Twitter is down

Twitter fail page

Twitter Fails Again

Seems twitter is done after a very long time. (5 months I think)

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UPDATE:

Its back, that was fast

TANDAA 08

The TANDAA08 conference, hosted by the Kenya ICT Board was supposed to showcase what local content developers are doing and the goverment plans to support them as we wait for the fibre optic cable to land in mombasa for what promised to good and very fast times for our internet industry.

Due to work schedules I could not attend the morning session, you can get info on the morning session from here. but I got there at around 2:00 in the afternoon and I was impressed with what guys are doing on the interwebs.  Among the speakers who presented their sites or gave talks included:

Aly Khan Satchu – rich.co.ke

Dr Sevilla – Strathmore University

Dr Mwirigi Kinagwi – askadoc.co.ke

Nick Nesbitt – Kencall

Alex Gakuru – Skunkworks

Ken Njoroge – Cellulant

Clement Ouda – myjobshouse.com

Muthoni Garland – storymoja.co.ke

kenyanpoet.blogspot.com

Waithera – capitalfm.co.ke

Overall I can say that the conference fulfilled its aims, the government presentation would have helped guys know what support they can get from the ICT Board seeing as they’ve got a huge grant to help local content devs. get along.

It is heartening to note that many website owners are earning good money from e-commerce kenyaemerging.com being a very good example.  Capital FM Mobile for me was the best, a gprs service where you get business directory, forex rates, atm locator, news among other things, another plus being you only get charged by your service provider (Zain or Safaricom) and not by Capital, I will give most definitely give the service a try.

Alex Gakuru’s talk on Skunkworks was also very informative.

That said during the conference I started the feeling that the conference was starting to turn into a sales pitch forum with presenters pitching the companies, it isnt bad but next time do it subtly.

Points that came out:

• There is a market for local content.
• The pay for registration model for portals and content sites isnt feasible at the moment.
• Monetizing mobile content provision is easier. (because mobile users are used to paying for services)
• Gov’t registration need to be streamlined, too many vague licences

Not a definitive list but the few that I could gather.

Overall I must say the conference was good and more or less a success.

PS

If you attended and have more that I missed, please leave a comment and I’ll update as required.