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Chat bot Experience

I have spent a huge a mount of time thinking about how to drive engagement and sales using the already existing technology. One of the experience I keep getting back to is chat bots and their ability to automate and drive consumers to making a sale or to provide feedback.

I have experimented with Ohms Law Montana, awarding winning Coast base hip-hip artist. Here is a preview on the experience on Facebook Messenger. This enable a user get a sample of the artist’s music, getting a short bio and ability to purchase concert ticket.

The other experiment I have done is prototype a covid-19 chat bot with key features as FAQs, Facts about the virus and live chat to chat with an expert.

 

Look forward to running more experiments on this experience.

Categories
disruption startups

Disruption starts with unsatisfied customers not technology

M-Pesa has being winning because it has made money transfer fast, safe and reliable compared to sending money using the Post Office or using buses that would reach where you are sending money to. Safaricom has done this with the most basic technology built on top of the SIM toolkit. This goes to show that disruption is never about the technology but being able to make customers happy and just working.

Booking a train ticket on the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) trains is nothing complicated. You just use the most basic technology known and used daily by mobile phone users. This technology is USSD if you hadn’t guessed it already. BuuPass has done the same with booking of buses. This has saved the customer money and the distress of getting all buses fully booked after spending time and money to get to the bus station.

Equity disrupted banking by targeting a new customer base that had difficulty getting access to banking. The bank made getting a bank account super easy by reducing the restrictions. Equity Bank democratized banking and banking stopped being a preserve of the chosen few. This allowed folks like farmers access finance.

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Disruption is never about the technology. It starts with unhappy customers. Find unhappy customers and make them happy in the most simple form.

Categories
leadership

Leadership

This post was first published on my LinkedIn account.

Here are lessons from my experience working in a number of communities and interactions with community members. Everyone, I believe knows what they need to do to become whom they aspire to be. What most of us need is someone to show them it has been done (role models) and how to do it (mentors).

In my work in communities I have come to realise we need to focus on building leaders within small groups of people. Identifying and mentoring potential leaders are equally important. As a leader in a community, it is important to create an environment where you provide space for self-discovery and opportunities for people to surprise themselves. This enables you as a leader to scale impact within a community. I have a phrase that I like say “Should I ever leave, I won’t be worried.” My goal has always been to create a self-sustaining community where I can get sick or leave and not worry that everything will crumble.

What ails our country is that we have ‘leaders’ who are not willing to grow leaders who will replace them.

Categories
Arts Social Media

Going Live: Ohms Law Montana

On a Tuesday morning of the 28th of November, a day set aside as a national holiday, Ohms Law Montana mentions he has two new music videos ready for launch. On this morning, 8AM, we had a meeting at Swahilipot Hub for an update on the development of mentor001 (a mentorship web application platform). Ohms had 2 new music videos (‘Wamakata Imara’ and ‘Poleni’) ready and waiting for a launch date, we had initially discussed a possible date but there was no concrete date set. We had worked with him to help launch his “Mada Tonje” music video at the Swahilipot Hub’s amphitheatre.

As we were talking, it hit me, we can do a live facebook session to discuss his new music and the new song and video. Initially I had floated the idea of doing 2 to 3 facebook live sessions on the Swahilipot Hub’s facebook page. This with the hope of building engagement on the page and use the 7k+ followers for the benefit of the community. So we thought, why don’t we try this with this new video.

Ohms Law Montana Talking

(photo by Don Makameleon)

Questions that lingered in my head included:

  • We had not done marketing for this live session and would people view it?
  • Would the lack of marketing affect Ohms’ video viewing and the hype?
  • What kind of questions will we get and would Ohms’ be able to tackle them?
Continue reading “Going Live: Ohms Law Montana”
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quote

Struggle with Migraines

Every evening I get mild migraines, it’s being the trend for a long time now. It’s as if it’s programmed to act up in the evening at around 6 p.m.

It feels like someone is prevent my brascratching my brain with nails. It gets so bad that I feel like I can hear my brain beating like my heart. At this time I feel like a want to escape, any sound or noise make the migraines worse. I take a pain killer but it makes the situation worse.

I don’t like the timing particularly because it’s the time of the day that I want to keep learning coding. The thought that it’s pulling my plans back, makes my brain ache more. Am a night owl, waking up early in the morning is a challenge, most of my learning is done during the night. By the time everyone is a sleep when I want to get back to coding, my brain feels tired and torn apart by the migraines so I end up doing less. A big setback as I’m under personal pressure to learn and create fast.

On a Sunday afternoon I take time away to give my brain a rest. I walk around the city, stare blankly at the ocean and meet up with a friend if I have the energy. I have stayed away from getting too involved with other people’s problem in an attempt toin from thinking. My problem, once in a situation I think deeply which ends up tiring my brain at the risk of upsetting the migraines. This is taking a toll on my personal relationship as I don’t give a lot of thought.

I need to find a permanent solution to this.

Categories
quote

Working on a mobile app

For the next months, my college classmates and I will be working on creating a mobile web app. The details are supposed to be secret, we decided to create the app after attending the Firefox OS Apps Day (refer to previous post).

Why the secrecy? We want to surprise especially our classmates. There is a culture where my fellow students are not doing anything else but reading for their exams, which is really bad for the technology sector. I’m a believer that a first honors degree will not help that much if you do not have the skills of creating something from scratch, solving problems as they emerge and having the drive to learn on your own. We are not that good in programming heck we are just beginners.It’s all about curiosity and the feeling as we see how ideas are convert into something that really works.

How are going to actually create the app?

  1. Identified the single problem we are solving.
  2. We have researched on what programming languages we will need to write the app.
  3.  Sketched the User Interface on paper.
  4. Now the actual development but there is a single detail we are going on a semester break which means guys are going back home and we live in different parts of the country, we decided to use Dropbox and share our codes and constant communication on what needs to be done.
  5. We will be learning on the go that is identify what is needed, research on how it can be done then code it. Rather than read a whole programming language then code the app. This will be faster and we can actually have something within a short period of time.

I’m excited 🙂

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quote

Firefox OS Apps Day (Mombasa Edition)

Saturday 23rd March

Woke up early ecstatic about attending Firefox Apps Day for Mombasa that was to be held at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Mombasa Campus), went to pick up my classmates…yes I had come up with a gang to represent my college. I made announcements in class about the event several times, I even had a reminder that reminded me about this Saturday every single day. I infected my friends with my excitement.

We arrived on time got registered and off we started. Met my high school schoolmates who were a year ahead of me, made new friends and learn lots that are definitely going to be a plus in my web development projects. I heard of the projects the fellows were working on and the great apps they are building made me feel like I have being in my comfort zone. 

Most important was the talk on the open web of which Mozilla has being championing and sharing of ideas and giving the world my time. This re-enforced my desire for use every single aspect of the technology I create to push the human race forward.

…the hackathon. We divided ourselves into group and worked on creating a simple web app. My group worked on a single form for an auto parts shop (online ordering). We used HTML for the markup and php for the backend that created the invoice for the customer. The group chose me to present the app to the audience. Headed to the front had issues with the projector, made a mistake in my introduction instead of saying “Am from Technical University of Mombasa” I said “…Technical University of Nairobi”. The other apps were great simple because of the time constraint, which got people to be creative. Well we did not make it to the top three position but we were happy since it was our first.

Went back home enlightened and hungry to learn more.

 

Categories
education

Learning Culture

September 2012, after holiday break from the University , I introduced an idea of starting a programming group to my classmates. We were beginners in writing code. I had thought of this thoroughly as I was aiming at encouraging a culture of self-learning where my friends and I can learn stuff that are not necessarily going to be taught in class. Started as a group of four now six. After a week or so, a guy left citing that he was not able to give time on his classwork. I told the other that whoever felt that s/he was not seeing the value of the group work they are allowed to leave. “If you want something really bad you would create time” this was what I told everyone. Time is no excuse

We started with Web Designing with HTML at codeacademy.com for the basics and to get us interested with HTML and CSS. A while later we got into other resources with an in depth coverage. We designed simple sites and dedicated more time to learning. Uncertainty started creeping in, most wondered if they should really get into programming as there is the other option of Information Technology infrastructure, networking, again it was evident they were more worried about staying on course with the University curriculum.  I thought I should go through the curriculum with them making it evident that what we are thought is introduction into a language nothing deeper. Now in second year we have being introduced to four languages which were left behind each new semester.

My main goal was still to encourage the culture of self learning. Now I have got three friends who are so into programming that they never pass a day without learning and writing new code lines. The rest still either not sure of what they want to do in life or busy with school work, chasing A’s and the first honors. Well, my grades have lowered since I started spending time self-learning but its all worth it because if I rely solely on my schooling I will not get where I need to be.

Am not going to let my schooling interfere with my education. 🙂