Cross Roads

NTV Ideas Lab and The OutboxHub On 9th September an Interesting 'marriage' took place. It was between a traditional news provider ( NTV ) and an innovation, incubation and business accelerator ( OutboxHub ). The term marriage is used deliberately to signify the importance of the merger as well as to value. The central aim of this link is to generate content from users and create new ways of sharing this content. This is worth noting because it recognizes the new trend toward citizen journalism especially in the light of current escalating device usage numbers. In my view this new drive for content from the source, brings some challenges to the fore. 1. Who is responsible for 'training' citizen journalists? 2. How will media judge the authenticity of content? 3. How do we setup reward systems (payment) for citizen journalists? 4. What are the laws that govern privacy? 5. How can these products cultivate development instead of being seen to promote a culture of backwardne...

There is a common feature on laptops that can prove to be a little of a challenge. When you are typing, the cursor often moves to certain sections so that without your knowledge information that you do not request gets moved to the wrong section. A simple flap or cover for this problem would help.

I've been working on a course that deals with complex subject of conflict . I began preparations for this course by simply researching the subject in as many books as possible, primarily for definitions. I have now learnt that different disciplines have different perspectives on this definition but that there is a sense in which all the studies are converging into one thing. You can approach a subject from many angles. Ours is unique in that we have sought to start from the basic and then branch out into the complex. I have therefore began this study with the thoughts of psychologists and tips on personality and then completed this study with what i see as the sum total of all this-Leadership and Management. In my view everything that we learn and develop personally is designed at least in a unique way to equip us to lead and to manage people and processes. This is the heart of the course. It is built using a moodle platform ( www.moodle.org ) and even if this is a work in ...

Hive Colab-Uganda This event was managed a group of young people who are trying to promote entrepreneurs. The idea which is currently being replicated by a host of other companies is designed to help young business people to develop their ideas. With some support from the U.S department of State, the plan was to use technology to drive technology and boost development. There was a brief presentation from the director in which she challenged the Ugandan community to engage more directly with these and other similar application projects whose benefits are many. Perhaps the highlight of the meeting was an exchange between two of the participants about the role of youth in development and the significance and or necessity of government funding.  

Trust and Business Have you ever sat with someone, listened to their business idea, and then left them completely unconvinced? Would you ever have invested in someone whose dress code was similar to that of Steve Jobs or William Gates prior to his investment in neck ties? You could argue that both Gates and Jobs have earned the right to dress the way they please but how many people have you dismissed simply because they were not dressed to your expectations? One of the many challenges in our society is that we have to fit in to be embraced and listened to. While this serves a multiple  purpose, it also serves as a hindrance often leading to negative forms of conformity. I suppose this article is triggered by two things: 1. A report by the Al Jazeera news about life in Romania after the dictator. The documentary describes the intensely distrustful character of the people which was caused by an entrenched secret police system, that created reports on all citizens. The d...

Mozilla Event On the 29th of October i sat through an event put together by the Mozilla Community in Uganda. I found the venue on a site called http://www.eventbrite.com. The site gathers information on events globally and makes it possible to get tickets on-line. Two key moments took place on this day and my attendance to this particular one was rather delayed. My arrival time was approximately 12:30PM about 1 1/2 hrs late. There were some great discussions around the subject of technology (Representatives from Mozilla Kenya) and media (New Vision) with key representatives from some of the sectors. A representative from the Government of Buganda spoke about the place of language and culture in development and promised the support of the Buganda government in other similar technology related events. The link between the speech given by the Uganda government representative and the new vision representative was the role of personalization or localization in development and prof...

This week marks the start of a few discussions and meetings regarding the next business process outsourcing event. In 2009, one of the first conferences was held and organized or chaired by the ministry of ICT and its head back then, Hon Awori. Several players in the market were in attendance and key contact people were slated to speak on a wide variety of topics. The Uganda Communications Commission, representatives from several Telecoms, as well as regional giants in Business Process Outsourcing. The purpose was simple and effective in the sense that it was created to showcase Uganda as a Business Process Outsourcing Destination. An amazing platform was therefore created for local business people as well as foreign companies to meet and talk and trade contacts. I began to gather information from this and other meetings, fearing that somehow, the different overlaps in responsibility would result in a loss of key historic data. South Africa, ...

This week i had the privilege of connecting with some rather influential people. After a search on eventbrite i came across a page for an event dubbed Mapping Day. It piqued my interest because of a latent desire to make use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems). I followed it up and found that the event had been organized by about three groups. Indigo trust (albeit indirectly), Fruits of Thought and Mountbatten ltd . The Second group captured my interest even more after i looked a little deeper into the Fruits of Thought page. Firstly, they have designed a very attractive page and provided some excellent pictures of some past events. Because of some design background, i was thrilled by some of the work that they did with their T-Shirt Designs. With this in mind, i was hooked. I signed up and showed up albeit a little late on Saturday 31st 2013 for the mapping day. The venue was in Muyenga...the Kampala equivalent of Palm Springs or Beverly Hills. After a sip of the l...

On August 28th 2013 i attended a Java EE7 session at Hive Colab . There were a few good developments worth mentioning. The first was a heavily skewed ratio of men to women with the latter in the lead. The presenter Arun Gupta was pleased with this development as was the HiveColab crew (and Women In Technology- WITU ). Even if the class was meant for the latest version of the tool, the speaker spent a good measure of time talking about the some of the pro and cons of the software and comparisons with other tools in the market. The session was rather technical but useful in the sense that those who came with prior knowledge of the development platform found the meeting useful in supplementing their already existing knowledge base. "An interesting way to enhance student learning...because it is often impossible to have everything gathered in a single lecture...invitations by experts with supplementary sessions can be useful"

There are times when internet users crave a some privacy for all sorts of noble reasons. There are several platforms that can be used to achieve this end. The way it works is you are given an address that reroutes your assigned IP address so that those who wish to pry into your activities on the internet are unable to. Last week we witnessed something similar to the use of proxy address. Two heavyweights met on in a ring in one of the new malls in Kampala, Uganda and entertained a blood thirsty mass in some kick-boxing. What made things interesting in the highly charged cultural atmosphere were the regions which the two fighters represented. Central Uganda and Western Uganda. There is a similar battle or trend that took place a few thousand years ago. David, young shepherd boy, rose up to face a champion from Gath...a Philistine-a giant. The guy had challenged the whole host of Israel so that the army were it to loose faced slavery. The point is that war between these two great ...