RubyConf Kenya 2016

A big “thank you” to the organizers of RubyConf Kenya for inviting me to present on Parallella and on entrepreneurship. Rich learning and networking were had by all.

I was especially impressed with M-Pesa, the mobile payment system used throughout Kenya. M-Pesa is a disruptive blend of financial technology, UX, and ecosystem management. Local devs are writing financial apps that leverage the M-Pesa platform. Banks are already being disrupted by M-Pesa, and the topic is worth a separate post on this blog.

Entrepreneurship and Open Source

Slides from the Entrepreneurship presentation…

Parallella, Supercomputing, and Ruby

Slides from the Parallella presentation…

After the Conference: Nairobi GNU/Linux User Group

A fellow developer invited me to attend the Nairobi GNU/Linux User Group held at the Tunapanda Institute on Saturday afternoon. The presenter, an instructor at Tunapanda, shared her experience with teaching tools for Scratch and PHP. The packed room held about 25 enthusiasts.

After the meeting, I met Linux system admins and open source devs who are deeply immersed in the Android space. They’re developing on devices that are hard (or impossible) to get in the USA. Multi-SIM Android phones are common in Kenya. One dev carries an Android with dual SIMs, eight (8) 64-bit cores, and the software tools to determine which core(s) are running at any given time.

Sad to say that I will be leaving Kenya in a few days. Gotta come back!