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.

Tech-Phobia in Newsrooms

The technological divide that exists between the classroom/lecture-hall and the newsroom is one of the greatest challenges we face as young journalists.

 

The phenomenon of social and new media seems to be adopted perfunctorily in news rooms, I mean you will find good connectivity, superb hardware but the usage of the social/new media tools is next to nil.

 

In journalism school you get the idea that if you do not get onto the social media train you might as well be waiting for it on the tracks to run you down.  If like me you read Jay Rosen a lot then you be aware of the cuts that traditional news rooms have to undertake.

 

Now the whole disconnect is when you get into the news room, mentions of twitter elicits blank stares, an explanation does worse.  You start to wonder if truly social media is what it is made out to be.  But at the back of you mind you know that it is.

 

You know that the future of newspapers is online but the news room itself does not seem to realize this.  Even with journalists losing jobs daily, the message does not seem to hit home.  Even to the point that displaying tech-phobia is some sort of honor badge among the ‘veterans’.

 

Funny thing is that when you turn in a report fast enough you now get questions of how you did, then unofficially you become the in-house trainer.  It is for this reason that I think things are looking up, that in time we will take our place in this new digital newsroom though it would be better if it happened a bit faster.

 

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This is cross-posted at the Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists blog 

We need experince!!!!

It’s been a while since I wrote on journalism, seeing as I trained to be a journalist, I have been reading the young journalist blog at journalism.co.uk and I appreciate it for having a place where guys who look at journalism the way I do hang out.

 

I think I’ve wanted to be a journalist for a long while now, after going through the whole law and lawyer-ing phase, I realized that I loved being the one to be the first one out with a story, I love looking for information and I also loved and still do love writing.

 

Fast forward to Uni. where the college though you are study the art of reporting you get to read of newsrooms letting go of staff, implementing the dreaded cost-cutting.  Yeah your articles and stories get published but no one wants to give you a job let alone pay you for your stuff. (though there others who’ll follow up your payment till you get paid) yeah

 

I took a break from Uni. for a year, due to several reasons among them some family stuff,  during this time, I decided to look for a job, and if I managed to get one then I’d do my last semester in the evenings. 

 

In this search I have come to realize that while editors might like you stuff there is also a devil called experience.  That’s what galls me, who in his right mind would expect you to have, two years experience working for a paper when you’ve just graduated from uni. where you were in class full time? and the funny thing here, the university newspaper, blogs and websites don’t count because this are self-publishing platforms.  Some guys forget that they also were once starting out.

 

That’s when I decided to do my own stuff, self-publish, blog like mad, just write, write and write, if a good opportunity comes along yay I’ll take it if it doesn’t then I’ll just continue writing.