Join us on the 30th of January at the iHub for our first MOMO meet up of 2012. We will be having a presentation by Dr. Zhen Liu, Head of Nokia Research Centre Growth Economies Lab, which has research teams in Beijing, Shenzhen, Bangalore and Nairobi.

About Dr.Zhen

Before joining Nokia, Zhen was with IBM T. J. Watson Research Center and served as the manager of System Analysis and Optimization group, and the senior manager of the Next Generation Distributed Systems department, and was a master inventor at IBM. Prior to this experience, Zhen worked in Orange Labs (formerly France Telecom R&D) as a Research Associate, and in INRIA (the French national research center on information and automation), first as a Researcher, then became a Research Director.

Continuing in the tradition of executing one of the best if not the best mobile tech events in East Africa, the AllAmber team led by Matthew Dawes are back with Mobile Web East Africa (MWEA) 2012 which will be held on February 22-23rd at the prestigious Southern Sun-May Fair hotel. I had the pleasure of attending and participating in a panel at the first MWEA event back in  2010, and this event is one you cannot afford to miss. This year MWEA takes at a notch higher with a speaker lineup that is worth it’s weight in Gold. The speaker line up includes:

• Emma Kaye, CEO, Bozza
• Paul Kukubo, CEO, Kenya ICT Board
• John Waibochi, CEO, Virtual City
• Mark Kaigwa, Partner, Afrinnovator
• Joseph Sevilla, Director, @iLabAfrica
• Judith Owigar, President, Akirachix
• Paul Stemmet, COO, World of Avatar
• Neil Ahlsten, New Business Development – Africa, Google

This is one of the most dynamic speaker lineup we’ve seen in a long time, and is sure to keep the attendees well informed on the mobile industry not only in Kenya but in Africa as a general. Looking for inspiration to start that mobile business in Africa? then you want to listen to John Waibochi of Virtual City  winners of the Nokia Grand Challenge Competition, wondering how small is the new big? Judith Owigar , President of Akirachix and winner of Anita Borg award,  will tell you how a simple idea can became a community changer. In short this is an event you don’t want to miss.

For more information on how to register and attend the event go to http://www.mobileeastafrica.com/wp/registration/

Android developers in Kenya, here’s your chance to take some high quality code courtesy of Amazon and hack up some interesting apps for the local market. Amazon have just announced that the Kindle Fire source code is available for download. Go here http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200203720

FYI it’s 809MB so patience is a virtue with a lot of wait

Smile it’s Mobile Monday!!

After a 2 month break, Mobile Monday is back. Join us on the 21st of November at the iHub as we network with fellow mobile developers, and entrepreneurs. Our speaker will be:

• Mbugua Njihia–  Symbiotic Media CEO will be talking about Presentation Skills: How to sell your app
• Planet Rackus-  Ma3Racer Game

Excellent opportunity to network with other mobile developers,entrepreneurs and enthusiasts. If you’ve registered before for other events please go ahead and register again .If you’d like to be present during the meet up in December please send us an email at talk@mobilemonday.co.ke and we will set up a slot for you.

For more information check out:

twitter: twitter.com/mobilemondayke
facebook: facebook.com/mobilemondayke

On the 21st of November, we will be having Mbugua Njihia talking about “How to sell your app”. Check out his presentation at Demo Pit and get some few pointers:

As part of our focus on reaching the community more effectively we are on the look out for passionate people who can join our website team and help us push out relevant articles to the community. If you have an existing blog and would like to have your article cross posted please feel free to hit us up on email at talk@mobilemonday.co.ke or on twitter @mobilemondayke, for those of you who just want to post articles and join the team also ping us.

So here below are the top 12 submitted apps that will have the chance to pitch in front of the professional jury and win a nomination to the Mobile Premier Awards 2012, which are held during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona:

CrowdPesa.com

Hewa

Empathy

3GINNOVATORS

NikoHapa Mobile App

iRelief

MEDKenya

WordPower

MsemaKweli

M-Shop

Symptom Tracker

Personal Nutritionist

Congratulations to all the App Artists that got selected!

The jury that will evaluate the apps on stage include:

1. Leonard D’cunha- Manager, Portfolio, Planning & Insights – East & Southern, Nokia.
2. Dr. Joseph Sevilla- Deputy Vice Chancellor (Quality and Assurance) Strathmore University
3. Maria langat- Operations at Akirachix and Software Engineer at Bridge International Academies
4. Alex Anderson- Lead Developer FrontlineSMS and also works on medical education website podmedics.com
5. Idd Salim- IT Expert.Coder at Symbiotic media and Xema labs. Blogger at IddSalim.

Venue Information:

The location will be at the *iHub_Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community at the 4th floor of the Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong Rd., directly opposite the Uchumi Hyper.

Date: 10th of September 2011

AGENDA

10.00am: Welcome and introductions

10.15am: First Act – Leading Platforms present

10.30am: 2nd Act – 10 Apps present with jury feedback
11.30am: Thanks and jury selection for Runnerup plus the winner.
11.40am: Networking and Winner announcement.

12.00am: Close

Join us this Monday the 29th of August at the iHub for our next MOMO meet up. We have a special focus on Mobile Advertising and are pretty excited to have InMobi as our keynote speakers.

InMobi is the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network. With offices on four continents we provide advertisers, publishers and developers with a uniquely global solution for advertising. Ournetwork is growing and now delivers the unprecedented ability to reach 314 million consumers, in over 165 countries, through more than 36 billion mobile ad impressions monthly. InMobi was recently selected as the 2011 AlwaysOn Top 100 Mobile Companies in Silicon Valley.

We will also be getting an update on upcoming mobile apps event AppCircus as well as some of the awesome work being done by the Ushahidi mobile team.

• AppCircus–  Judith Owigar  of AkiraChix will be talking about AppCircus
• Ushahidi Mobile Apps with the Ushahidi Team
• InMobi- The Economics of Your Ad Supported Application Business with Terence Eden, Developer Community Manager, EMEA, InMobi

Excellent opportunity to network with other mobile developers,entrepreneurs and enthusiasts. If you’ve registered before for other events please go ahead and register again here http://momoke2908.eventbrite.com/ .If you’d like to be present during the meet up in September please send us an email at talk@mobilemonday.co.ke and we will set up a slot for you.

For more information check out:
twitter: twitter.com/mobilemondayke
facebook: facebook.com/mobilemondayke

Event Sponsors

Partners

The m:Lab’s training on mobile applications development and related technologies is delivered through a short course program. The training program is designed to offer individuals who already have a software development background an opportunity to hone their skills with a mobile technologies focus. It is a program targeted at the thousands of graduates of ICT related degree programs from East African universities.

The training is undertaken at m:lab East Africa’s new facilities located at Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong road – one floor beneath iHub. The training facility has capacity for 25 students equipped with computers and high speed Internet connections. The Lab’s testing facility equipped with a wide range of mobile devices from various manufacturers is also accessible to the students.

Technologies covered in the training include USSD, android, J2me, php, mysql, LWUIT, Mobile Web , IVR, User Experience Design, SMS, Systems Design. Students also get to cover training on business for mobile. This is meant to improve their entrepreneurial skills and is complemented by short business incubation period before they graduate. The Lab expects that although some students may complete the course and go into relevant employment positions others will go into entrepreneurship with mobile innovations.

The current program is a full time daily course on all week days. The students get to interact with other developers and domain experts from different development sectors through events organized by m:lab East Africa and the iHub community.

Eligibility criteria

1. Must have completed a degree program (evidence = final year transcript or degree certificate)
2. Must be available on a full time basis from 9.30am to 3.30pm for 4 months (between September 5th 2011 and December 31st 2011 for second wave of students)

Number of Students

A new lot of 25 students is expected to join the training in September 2011.

Evaluation and Selection Criteria
The selection panel for submitted applications will consider the following criteria

1. Familiarity with technology, platforms and programming languages
2. Accomplishments
3. Demonstrated interest and motivation
4. Academic background and performance