Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Ignited. Forever burning

And so it happened. Salim finally decided to participate in local developers’ contest. A Hackathon. As I warm up for Pivot East.

He decided to attend the Ignite Hackathon.

Over the last two years, he has seen awards being taken by pretenders and wannabes, as well as deserving and seasoned masters of the code-game.

So, seated and psyched by @zacckOS, the code was designed, visualized and aligned to the theme of the Nokia/Emobilis/Capital FM Sponsored theme: “An application for the Masses”.

The challenge was to design a mobile application, from scratch, in less than 30 Hours [Saturday 8am to Sunday noon] or showcase a done, but un-published app and align it to that theme.

Ofcourse, as anyone who knows anything about me apart from my seconds name and that I hate VB and Man Urinals, I dislike JUNK food with a passion. But, Sacrifices had to me made. My peeps were texting asking where we are playing pool that night. Not tonight. Sacrifices had to be made.

The venue, above BrewBistro, was humbling. Twice the size of @iHub and @thenailab combined. Fitted with modern equipment and cushioned coding seats. Big enough to host over 500 people. And here we were, thinking Magua was all that. Talk of the Chinese Peenus. Just 2 minute drive from my crib. What more could a coder ask for? I was tempted to shifting there from next month. Next week. Maybe.

I decided to develop a mobile platform. A mobile app was too easy. I called it mGenie.

mGenie is your personal Mobile Genie. A know-it-all platform. It allows a user chat with WebServices running as Bots using a very simple Key-words register, provided by the Bot. It is an N-tier platform consisting of:

• A mobile application supporting XMPP in J2ME.
• A MySQL Database that holds a register of services.
• A PHP web-service that feeds the Mobile App with the services from the DB.
• An ubiquitous Bots register that allows developers develop their own services and plug them to the service inventory. These Bots support a simple

User - All a user needs to do is download the app on their phone.

Service Providers – Service providers would register with Xema Labs and have their services registered and approved to appear on the mGenie Mobile Application.

Example:

Let us say Nairobi Stocks Exchange developed a Bot that does the following:

• Listens to connections.
• Responds to keywords:
• Mobile user types ‘Help’ – It responds with ‘Help: To see price of a stock, type the name e.g. For Safaricom, type Saf. Type stocks for a list of all stocks’
• Mobile user types ‘stocks’ – It responds with ‘Stocks: Saf (Safaricom), eqty (equity), Acck (Access Kenya)’ etc…
• Mobile user types : ‘Saf’ – It responds with ‘Safaricom is trading at KSHS 3.1′
• Mobile User types : ‘saf history 3′ – It responds with ‘Safaricom stock for the last 3 days: 24th March [Lowest: KSHS 3.0, Highest: KSHS 3.3], 25th March [Lowest: KSHS 3.1, Highest: KSHS 3.4], 26th March [Lowest: KSHS 3.2, Highest: KSHS 3.4]‘
• Etc…
• The responses and the data are FULLY controlled by the third-party developers. No need to update the Mobile App. It is just a shell.

The mGenie platform is able to run ANY type of service. Insurance Quotes? HIV Counselling? Medical Symptoms Queries? Music Downloads? Name them!

So, Luckily, I was part of the 15 people who made it to the Shortlist to demo their apps. I was 4th to demo my App. I demonstrated a Simple dictionary bot that takes a word from the user and gives the dictionary definition. Then added that the platform is open and ANY developer could develop their Bot to serve their personalized content to interested users.

Talk of an intelligent Mobile-based real-time and personalized user-preference-tracking s40 Meta-directory. I could see the judges impressed my the amazing simplicity presented to the Mobile user, despite the complexity of the setup, all done in less than 30 hours. My presentation was done. So I went back to my seat amidst claps.

Immediately I was done, Chris Kirubi stood up and took the Mic. He was the sponsor, so we gave him all ears. He started by expressing disappointment that the App was ‘doing too much’. I did not get a chance to answer back and explain that this was a PLATFORM and the ‘too much’ being done was by the third-party service providers. He talked and talked and I could see, with every word and scorn, the judges begin to vacillate. The 7 our of 10′s that I might have got quickly turned to 4s.

Why would a sponsor take the Mic, in the middle of a presentation and put down a contestant? Presentation 4 of 15. Couldn’t he be professional and wait for the event to end, then talk to me personally? Or to the crowd, like he did, but after the judges had finished their job?

One part of me told me to get into my car and go home. Another more sensible part told me to be strong. So did a few tweets from some of my peeps. Had I come first, I am sure he would have rescinded the prize.

In my life, I have seen shoe-shiners advise masons on how to lay the bricks in the best way. I have been to lectures where chicken-feet-washers talked about IT security. So, Kenyans talking about something they know NOTHING about, and with authority, was nothing new.

Despite the stones thrown to me and the castigations, I came 3rd. I went home completely disappointed, and utterly flabbergasted.

The Ignite Hackathon was HUGE success, to me. Despite what happened. I came third, overall. And I was happy. Not for the money, but for ‘Validation’. That was 120 coders and 6 judges looking at me and saying, “Msee uko poa code!”. And that is all a thug like me wants.

Back to code.

Wazi.

Enough. Let's get paid!

Heh! Ni kunasty. Feelings nazo. Emotions nazo.

Last week I tweeted that I had finally managed to get time off my busy schedule and get me a driving license, and MY GOD!! It proved to be a thorn in a lot of people’s flesh.

“People have been driving for ages! Don’t boast to us”, one male retorted in a comment on my blog post. ‘Boast’? I wondered.

But this was just an estate dog barking.

So I went on with my biz.

I had a hard-on for a German machine, but, as advised by @Kaboro , @afrowave and my other close peeps and well-wishers, I decided to get a small, cheap car to spruce my driving skills first. Small enough, but beastly enough to make the Vitz, ISTs and other Kindergarten cars cry as I pass them. So I tweeted this. “Just got me a 5-Speed 1989 Starlet GT Turbo. Happy days”, My Gawd!! Enter the trolls, the eHaters and TwHaters. “Gari ya watoto wa Campus.”, “Hahahah!! Hauna doo”, etc.

Such bitter sons of biatchez. I wanted to confess to the probably-matt-using, sad, little goat-fucker that my 2 weeks’ pay is enough to  pay him and his family for a year to just sit at home and play with their nipples all day. But nitaambiwa najiringa. They will say Salim is full of pride and is a show-off. So I let them be.

So, I wake up at 8:13am today, and felt like tweeting : “I am awake and well, Praise be to Allah!”. But immediately, I knew THAT would offend someone. TeamFickle. “What do you mean waking up? So what? People have been waking up all their lives. And do you think you are the first one to praise Allah!”, was my premonition. So I stopped tweeting the thought.

Can’t we just share our little successes? Can’t we all just be happy for each other? Can’t we all just get along? We cant? Well go phuck a tree. You are the reason you are bitter with yourself. Not me, loser!

Wow! Explosive start of this blogpost, huh? I know. I am GOOD at foreplay. Twende kazi.

In March 18 2010, I blogged about 10 opportunities that were there, agape, for people who wanted to make alot of money in code. 75%-80% of the potential was locked on MobileMoney and PRSP interactions. So, I went all bonkers when Safaricom classified me, my blog, my left nut and my cat as “IT Security risks”. Salim and any associated people were blocked for over 18 months from using ANY Safaricom services.

Luckily, In came Bob and a team of more receptive people. The embargoes were lifted. History. We finally have the connections that were required to enable the Kenyan techies develop and INSTANTLY-on-upload, earn from the 10 systems.

This drive and need to see people succeed and EARN from code was part of the 8 reasons that the Head of Innovation job at Safaricom was so strategic for me. To act as the door-opener to all the coders I see with super systems but no way to monetize, because Safaricom are, despite all the efforts from NW and BC, still Safaricom. The biggest, roundest and hardest nipples in town. Inundated in hubris. But I did not have a University degree. Down the drain, it all went. Sad.

The opportunities have withered. Some adulterated and killed due to poor execution by copy-cats. What we call the IT-journeymen. The  tire-kickers. The nina-system-kali-inatwa-HelloWorld crew. Massive, colorful, expensive and well-covered media launches for mediocre products. Spoils the name of the Kenyan IT potential. People with money and capacity but not the focus or knowledge or patience to execute the master-plan. People who think code ni mkate. You know worramtaokinabout!

1 – Harnessing XMPP – Human-to-computer communication. No one in Kenya seems interested in this. How humans can ask a computer bot, via chat, about real-time data. Takes you beyond search. You don’t look for information. Information finds you. Behavioral analysis algorithms make sure only relevant information comes to you. Dollar rate? NSE Share price. Sale and buy Order to a stockbroker server with order confirmation support? Symptoms for a disease? Closest clubs and bars? I am going to showcase this in the IgniteHackathon this weekend. We have smartphones. We have a local loop. You have No excuses.

2 – MPG – Mention Ma3Racer. Then shut up. Because that is all there is available as far as games from Kenya are concerned. Multi-Player Games are there for the taking. Human vs human over the KIXP local loop? Over WaziWiFi? Over iHub Wifi? 5 bob per week per player. Bragging rights and monthly prizes per winner. What’s there to stop at least 20, 000 of the 200k+ Kenyans with Smart phones playing your game and paying you daily? Wait. It is you, dummy!! You have not developed/finished the game.

3 – UGC – Last week when I met NW of Safaricom, he was super-excited about the KulaHappy service. How much traffic it was pulling and the traction it was getting. My lectures and blog posts about the potential of local User-Generated Content sasa zimekuwa kama wimbo. If Ogopa DJ and/or homeboyz were serious and stopped depending on the foreign and un-monetizable youtube, they have enough content to make a killing off data, ads and subscriptions.

4 – Kenyan Social Network – Well, again. Figures. at least 38% of Safaricom Subscribers are Data-enabled. That is at least 7.6 M. Again, Facebook has only 1.7M users. 6M Kenyans CAN use facebook if they wanted, but choose not to. Less than 50k users on twitter (give or take). What do you have to offer these Kenyans that the foreign social networks cannot? Think. The Kenyans are waiting. Sembuse had 246, 031 people before we closed it due to the embargoes above. Then, Facebook had just over 580, 000 users. Tulikuwa bumper. Potential iko.

5 – Hacking and Security – *looks left, right, re-checks firewall*. Now, I will not speak about the story I heard about these hackers who used to go to The Mug in prestige and steal digital Airtime Vouchers from that bookstore there, on the ground-floor over their insecure Wi-Fi. I will not. I will not speak about the NgongRoad Hackers who listen to VOIP calls doe to poor Voip security.

I will, also, not speak about these guys who once came to see me at iHub claiming they know people high up in Safaricom and that they could make me millions if I showed them the Mpesa Exploits I had spoken about in 2010, in the old version of Mpesa (decommissioned and replaced with a robust and more secure one).

The potential is there. having an inquisitive mind, Forming a legal entity, getting certification from CEH and the like and then being true to the client’s interest are the only requirements.

Heh! Acha nimalizie hapo.

Back to code.

Wazi.