On 7th February 2014 WomenTechmakers Kisumu held had an App Inventor training.
The training was suppose to take 2 hours but it ended up taking about 5 hours :-).
This was because we had an amazing coach.The girls were enjoying the speed at which they were making application and they were having fun creating simple application.
Only 10 girls registered to attend the training but we were later joined by five more girls and 4 boys.The whole training was so much fun that we stayed all through past the intended time (Without snacks or refreshments just water).
What's even amazing is that they offered to go volunteer as coaches in girls high school to teach app inventor through the technovation program.
They can't wait for the women techmakers conference in March
The first ever #CollegeHack in Western Kenya took place last Saturday at LakeHub, Kisumu. This event saw students from various campuses of higher learning institutions participate in large numbers. This event was the first of its kind and was hugely successful as witnessed by the excitement and satisfaction of the participating teams.
The #CollegeHack is meant to bring college students in Western Kenya together to a one day open hackathon that begun at 9.00am and ended at 5.00pm. #CollegeHack was initiated so that the students could promote their skills in teamwork, entrepreneurial thinking and skill actualization.
A sections of the hackers.
This session was mentored by James Odede, who is the Co-Founder and Director of LakeHub, Dorcas Adhiambo the Community manager and GDG organiser of Kisumu.Chandi Tome, who is also a director at the hub, Micheal Diang’a, a Developer who specializes in Web, George Osang, a Mathematician and programmer, Dennis Ochieng’ Computer Scientist and Businessman and Deryl Aduda, a Marketing and Public Relations guru.
This particular session of #CollegeHack succeeded in its objective of helping the students come up with innovative ideas that would offer real solutions to the community.
One such idea was from a group of four, aptly named Quad IT, who are planning to fully automate the land registry thereby reducing corruption, land grabbing and time wasting by providing an application that will avail land records, location and land laws. This would make the land search and purchase more transparent and less tedious.
NyumbaNeat team presented an idea that offered a home cleaning service through an online portal. NyumbaNeat’s idea was meant to target the young and upcoming professionals (Yuppies) and bachelors.
TechDoc group wanted to boost maternal health by linking expectant women and young mothers to medical practitioners especially in the Western Kenya Region. Their app would also help mothers manage the entire pregnancy with a calendar and best practices. This, they hope, will help reduce pre and post-natal deaths.
X Farm team worked on an idea of an app that would provide farmers with information about farming. This app would enable farmers to get information such as the kind of crop to grow in a particular soil type and climate.
X- farm making a presentation of a smart idea.
M Commerce came up with an idea to offer businesses with no online presence a platform to list their products without incurring the extra cost. M Commerce’s idea would target the the small shops and retail stores while EasyReg group of students worked on an app to eliminate the paper work at college during the registrations of various items.
Some had to operate from two workstations
As you can see, we had lots of fun for a first event of this nature. We have a long way to go, no doubt. And we have realized that many of us have lots of ideas that are worth probably millions of shillings. We therefore have to proceed with the #CollegeHack series next month. Be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.
Calls for applications for the next hack shall be announced soon.
