The Kenya ICT Board will award the three best application developers in the mobile applications development competition, pledged the Board’s CEO Mr Paul Kukubo. The competition was launched at the close of the University’s second Mobile Boot Camp which was held from 9 to 11th July.
Applications developed for the competition should be submitted to Jessica Colaço at: jessica.colaco@srcc.co.ke by Saturday 15th August 2009 at 11.59 p.m. (GMT + 3 - Nairobi Time). It will be the second time the board will be awarding mobile application development winners as it sponsored the winners of the first competition. See: http://www.strathmore.edu/News.php?NewsID=55
The theme of the camp was "Mobile Applications for Development in Africa". Applications for the competition should be in the fields of M-Learning, M-Health and M-Agriculture. The Faculty of Information Technology, MIT-AITI (http://aiti.mit.edu/) and Strathmore Research and Consultancy Centre (www.srcc.co.ke) helped organize and deliver the Mobile Boot Camp. Approximately 100 university students, software developers and entrepreneurs attended event.
The camp comprised both theoretical and practical sessions. The first day consisted of plenary talks from experts in the field of mobile technologies. Michael Gordon, the President of MIT-AITI gave background information for mobile applications: He covered three systems i.e. local applications, short message systems (sms) and mobile web.
Michael Wakahe of Shujaa Solutions Ltd talked about the Server-Side Technologies used in Mobile Application Development, while Wilfred Mworia of African Pixel talked about platforms used in Mobile Application Development.
Mr Gordon gave an overview of SMS services. Engineer David Mulongo gave an overview of the GSM system. Mr Stephen Kamotho of Safaricom talked about Networks – Bluetooth and WiFi and Zain’s Oscar Correia gave an introduction to 2G/3G network architecture.
Symbiotic’s Mbugua Njihia and Idd Salim Kithinji talked about the Pasha Habari and Sembuse services. Gaming Innovator’s Wesley Kirinya talked about Embedded Game Development, and Nathan Eagle talked about txtEagle by Dr. Nathan Eagle (txteagle.com).
The presentations can be downloaded from: http://www.strathmore.edu/aboutus.php?id=171 (at the bottom of the page). The second and third day of the camp comprised of breakout lab sessions that covered Beginner J2ME, Intermediate J2ME, Python and Windows Mobile.
The Beginner J2ME breakout session was facilitated by Michael Wakahe and with students from the MIT–AITI as lab assistants. The Intermediate J2ME breakout session was facilitated by Michael Gordon with his team from the MIT–AITI as lab assistants. This is an example of how AITI is helping to train the next generation of technology teachers and leaders.
The Python breakout session was facilitated by Geoffrey Mimano from Datadyne and the Window Mobile Session was facilitated by Conrad Akunga from Virtual City. The highlight of the camp was txtEagle and location awareness in Intermediate J2ME: using cell tower triangulation and GPS delivered by Julian Yuen. The next Strathmore Mobile Boot Camp will be held in November 2009.
More information and pictures about the Mobile Boot Camp at:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/jessicacolaco/SecondMobileBootCamp911thJuly2009#5365769068987047538
http://aiti.mit.edu/blog/?p=116
www.jessicacolaco.wordpress.com
