford to have NO SALES? Can it interest an investor, or better still, do you have Angel Funding?

That is why some no-brainer kindergarten products like DealFish will come and go. They don’t have a Kenyan-Applicable revenue model. Just alot of money to run for 3-5 years with the hope that their foreign idea will forge a niche.

That is why MXit failed in Kenya [As I said last year on my birthday] [My sentiments on some of the players mentioned might have changed since them]. As soon as the money to ‘test the waters’ runs out, the product dies. It is not sustainable. Same is the risk with some products like Mocality.

Don’t forget. The difference between the coder people see and say : “Heh! Manze huyo msee ni mnoma sana code. Hakuna kitu hawezi develop”, but takes a matt home, and the coder people see and say : “Msee fake sana. Hata system yake si kali but kina doo kaa shiiiet”, and jumps into his Kompressor after work, then calls your girlfriend, is the business mind.

And this is my challenge to iHub, NaiLab, mLab and IddLab. We need to incubate monetizable ideas, make them work and turn them into businesses. Then we can create success stories. Hopefully we can stop Ndemo from seeing Google as the Saviour. We need to demonstrate local competencies. We don’t need Google to host and digitize Government data. We need Google to Work with us to do that. The skillsets are there, but let us have some real businesses out there. Running and profitable.

Hapo vipi?

Back to code…

Wazi

I am very sad. Really.

A good Friday it was. ‘All you can eat’ Pizza Friday @iHub, Mozilla 4.0 Bash. Hot campo chics. Campo chics with Att. Campo chics raring to go. Name it. Yote ilikuwa hapo.

When the @g33kmate (that hand-stand chic), the MC, asked people to crack jokes as an ice-breaker, all I could hear were ‘Hello World’ jokes. Possibly done in VB6. Not even one funny ‘knock-knock’ joke was to be heard. I wanted to show them how jokes should be delivered, but I was busy plugged into my Unix farm.

So, as part of my CSR, I decided to ‘dosisha macoder’. And this is where code-name lugubrious kicked in. My high-spirits were immediately transformed into utter melancholy.

What are we teaching our kids in campus? Apart from throwing stones and getting hormonal over every small thing, what else do people do in Campus?

I repeated the excercise below to about 5 random people. Here goes:

Salim: “Sema. Naitwa Salim.”;

Respondent: “Naitwa “.$name;

Salim: “What do you do?”;

$name : $response ['Comp Science','I code','PHP na MySQL','Najifunza'];

Then I would offer a simple challenge. A simple 2-question quiz. I open notepad++ and ask $name.

“Write a piece of code that will connect to the MySQL localhost and select the first 10 records from a table. Format the dates on output as yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss. Do this in 10 minutes and this KSHS 1, 000 is yours. Do not leave Notepad++”.

My God! They all failed. Not a single soul could code without Googling.

“Lemmi just Google it and I will do it in 2 minutes.”, one would request.

Yes. This is the direction we are heading. Campusers forming the copy-paste culture. People who can’t code offline. Coders who cannot write code. Coders who will never work for Google or Facebook or Yahoo. Coders who will continue writing insecure and immature code for Craft Silicon.

I even let some Google it and have it run then opened a new document and told them, “Re-type the same code here, now.”. They could not.

Back to code…

Wazi