February | 2011

Ruby Nuby trains and funds your next local startup

Help Ruby Nuby set up our community based tech and entrepreneurial training in Nairobi where we will train the next generation developers and fund companies they and you may start. 6pm, WED, March 2nd

Ruby Nuby has won a grant from British Airways to see about bringing our program to Nairobi. Come learn about Ruby Nuby and how we plan to:

Create an environment that allows all to to succeed in a collaborative, cooperative manner.
Train the next generation of web developers and tech entrepreneurs in Nairobi,
Train disadvantaged and at-risk youths and fund their training
Fund startup companies and attract additional funding for your companies.
Economically develop the arts.
Change the educational system from a pay forward model where one incurs debt without a guarantee of a job to a payback model where one collaborates with and contributes to a community and is placed in a career.
Empower women to succeed in technology and create incentives for men to help women do so.

A 25-minute presentation Ruby Nuby and it’s non-profit arm, Agile Activism, followed by a Question and Answer session. Afterwards, we will brainstorm on how we can best take advantage of the 500kg of sponsored shipping to Nairobi from New York that we have obtained. We will use this sponsorship to import the computer gear necessary to set up our program. We just need the community support to make it happen. By using VolunTourism, we will attract the world’s best developers and business leaders to come guest teach/lecture in Nairobi and then they will go on Safari which will economically develop the region’s tourism industry.

The mission of Ruby Nuby is to provide an environment that facilitates immersive learning by a Community of Contributors(TM) who contribute, learn and succeed by collaborating, cooperating and supporting each other. We work to promote a path to success where equal access, social justice, equability, diversity and sustainability are embraced.
I have 2 very recently released Ruby on Rails books and a new netbook that will be Ruby Nuby Nairobi Community owned to start a Ruby Nuby/Ruby on Rails/Tech study group here in Nairobi.

When: 6pm, WED, March 2nd

Where: iHubNairobi

Please Click here to RSVP

By: Tosh

28-02-2011

Community Events Members

NairobiGTUG @iHubNairobi

On the 26th of February 2011 the third NairobiGTUG event was held at the iHub. The turnout included mostly techies and developers. During these meetups, the techies share resources, skills & knowledge about Google technology & services. They spread little tricks about Google’s technologies, or simply chat with each other talking about:

Google Data APIs
OpenSocial
Google AJAX APIs
Google Code
Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs
Google Apps
iGoogle
YouTube
Google App Engine
Google Open Source projects

Following GTUG

To register for the mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/nairobigtug/
Twitter: #nairobigtug
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/NairobiGTUG/259317518038?ref=m

The Event

Ahmed Maawy, the NairobiGTUG lead started off by introducing the team and the day’s presenters, as well as explaining the concept behind GTUG.
The first presenter (Andrew Kamau) then did a presentation on the foundations of the Android OS. It was mostly the basics of Android from the user and developer perspective.
The second presenter (Job Maina) then went on to present GWT, and explained the concept behind GWT and how it integrates with Eclipse and did a small demo on an already developed application.
We then had a presentation from Paa Kwesi, a Googler who talked mostly about how chrome is developer friendly, covering the various development tools available inside Chrome, how plugins are developed, and how to develop apps for Chrome’s marketplace.

More photos of the event can be found at: http://nairobi.gtugs.org/events/26th-february-2011

Post by Ahmed Maawy

By: Tosh

24-02-2011

Community Events iHub

Larry Wall @iHubNairobi Update!

We are very honoured to have Larry wall the author of the Perl Programming Language as our guest speaker for this Month’s Fireside Chat!

Larry earned his bachelor’s degree from Seattle Pacific University in 1976 and is a graduate from UC Berkeley. He joined the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory after he finished graduate school. He is the co-author of Programming Perl (often referred to as the Camel Book), which is the definitive resource for Perl programmers.

Perl is used for graphics programming, system administration, network programming, finance, bioinformatics, and other applications. Perl is nicknamed “the Swiss Army chainsaw of programming languages” due to its flexibility and power.

Click here for the livestream link

By: Tosh

23-02-2011

Community iHub

Computers Vs Smartphones in Schools

Computers in Schools – Wouldn’t smart phones be better?

With all the hype around getting laptops, desktops, big computers of any kind into Kenyan schools, what about mobile phones? Might smart phones, with their easy of use and growing screen size be a better tool for students? Say one iPhone per child or one iPad per teenager?

Smartphones for schools could be more viable (cost, personable, and battery life) than computers. Yet computers have the form factor, training programs, and applications for education.

Join Wayan Vota, a noted expert on ICT and education to explore the role of mobile phones (and computers) in Kenyan education on Friday March 4th, at the iHub.

Smartphones for Education
a conversation with Wayan Vota
Friday, March 4th, 9-11am @iHubNairobi

Bishop Magua Centre
George Padmore Lane
Nairobi, Kenya

As a bonus, we’ll be giving away an IDEOS Google phone and Solio solar chargers, and have drinks and snacks to power your thoughts. But only if you sign up for the event.

By: Tosh

22-02-2011

Events iHub Members

Sanaa Republic creatives meet @iHubNairobi

So tonight was pretty awesome! Its amazing just how the Sanaa Republic community of creatives has grown and becoming more and more involved on each passing meetup. Tonight we met at the iHub to help design the Sanaa Republic logo and we had a good turnout.

It was a great time with what seemed to be around 15 or more creatives and as always, new guys joining in the conversation! The set up was easy, with desks and creatives facing each other and the creatives scribbling their ideas of what they think the logo should look like. The first part of the meetup was was mainly to get and introduce the new guys to the concept of Sanaa republic. The drawings were superb and the guys were great!

A big thank you goes to the crowd tonight and the ones from last week that have been helping put together creative materials for the iHub 1^st year anniversary celebration… All of you are just plain awesome.

Please follow @sanaarepublic to know about our meetups and also just to have a glimpse of what was done tonight!

By: Tosh

21-02-2011

Community Events iHub Members

Celebrating our Community

From organizing fireside chats with some of the most successful CEOs in Kenya, to simply providing a space where techies and creatives can work from, network and just hangout, the iHub Nairobi was born one year ago and will be celebrating its first anniversary on March the 11^th. It has been a great year with so many exciting activities, none of which would be possible without our members! Because of this, our celebration comes with a special theme: “Celebrating the Community”.

Over the next couple of weeks, we would like to shift the focus from only celebrating the existence of the space to also celebrating how far we’ve come as a community. From when we all first met to this day when we rely on one another to co-work and deliver ingenious innovations together.

To make true our theme of celebrating the community, we would like to involve the community that has been growing over the last one year in a number of different things. Some that will be announced as we count down the days but to start us off is this Twibbon page to show your support for the iHub! http://goo.gl/cOAde

Please also tweet with the tag #iHubNrbi1st to tell us what your thoughts have been for the last one year and some of the things you would like to see happen in the future!

By: Jessica Colaco

21-02-2011

Community iHub

Larry Wall will be speaking at iHub this Thursday at 5.30pm

The iHub and Skunkworks Foundation are proud to announce that Larry Wall will be at the iHub this Thursday for our 3rd Fireside Chat this year.

Wall often compares Perl to a natural language and explains his decisions in Perl’s design with linguistic rationale. He also often uses linguistic terms for Perl language constructs, so instead of traditional terms such as “variable”, “function”, and “accessor” he sometimes says “noun”, “verb”, and “topicalizer”.

Join us as we listen to his journey on the creation Perl over 20 years ago. Register here.

#Some PERL souce code

#print see you all on Thursday
$str=”see you all on Thursday”;
print $str;

Date: Thursday 24th February 2011

Time: 5.30pm – 8.30 pm

Venue: iHub

By: Tosh

20-02-2011

Community Events iHub Members

Basics on Project Management Session

Please note that this session scheduled for tomorrow has been cancelled due to unavoidable circumstances.

Does it feel like more and more pressure is being placed on you? Is it getting harder to meet those deadlines? The set of skills required to keep projects on time and on budget and to avoid these types of problems all fall under the discipline of project management.

As a programmer, developer or creative, you may not think that you should have anything to do with project management. But if you understand some of the basics, you can anticipate the situations that will directly affect you on a project. In the best case, you may even be able to influence the project plan to some degree.

On Wednesday the 23^rd Helinah Muniu, Managing Consultant at BlueNet Solutions Limited will be at the iHub speaking on the basics of Project management from 6pm.

In this session, she will examine the different “forces” that are at play in any project, see how they interact, and explain how you’ll benefit from understanding their dynamics. Below are among some of the topics she will touch on:

Definition of Project Management
Importance of Project Management
Identifying Project Management steps
Explaining “high level” Project management steps
Project management certifications

There will be follow up sessions that will have in-depth discussions of each Project management step one session per step.

Please remember to R.S.V.P to attend this event

About BlueNet Solutions Limited

BlueNet was founded to be the market leader delivering Technology-as-a-Service to small and medium businesses (SMB’s) in Africa. Our aim is to make technology work for business by radically improving the economics and delivery mechanism of technology for the African company.

Our portfolio of services includes network security, monitoring and management; end-user help desk; on-site engineer services; internet; email; remote data back-up and restore; infrastructure supply and support. We deliver an ongoing proactive, contractual service – outsourcing the IT management process measured by a level of performance focusing on consistency and improvement.

By: Jessica Colaco

17-02-2011

Community Entrepreneurship Events iHub m:lab Members

Pivot 25: East Africa’s Mobile Competition & Conference

Pivot 25, will happen on June 14-15 in Nairobi. In the meantime, If you’re an app developer or entrepreneur, submit your idea here!
Applications are due midnight (East Africa Time) March 15th, 2011.

What is it?

Pivot 25 is an event bringing together East Africa’s top mobile entrepreneurs and startups to pitch their ideas to an audience of 400-500 people, with a chance of winning monetary prizes and increasing awareness of their work to local and global investors and businesses. In East Africa’s hot mobile market, this is a way to find out “what’s next?“.

The competition is for 25 entrepreneurs/startups to pitch their best mobile apps or services, in 5 different verticals, to the audience and a panel of judges. Anyone who has a new app or service can apply, if they’re from Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda or Kenya.

Pivot 25 is mostly about the entrepreneurs and their pitches, but we’re also sprinkling it with fireside chats with the top mobile industry leaders in the region.

Get Involved

There are a couple of ways to get involved with Pivot 25.

Sponsor the event – we’re already getting some great sponsors on board, but there are still a couple areas available.
Enter your startup – this is the BIG one, if you make it to the event, the awareness will be huge and the prizes bigger!
Register to attend – we expect tickets to sell quickly, so get yours now before they’re all gone.

Help us get the word out by tweeting (our handle is @pivot25), blog it, and definitely tell your friends around East Africa to get their startup application in right away.

Some Background on Pivot 25

The mLab (mobile lab) is a new incubation, training and testing space for mobile apps in Kenya. It’s situated directly underneath the iHub, and was created from an infoDev grant to a consortium of the iHub, Emobilis, the Web Foundation and the University of Nairobi.

As the team behind the mLab got together and talked we realized that we needed to solve two problems. First, a good way to create awareness of and access between the mobile entrepreneur community and investors and businesses. Second, that an event could help raise funds for the mLab, making it sustainable.

The Event will not only showcase developer talent in the region but also bring much needed focus to the mLab and the role that it play’s in the mobile application development ecosystem in East Africa. Our goal is to make this truly inclusive, bringing together startups, manufacturers, businesses and operators from every country in East Africa. The mLab is accessible to anyone in any of these countries, and Pivot 25 is as well.

Blog post by: Erik Hersman (www.whiteafrican.com)

By: Tosh

17-02-2011

Community Events iHub Members

Update on Bit Magic event

Thanks to the guys who’ve registered for the event. We have about 50 so far and still counting. Looking forward to seeing you all.
Even though the window for speaker registration is over, we look forward to an engaging participation by you, lots of criticisms and comments!

We have three groups of speakers for the afternoon:

Michael Pedersen

Title:
Template engines – and how they make it more easy to work as a team.

Abstract:
Once your project grows “out of your bedroom”, more people become involved in working on the project. With this comes several challenges as to how to “work together”.

In this talk I will present a template engine (SlowTemplate) which enables php code to be completely separated from HTML in your project. Using this approach you make it extremely easy for an HTML-developer and a programmer to work together, without stepping on each other toes (and ruining code for each-other).
Further more it makes it much more easy to maintain an application, i.e. redesigns can be done completely without involving the programmer.

Wesley Kirinya

Title:
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of J2ME.

Abstract:
J2ME has been marketed as one of the most popular platforms to develop for mobile, but just how practical is this?

In this talk, I’ll take you through a personal experience with J2ME development:
The Good: One of the largest platforms supported on mobile.
The Bad: Great Specification, Poor Implementation.
The Ugly: Performance variations, manufacturer specific extensions.

At the end of the talk we hope to have an exchange of opinions on where other mobile platforms lie. Are they better off or simply on a different level?

Riyaz Bachani & Michuki Mwangi

Title:
Kenyan Internet Revolution

Each speaker has 40 minutes of talk including questions. There is a 10 minute break after each speaker.

We start at 1400 EAT sharp, techie time!