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Archive for July, 2008

ITEX Kenya, Nairobi in the news

July 23rd, 2008
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Rebecca WanjikuDuring the ITEX Kenya event in Nairobi I had the opportunity to speak to Rebecca Wanjiku from the IDG News Service. It was a bit of a hasty affair, we planned to meet after lunch but the schedule was running late and lunch turned out a much shorter affair than planned.
In between sessions we managed to track each other down in the hotel and she kindly extracted this articled on NetworkWorld from out short discussion…..

Sun Microsystems will focus special attention on Africa under a new emerging markets sales geography, which the company expects to drive accelerated expansion and sales coverage across growing markets.

Given the unique challenges faced in Africa, Sun will use the knowledge it has gained in North America and Europe to deliver ecologically sound and economically viable tools, said Hein Van Der Merwe, Sun’s chief technologist for the Middle East and Africa region.

“The emerging markets sales geography is aimed at opening more opportunities for the governments, businesses and developers in regions like Africa,” he said.

Read the entire article here ……

Popularity: 23%

Hein General ,

The Operating System

July 17th, 2008
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I recently gave a talk on operating systems, not from a technical perspective, but more around some of the softer issues with the purpose to raise some questions around practices in this market. The ones I decided to include are listed below with a few key questions and ideas on what each point is about.

Barriers To Entry – How easy is it to get hold of the operating system, but more importantly, is the binary you can get hold of the same as the production supported version the vendor will supply if you had to purchase it ? Would you have to purchase hardware from the same vendor to be able to run the operating system or does it support general hardware ?

Most vendors will make it as easy as possible for you to get hold of the operating system, it is after all to their benefit. Think of the main operating systems suppliers out there, is the version you can get today, without needing to fork out money, the same production version you would receive if you ordered a copy from the vendor ? Think Sun Solaris, Redhat Enterprise Linux, Windows, IBM AIX, HP HP/UX.

Life cycle – Where do you live on the curve, fast changing hungry for new functionality or slow and deliberate with as few as possible changes ? Both these conditions actually exist in most organizations, do your operating system cater for this ?

Community – Is there a vibrant community around your operating system, from kernel developers to application developers and all the way to end-users ? Remember innovation happens elsewhere, if there is no open community around the operating system, possibility of innovation is limited to a small group of individuals.

Observability – How open, friendly and visible is the inner workings of the operating system ? If a problem arises, performance or otherwise, is it possible to peek deep inside the operating system to identify the problem or is guess and re-install the standard attempt at fixing issues ?

Momentum – Is the operating system on its way up or down in terms of momentum, are applications being ported to it or away from it ? Is the number of sites, blogs and discussions around it increasing or decreasing ?

Virtualization – Does the operating system natively provide the tools to virtualize workloads ? At what cost does this come, free and part of the operating system or at a per instance cost ?

Security – Is security a major focus of the operating system or an afterthought ? Are there masses of 3rd party software available to plug the holes that should never have existed in the first place ?

Integrity – Does the operating system provide built in mechanisms to verify that data stored is still the same data when it is read ? Does this come as an add-on or as part of the base operating system, is there cost involved ?

Compatibility - Are newer versions of the operating system compatible with past releases ? How painful and costly is it to move to the next release, does the vendor guarantee , not just verbally, that this compatibility exists ?

Barriers to Exit - What would it mean if I stopped paying support and maintenance to the operating system vendor ? Would you legally still be able to keep the operating system running or is the license to use the operating system tied to the maintenance contract ? What functionality in the operating system would not be legally available in this case ?

Popularity: 27%

Hein Featured, General, Open Source, Presentations , , , ,

Pleasant surprise in a positive Kenya

July 11th, 2008
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Nairobi

When you have not seen relatives or friends for a long time it is always striking how one can see changes that people who visit them regularly do not notice. How much their children have grown is exaggerated by the time lapse or how gray someone has become.

I had this same experience in Kenya today but not on an individual basis, on the level of a country or continent. Over the years I have traveled to and have been involved in Africa frequently but for the last few years my interest have kept me away from the continent, until today.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to speak at ITEX Kenya , an ICT symposium arranged by Dimension Data in Nairobi. The focus is on ICT in an African context but rather than repeating the aim of the symposium, below is a portion from the first page of the agenda booklet :

ICT has the potential to impact on every sector of Kenya, particularly businesses, education and health. It can create a wealth of new opportunities for Kenyans across the country and put the world at their fingertips.

ITEX will inform you about the most cutting-edge technology. It will update you on the latest software and innovative solutions and will put you in the company of IT experts from around the globe, who will share their unique insights into technology and its role in Kenya’s future.

My presentation during the event is not of importance, it was titled “Being Ecologically sound makes Economic Sense” as part of Sun Microsystem’s involvement in the event if you are interested.

What did give me the feeling that much has changed since I last regularly visited Africa started with one of the keynote presentations by Paul Kukubo, a leading entrepreneur and CEO of the Kenya ICT Board.Paul Kukubo

Two things in particular that he said brought on the feeling that the attitude and understanding of leaders in Africa have shifted miles from what I remember. The first was a simple but profound statement during his presentation “We need to create an African middle class” , words spoken not in the sense of we need to secure financial aid to make the poorer of our population better off, but in the sense of it is our responsibility to create and develop the infrastructure and opportunity for people to better themselves.

The second point in his presentation was around where the focus should be, “Innovative use of technology”, not to develop the next generation silicon wafer fabrication process but the use of technology innovations in the African landscape to enable change.

These two statements show an understanding of what is needed that I missed years back when I visited Africa regularly. Especially the second statement as Africa has always been a continent where ingenuity and innovation has helped people do more with less, more so than anywhere else I know of in the world. If you need proof just wonder over to AfriGadget, a blog by Erik Hersman and others dedicated to showcasing African ingenuity.

The second time today the feeling that something has changed struck me was during the cocktail reception this evening. While discussing the events of the day with a group of gentlemen from Telkom Kenya. The tone of the conversation is what was peculiar, a tone as positive as any conversation can possibly get. Filled with ideas of how simple things can change the African landscape and economy for the better , without a “but” as I expected, in a can and will do tone.

If this is any indication of the future of Kenya and maybe even Africa as a continent we might just be witnessing a positive change in Africa that will affect the entire world for the better.

Popularity: 19%

Hein Travel , ,

Why corporate presentation skill courses fail to deliver

July 2nd, 2008
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I have seen many “presentation skills” courses arranged by large product centric corporates to assist their staff in gaining the skills and experience necessary to portray an offering in a compelling way. I have unfortunately not seen too many of these sessions bear any real fruit. If one take a few steps back, two intertwined reasons behind the ineffectiveness of these sessions become clear.
Firstly most of these sessions are facilitated by an external resource using material that bear no relation to the company and only covers the skills of putting together and presenting an effective message, not their message. But surely this should not hamper the success , the skill is surely transferable ? This gets us to the second portion, in most large corporates presentations are not prepared by the presenter, they are produced by a marketing or product department. Departments that rarely deliver the presentations themselves, they are tasked to create the presentations according to the standard corporate template and distribute to the rest of the individuals for actual delivery. Now we end up with a person that attends a presentation skills session, learning all the goodness of what the structure of a good presentation should be, only to land in the position where they have to attempt applying these skills to a sometimes poorly (actually this should say mostly, but we do not want to be rude)  constructed presentation.

So what would the solution be to this problem ? Simple, concentrate educational sessions on the individuals that create the presentations, not the individuals that inherit them for delivery. Both the creators and the presenters would be the ultimate goal but if you have to choose, choose the creator. The same applies to books on the subject, buy one for the original presentation authors before you spend money supplying the individual presenters.

Popularity: 35%

Hein Presentations , , ,