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:

(Photos courtesy of Daudi Were)

On the 21st of February we had our MoMo meet up. To say the attendance was amazing would be an understatement, with over 40 students from JKUAT attending and a total attendance of 200 this was by far the largest MoMo meet up to date. Microsoft-EA came in strong with Vincent Mugambi, who described himself as the “Pastor Muiru” of Microsoft, in other words his an evangelist, a developer and platform evangelist to be precise. A few highlights from Vincent’s talk:

1. Microsoft has one of the largest cloud offerings in the market right now.
2. Mobile developers can leverage the cloud to build and deploy applications.
3. New features in Windows Mobile 7

Conrad Akunga of Virtual City joined Vincent to talk about the Imagine Cup. Conrad has been a judge for 3 years during the event when it was held in Kenya. He challenged developers to push the boundaries and come up with strong ideas and projects. “The era of the lone ranger is over..” was Conrad’s advice to developers, “work in teams..” was a message he emphasized. One thing he said caught my attention, “..don’t ever think your idea is completely unique..” most developers assume that their idea is very unique, in most cases someone else has thought of it before and probably tried to execute, the devil is in the details.

mLab (www.mlab.co.ke)

As part of the evening we had a quick introduction to the mLab team, led by John Kieti, a friend and colleague. John and I share common interests in technology and health, but I honestly have no idea why his twitter handle is @gmeltdown . The mLab, a mobile development incubator,will form a key component of spurring development in the mobile sector, a welcome addition for all those techies out there looking for a place to go from idea to product. The mLab is an initiative of InfoDev in collaboration with iHub, eMobilis. South Africa will also be launching an mLab over the next few weeks, I was very excited to learn that Steve Voosloo, formerly of the ShuttleWorth Foundation will be part of the team setting up the mLab.

Pivot25 (www.pivot25.co.ke)

Jay Bhalla also talked about Pivot25. Pivot25 gives companies the opportunity to showcase their applications to Operators, Venture Capital Community, Angel Investors and the ICT community at large, and at the same time the chance win prize money for their Companies and Applications. Applications are due midnight (East-Africa time) March 31st, 2011. To enter the competition please view the rules and instructions. We advise you to be as detailed as possible and fill as much of the application criteria as possible.

ELMA

Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO-Craft Silicon took a few minutes to talk about ELMA. ELMA is a a mobile commerce platform that allows programmers to develop business applications rapidly. Developers can build robust applications fully integrated with a payment gateway. Definitely watch for Craft Silicon, they seem on the right path.

Kirui, a student from JKUAT wrote a more detailed blog posts recapping the event. check out http://kiruikenn.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/mobile-monday-with-microsoft-how-it-went-down/

This event was a success by any measure. We managed to impact students who will form the next generation of developers and entrepreneurs. Check out more photos here http://goo.gl/mjecn Look out for bigger and better things from the MOMOKE team.

Many thanks for those of you who attended our first MoMo meet up of 2011. The iHub was packed again as developers and enthusiasts came together to hear Pesapal talking about the online payments ecosystem in Kenya.

For those of you who missed out on this month’s MoMo meet up or may be you just want to go through the excellent presentation Liko Agosta, CEO- Pesapal made here it is:

PesaPal- 360 Degrees

Our last MoMo event for the year held at the iHub was very successful. We had over 100 people attending and the quality of the content was amazing. Nokia was well represented by Agatha Gikunda, Safaricom was represented by Nzioka Waita and we had guest appearances from the Deputy Vice Chancellor of JKUAT.

Pictures from the MoMo meet up that happened on the 15th of November at the iHub.

John Wesonga, kicking of the meeting

Kahenya & Limo talking about overlap.co.ke- An app that allows motorists to report errant drivers

Deputy Vice Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology speaking on the importance of engaging the main actors when developing an app that is specific to their sector e.g. If you are developing an app to assist farmers, talk to them and understand their challenges.

The Mobile Monday-Kenya team from left John Wesonga (MoMoKE),Nokia-Agatha Gikunda , James Muendo (MoMoKE) AkiraChix- Jamila Abbas,Virtual City-John Waibochi  and Safaricom- Nzioka Waita

Big thank you to Virtual City, who continue to sponsor us and help us grow this community. Also we want to thank Nokia for being part of this event.

View all the pictures in our Flickr stream http://bit.ly/gZwpu4 and check out what Erik Hersman aka White African had to say Mobile Monday takes over the iHub

Last evening we had by far our largest Mobile Monday meet up at the ihub. The meet up was facilitated by Samsung who came in strong and showed us why they are a force to reckon with in the mobile industry. As always the meet up was characterised with a lot of excitement and very good participation and turnout from the mobile community. MoMoK had earlier promised on our twitter stream @mobilemondayke that we would have “goodies” for application developers, believe me we didn’t disappoint!!

We were privileged when Samsung chose Mobile Monday to launch their app developer competition and show case their platform Bada. Developers have the opportunity to win up to Kshs200,000 ($USD 2500) in prize money plus get their apps pushed on to the Samsung Bada apps store where they can continue to make money from the revenues the app generates- “With a Samsung, it’s not that hard to imagine”. Update: More information about the competition can be found here.

Verviant, a kenyan technology company was also represented at the meet up, with Mark Mwongela MD doing his best to show case some of the work that Verviant has done in developing applications on the Samsung Bada platform.

Also present was someone from Mxit.

MoMo-Kenya is growing fast, and this works to the benefit of the developer community. We want to make it bigger and better during each event.

A big thank you goes to our partners- iHub Nairobi who always manage to give us a superb venue plus team to help us arrange things, Virtual City- our premium sponsor, Pete the Barista- the coffee,beverages and food go a long way and of course the MoMo-Kenya team.

During the 10th Anniversary of Mobile Monday held in Finland, Xrystalgenius led by Alex Nyika were crowned champions in the Peer Awards. Xrystalgenius beat competitors from Uganda,Kenya (Akirachix),Brazil and Pakistan. Below are some of the pictures from the Peer Awards ceremony.

Photos from the 10th Anniversary Mobile Monday meet up in Helsinki,Finland, Sept 27-29th

During the 10th Anniversary of Mobile Monday held in Helsinki,Finland, Jari Taamisto CEO/Founder of Mobile Monday officially signed up the Kenya chapter of Mobile Monday. As one of the youngest MoMo Chapters, we are now part of the 150,000+ members in over 32 countries. The signing ceremony was done by John Wesonga (pictured here with Jari Taamisto) the lead of Mobile Monday-Kenya. The official MoMo founders pin was handed over to John Wesonga.

Follow on Twitter using #momoke, the live stream is here – http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mobile-monday-kenya-meet-up