The Nonprofit Software Development Summit 2007 concludes

I never thought I would be in the Bay Area, which is within 2 hours from the Silicon Valley, for almost one full week without seeing my number one tourist destinations: the Googleplex and Yahoo offices. Ooh, and if time permits Live.com offices.

But somehow I did and it was worth it. Here's why:

For past week, I have been participating in the 2007 Nonprofit Software Development Summit. If I previously mentioned that I would attend this summit then it was lie because nobody attends conferences organized by Aspiration. Everyone participates!

The Sessions
There were sessions on Agile Development, Usability, AJAX, Ruby on Rails, Apache and Mozilla Foundations, Open APIs, Telephony, Single sign on/Identity and so many others as listed on the Event Schedule Wiki. The problem was that at any given time, these sessions were run in parallel with others. Of course, that's why we managed to cover all these sessions. But the good news is that all the sessions have updated the Wiki with notes of what was discussed. Not only that, but these notes are available to everyone including you.

On my part and with assistance from Jeff Rafter, I facilitated a session on Software Development in an African context where we looked at challenges that are unique to Africa and the developing world and how Baobab Health Partnership is using its appropriately engineered technology to tackle these challenges.

I also demonstrated and gave pointers on creating Addons for Firefox especially Extensions in a skills share session while Jeff shared his XML skills.

The People
The summit attracted about 100 participants from Latin America, Africa, US and Canada. In between sessions, I had a chance of meeting some of these wonderful people including the co-founder of Apache Project and Foundation, Brian Behlendorf and many others.

It was an interesting experience to meet Michal whom I previously met about a year ago in Uganda at AfricaSource II. This time he was quick to show off some eye-candy on his Xgl'd Ubuntu Edgy Laptop. Or is it AIGLX'd?
By the way, I won the award of the longest traveled participant by far ;)

A lot of thanks to Tech Soup and Google for sponsoring the event and to Aspiration for making it happen. Now browse through the wiki and catch-up on the sessions.

Photo by itzpapalotl on Flickr

I'm Coming to America

I'm not any royal like the Prince of Zamunda but I'll leave for San Francisco, California, this Sunday 18th February, to attend the Aspiration Tech's 2007 Nonprofit Software Development Summit where I'll also talk about Software Development in an African context, and then a few days later O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony Conference (ETel) 2007

A lot of thanks to the Anarchogeek, Gunner and the nice folks at Aspiration for making the arrangements.

Looking forward to meeting the world's technology leaders while there.

Network Security Opportunities at Malawi's Telecoms. Ltd.

Malawi Telecommunications Ltd (MTL) has advertised 2 Network and Systems Security jobs recently.

1. Networks and Systems Security Manager

• will report to the Head of Information Technology
• will design, implement, manage and control MTL's LANs, WANs and Systems Security policies
• BSc Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems Management or Electronics Engineering
• 5 years experience
  

2. Networks and Systems Security Engineer

• will report to the Networks and Systems Security Manager
• will design, install and configure MTL's LANs and WANs and enforce Systems Security Policies
• BSc Degree in Computer Science or Electronic Engineering
• 2 years experience

Deadline for both positions is Friday, 16th February 2007
Source: The Daily Times, 07-Feb-2007, page 28

How Miguel de Icaza learns new programming languages

In an interview with Microsoft's Port 25, Miguel de Icaza talks about Mono and .NET. About 4 mins 23 secs into the interview, Miguel tells us how he learned C#:

I was learning C# as an experience, and I developed a C# compiler in C# as my way of learning the language

Miguel's way indeed!

You can get the video interview as an MPG4 video clip or mp3 audio download from Port 25 aka Communications from the Open Source Software lab @ Microsoft.

technorati tags:mono, migueldeicaza, microsoft, podcast, csharp

Mangaliso Jere (1980-2007)

On 18th January 2 weeks ago, Mangaliso Jere quietly breathed his last while medical doctors operated on his nose. He had made an appointment with a doctor at Mzuzu Central Hospital to operate on a swelling in his nose.

A couple of days before the operation, he posted on his blog that he had just recovered from Malaria. My last comment to his blog was congratulating him for that recovery and mentioning that Malaria is no longer threat for under-five kids only since it is also killing adults like some local celebrities. Indeed, on 21st January Vic Kasinja of Joza and Taxina fame died of Malaria in Lilongwe.

Mangaliso was working for SDNP Malawi, an active member of the ICT Association of Malawi, an active blogger at Mangaliso's World blog.

ICT Professionals in Malawi have mourned Mangaliso through the ICT Association of Malawi mailing list.

You can also read posts from several bloggers including Austin Madinga, Mike McKay, Lounge Chicken and Steve Sharra at Global Voices Online. Mangaliso's sister has set up Mangaliso's World 2 blog, an incarnation of Mangaliso's World blog, to keep his dreams alive.

On Saturday, 20th January 2007, his body was laid to rest in Area 18, Lilongwe, the city he was living in with his mother before relocating to Mzuzu.

May his Soul Rest In Peace!