Yesterday was the first day of JKUAT’s AITI Extension (AITI-x) course.  The course is being instructed by a graduate of this past summer’s AITI course held at Strathmore University, Samuel Kamochu, and two others.  You can follow the course by reading their blog:

http://discoverjkuat.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/the-maiden-jkuatmit-aiti-x-session/

50 students in the class on the first day!  We know that Samuel will lead an effective course.  During this past summer’s course, Samuel demonstrated excellent leadership and teaching abilities, helping out during our labs and during Strathmore’s Mobile Bootcamp.

AITI is very excited about this course and the effect it will have on its students and instructors.  The extension course demonstrates the impact and the scalability of our program.

MobileActive.org published an article recently describing the growing popularity of mobile development bootcamps in Africa.  You can find the articles here.  Strathmore’s Bootcamp and AITI were mentioned prominently:

Strathmore University held its second Mobile Boot Camp this summer. The inaugural camp was held in November of 2008. The camps were spearheaded by Jessica Colaço, Research Leader at Strathmore Research and Consultancy Centre (SRCC). J2ME and Java breakout sessions were facilitated by Michael Wakahe of Shujaa Solutions Ltd and Michael Gordon, president of MIT’s Africa Internet Technology Initiative (AITI).

A team of students from the MIT–AITI assisted in the lab this summer, an example of how camps are mentoring for the next generation of technology teachers and leaders. Colaço also belongs to the first class of the EPROM program that Nathan Eagle founded at MIT. Coincidence?

Read the entire article; it is interesting, and there is more on AITI (it evens mentions this blog!).  The article has one factual error.  It mentions the team that won AITI’s Mobile Application Development Competition.  This team won the competition that was associated with AITI’s 6-week course; they did not participate in the bootcamp competition.

Today we updated our wiki to include the full Mobile Application Development in Java curriculum that we developed over the last 2 years. You can find the materials here.  These materials were piloted and refined this past summer in Kenya.  Anyone is free to use the curriculum.

Samuel Kamochu, a distinguished graduate of our 2009 Kenya program, has spearheaded an initiative to offer an AITI-like course at JKUAT.  The course will employ AITI’s Mobile Application Development curriculum, and it will be structured in much the same way as our 2009 Kenya course:

• Intermediate Java
• SMS Services
• J2ME
• Android
• Mobile Application Competition

The course will be instructed by Samuel, a JKUAT alum, and two other JKUAT graduates:  Isaac Oteyo and Andrew Kinai.  The instructors have already selected their students based on  recommendations from JKUAT faculty.  30 second-year JKUAT students are enrolled.  The course will be offered 3 days per week for 2 hours a day, 1 hour for lecture and 1 hour for lab time.  The course begins October 15th.

AITI is very pleased to support extension programs such as this one.  We will help in any way we can.  We will keep you updated on the progress of the course.

MobiTechno, the team that won first prize at our Mobile Application Competition, has some dramatic updates.  The team has developed their AITI project into a registered Kenyan company.  They have also copyrighted their idea.  More exciting, their service is now hosted in Kenya with an SMS service provider.  The service has an SMS shortcode which allows users to access their service via SMS with a short, 5 digit number.  They are meeting with advisors and venture capitalists, contacts they made through the AITI course.  The service is currently being tested through a limited rollout.  More news as it develops.

The members of AITI Kenya are now all back from their various travels.  We are in the process of consolidating the end of the course and responding to email and events that occurred while we were traveling.  We are sorry for the delay for those who have emailed us or posted to the forums.  As you may notice, we have updated the blog with events of the last week of the course.  It was unfortunate that the final day of the course had to be pushed back to Monday the 20th of July because of Strathmore graduation.  This did not allow the instructors any time to organize after the course ended, as originally planned we had 3 days for this.  We left for our travels immediately on the morning of the 21st.

Enjoy the posts below, and if you are awaiting contact from us, rest assured that we are back. BTW, our travels were excellent.

The Strathmore news service has posted an article covering some details of the bootcamp and Strathmore’s own Mobile Application Competition.

http://www.strathmore.edu/News.php?NewsID=120

While the Judges were deliberating, graduation ceremonies commenced.  Strathmore University organized a program of speeches for our students.  After the speeches, certificates were handed out to the students.  I was facilitating the deliberation session, so I missed the most of the speeches.  However, the rest of the team summarized the speeches for me.

The first speaker was Rose Wahome, Faculty of IT Manager at Strathmore University.  She was followed by faculty of the Strathmore Business School.  The final speaker was Reuben Marwanga, Dean of Strathmore’s IT Department.  The speeches focused on the singular opportunity that our course presented to the students: expert programmers and instructors devoting their summers to the students.  The speakers commended on the appropriateness of our curriculum and our entrepreneurial focus.  Small business opportunities and the entrepreneurial spirit were discussed as well as the ripeness of Kenya’s environment for small business creation.  As related to me, the outpouring of appreciation for the AITI instructors was emotional and overwhelming for the teaching assistants (Zach, Cory, Michelle, and Julian).

Reuben Marwanga during his speech

Michelle gave a speech to the students representing the view of the AITI Teaching Assistants.  I did not witness the speech, but I was told it was impressive.  We have it on video, and we plan to post the speech as soon as it is digitized and edited.  I cannot wait to view it.

Michelle during her speech

I arrived back in the room in the middle of the last speech.  The Judges had decided a winner, and I waited until the speech was complete to announce the decision to the students.  In front of the students, before announcing the winner, I spoke about how impressed the instructors and the judges were with the entries.   I spoke about how important it is to market an idea to potential investors and how the competition was good practice for such a situation.  I talked about some of the qualities of the winning team that the judges found so impressive.  Finally, I announced the winner to uproarious applause.  The members of the winning team, MobiTechno were surprised and overwhelmed, some were crying.  The winners came to the front of the audience for a brief speech and to accept their certificates and prizes.

After MobiTechno were seated we began to hand out certificates to the students.  AITI distributes three types of certificates:

• Certificate of Completion for those students who have successfully completed the course
• Certificate of Diligence for those students who worked particularly hard and showed extreme devotion to the course
• Certificate of Excellence for those students who demonstrated an excellent grasp of programming concepts

Most students earned Completion certification, while 5 students earned Diligence and 5 students earned Excellence.  The students were very excited as we were announcing the recipients of the last two awards, showing much happiness for the recipients.  Furthermore, I said a little about each of the recipients, a short anecdote or description, that amused the audience.  After the certificates were awarded, I spoke of the dedication and sacrifice of the TAs.  Each had worked extremely hard over the course of the program to ensure its success.  The TAs sacrificed better paying jobs for AITI and I (as well as the students) are very grateful.  Finally, I thanked everyone at Strathmore and Google who helped us deliver the course: Rose Wahome, John Matogo, Esther Gathenya, Belinda Nichols, Susie Vaks, and Elena Spitzer.  AITI tried many different and ambitious ideas for this program, and they could not have been successful without the help of these organizations and individuals.

Next, Jimmy Gathage, a member of the class, was selected to give a speech representing the students’ view.  The speech was wonderful.  It touched on their extreme appreciation and how much they learned from the course.  I was very emotional, as were the TAs.  Thank you Jimmy.

I am sure that I’m forgetting much, as it was a whirlwind day.  Our final event of the day was a reception organized by Strathmore.  The students, AITI instructors, and Strathmore faculty congregated in Strathmore’s beautiful reception hall for food and merriment.  It was an release of friendship and camaraderie that was built over the 6 weeks of the course.  Now the students and instructors could interact with less formality, as friends, and cut loose!

I’m still reflecting over the 6 weeks of the course and I will continue to update the blog with my thoughts and any news.  I believe the course was a great success and I learned much for future courses.  As mentioned, we changed AITI greatly as compared to previous years and I feel that this iteration was a big step in the right direction.  I look forward to our students’ comments regarding the course.  AITI does not end after the course is completed.  We encourage our students to remain in contact with us, employing email and our forums.  We are available to our students.

Today was the culmination of the course, the Mobile Application Competition.  The competition began this past Friday when the groups had to submit their business plans.  The business plans were distributed to the judges so that they could prepare themselves for the competition. Today the students presented their application (service) ideas to our panel of Judges.

You can find all of the business plans and presentations on our wiki:

http://aiti.mit.edu/wiki/index.php?title=MAC_Kenya_2009

We also recorded videos of each of the presentations.  We will post the videos as soon as we digitize and edit the footage.

With the judges arrayed in the front row, the 7 groups each had 20 minutes to present their idea to the panel.  None of the AITI instructors were included in the panel.  The presentations included a slide deck covering the basics of service, the financials, market research, competition, and 5-year plan.  Please view the presentations from the above link.  If you do, you will see how much work went into each of the presentations.  During the course of the class, students were given pointers and advice regarding presentation style and delivery method.

MoTickets Presentation

Forex Finder Presentation

The groups also needed to demonstrate a working implementation of the common use cases of the service.  The groups deployed SMS servers, client-side (mobile-side) J2ME applications, and databases for these demos.  Much work went into these technical demos and all worked flawlessly.  The groups were encouraged to interact with the judges and demonstrate their services so that the judges were excited.   Groups handed out phones to the judges, displayed emulated interactions on the screen, and some even asked the judges to use their own phones to interact via SMS with their service.

Brass Technologies Demo

MobiTecho Demo

The students took the competition very seriously.  As you can see by the images, most dressed to impress, and had well-polished presentations.  All of our students are engineers (software developers), and we realize that for many of them, this type of task is difficult.  However, the presentations were exciting and professional, with many questions from the judges.

Point U Right Demo

After the 7 presentations (which ran only 30 minutes late), I took the judges to the deliberation room.  I led them in a discussion to decide the winning team and the runner up.  This deliberation lasted about 30 minutes with the judges.  As we went around the room, a clear winner emerged: MobiTechno.

MobiTechno’s flagship service is to provide users with a database of prices for goods and services.  This database is updated by users and is searchable by users.  Content is fully built by users.  When the user encounters a good deal, he/she can update the system with a report via SMS or a J2ME application.  The service tracks fare prices, goods, services, properties, and traffic.  Please see their business plan and presentation available from the link above.  The judges were very impressed with MobiTechno’s demo, the polish of their presentation, and (of course) the potential for the idea.

MobiTechno with Certificates

The runner-up was Forex Finder.  The idea behind this service is to provide information for those seeking to exchange funds from one currency to another, a common task for both tourists and native Kenyans.  The group has created a system to capture the exchange structure (rates, fees, etc.) for forex bureaus.  Bureaus register with the service to advertise themselves.  Users can query the system via SMS or J2ME by providing their location, the currency and amount of money to exchange, and desired final currency.  The system will return the bureaus that will give the user the most money in the final currency also factoring in distance to the bureaus.  The bureaus can also update the system with any rate or fee changes securely via SMS or J2ME.

The instructors recognize and congratulate all of the groups for their hard work and dedication.  Each of the ideas from the competition could be spun into a viable business.  The atmosphere for the class for the last week was electric: the spirit of competition combined with inter-group assistance.  The goal of this class, even more so than creating expert programmers, was to create technical entrepreneurs: individuals who can see opportunities and understand what it takes to turn an idea into an actual business.  I feel that the course has achieved this goal.

We also thank the Judges of the competition.  Each Judge gave us the afternoon, listening attentively, asking questions, and taking notes.  We greatly appreciate that each judge could sacrifice an afternoon of work for AITI, and we are thankful for their expertise and opinions.

We will keep you updated on the progress of the teams.  We know that a few of them plan to follow through with creating a business from their idea.  We recognize the difficulties that exist in Kenya when founding a small business, and AITI will help our former students with contacts, funding opportunities, and technical advice.

The day before the Mobile Application Competition the class took a trip to Kenya’s Mount Longonot.  23 students and 3 instructors (Cory was injured and Michelle was sick) woke up early to scale Mount Longonot and hike the rim of the dormant volcano.    From wikipedia: “The gate is around 2150 m asl and the peak at 2780 m asl but following the jagged rim involves substantially more than the 630 m vertical difference.”  The instructors had a blast hiking with the students.

Everyone starting off on the hike:

The hikers at the start

The group that reached the rim:

Group that reached the rim

The group that reached the peak of the rim:

At the rim's peak

Everyone after the hike:

At the gates of the park