Fix Our Networks

Nigerian mobile internet service is terribly bad. It need to be fixed.

We've been running pilot on Tiketmobile for some time now and I've not been directly responsible. However, when we were not going as fast as we had projected, I decided to push for installation on everyday people's phones, wherever I find myself and observe usage. The major observation from this is that the internet networks are terrible. All of them.

We created Tiketmobile out of CC Hub where the network is beautiful. Yes, you can get a device, connect to the wifi and test your app. In 3 seconds, the app has pulled start-up data from the remote server and is running fine. When you get outside, the story is different. A transaction which would take about 10 secs or less would now take some 5 to 15 mins. This is very bad. Everytime this happens, I always start opera-mini on the phones to check if it's a fault in Tiketmobile's architecture, but it is always the same thing.

It's terrible.

Telcos have to upgrade their equipments, or whatever it is they need to do for things to work better. Internet applications that don't require constant use or that's not social app would find it really hard to garner users in this kind of situation. If anyone can reach them, they should tell them.

Maybe it's Lagos only, because Kennedy said network was better when he was at Abuja. The network on the streets here is terrible and needs to be fixed.

Cheers.

P.S.
If you have a Java ME device and you want to try Tiketmobile out, visit http://getjar.com/tiketmobile and download it. A change would be pushed-up tomorrow though. It's just a change on UX, based on observations and nothing special, so it's OK to have this.

It's a blood thingy!

My dad is easily the first person I'll go for for business advice.

He left his home after his primary school education to pursue a living. After some years of hardwork (and serving his oga(s)), at his mid/late 20's he became a successful businessman. At his prime, he managed 7 shops spread across Lagos and 12 boys manning those shops, in a joint business between him and his elder brother.

Things fell apart though, before we (his kids) could really feel his wealth :( Then he focused on ensuring that we all get educated. However, he always has one advice or another to give me in my quest to build a successful business.

The picture above was his business promotional material from way back. I saw it among some of his stuffs one day and I took a shot.

Here's to my dad, Mr John Ezeokoye -- M.D. DE JOHN Electrical and Electronic Stores. Dealers in electrical, electronics and plumbing materials.

We Hired.

We just increased our core team to 3 people.

Last Saturday, Kennedy Obiechina came all the way from Abuja to Lagos to join Tiketmobile as a business developer. Kennedy holds a BSc. in Accounting from the University of Nigeria, Enugu campus. While he was studying for his degree, he was the student union information officer for two sessions at a row.

He is quiet when unfamiliar with a place but has a very imposing personality when he's used to an environment. He cannot avoid being noticed. Very analytical somebody when he's trying to convey his points/views and HE IS NOT A TECHIE, but he's very technology literate.

We've been friends since 2005. While we were teenagers, everyday after evening mass, we would spend a lot of time talking about our dreams. He had always known of my dreams to build a successful technology company and always asked me how I'm faring in accomplishing it. Yesterday, when I told him that my co-founder is 18, he responded with: "probably, he would achieve that dream you had of founding/running a successful company at 20"

I've been speaking with Kennedy about the Tiketmobile concept for some time now, so he is familiar with it. Whenever I needed links to a bus service provider, he was one of the first people I'll talk to (by virtue of his SU "information officer" position, he had information). So it was only approprate for me to reach out to him when we needed a business developer in-house (A.K.A when the load got too heavy for me to carry and I started to fail in my tasks). We spent almost the whole of yesterday talking about what has been done, what needs to be done and the time frame we would apportion to tasks.

Kennedy would be responsible for accounts and business outreach. If you want to reach him you can send him an e-mail on kennedy@tiketmobile.com

I'll be disciplined

Yes I have a blog. I have had it since 2007 and this is my first post for 2012.

I once had a goal of putting up at least 2 posts per month, but it takes discipline to blog regularly when blogging is not your day job. Like it take to do a couple of other things. Things like working on an attitude, creating (and running) a start-up and waking up in the morning and getting to work at 9.

Lately, I've decided to imbibe the culture of getting to work at 9, a culture that is extremely hard to start, when you don't have a boss to vet you. I decided to do this to set an example to my (much younger) co-founder and future employees. Despite the fact that I work late nights, hence go to bed late, I've had to force myself to sleep early over the past few day. I've not done badly in waking up early, but I've never gotten to work at 9 at the dot.

It's almost a year since we wrote the first code on TiketMobile, at Start-up Weekend Lagos and placing 2nd at the event. Since then, we have spoken to potential investors, done a brute force on implementation, lost direction, pivoted strategy, re-implemented and gained strategic partnerships (in that order). What has been most interesting -- and important -- to me is pivoting strategy. This we have done a number of times over and at different levels. Once you decide on the direction you want to go and determined what you need to do, it pays to hit hard -- hit as long as is required to drive the nail in.

We've worked hard, gone to the market to get data, released a series of buggy apps, gotten several feedback from internal testing processes and finished up on what we are ready to release as a public beta. Our app is based on our own targeted market data, gotten from real-life market research, which we did in our own little way. Thanks to Co-Creation Hub, Nokia and Futurise for the amazing experience of the Growth Academy (G.A.), which gave us key directions on how to lay basic foundations for growing that enterprise of the future. I should (ehm... would) write about the G.A. soon.

I've discovered (and I'm terrified at) the amount of impatience I exhibit on regular day-to-day activities. Impatience and irritability. Lately, personally, they have cost me a few regrets. I'm hoping to nip it at the bud before it becomes a monster and destroy big things. I know habits die hard, but I'll try. I'll be disciplined.

Wish me luck.

Geek's Night Out

I went out for some fun at a club on Friday night and when I got bored, my droid filled the gap. I prepared this post "in the club" (Reminds me of 50 Cent). Enjoy!

For a moment I‘m thinking that this is all a waste of time. BTW, as I type this document, music is blasting on my ears, my joints ache from a lot of dancing and once in a while I try to pick myself up and rock my body once more to the beats. In case you don‘t get it yet, I‘m in a club.

It‘s friday night and Samuel had invited me to Jemaimah‘s birthday which was to hold at a club at Adeola Adeku. I had put it in my itenery and looked forward to it. Before now, the last -- and first -- time I was at a club was at Paris, the farewell party for the 2008 Imagine cup. It was fun but I only went ‘cos it was part of the program lined-up for the event. Now this; this is actually going out of my way ‘cos today was one of the most stressful of the week.

I must confess, it was worth it. I had the first lap-dance given to me, I rocked some ar$es like the world was gon end tonite. The fun was madt! Then I got tired. I discovered that, unlike programming where I have fun and seldom got tired, while clubing, I actually get tired of dancing. Tired and bored of the whole thing. Then I thought of what to do, then I reached out for my droid, opened up my pdf on phone gap and read a few pages, then I danced a little more, pestered Samuel a little when he tried to catch some sleep, philosophised a little about how vain clubbing is yet deceiding that I would do it more, once in a while tho. Then finally, I get the idea to write a blog post while Tina is pestering me inbetween and I rock to more music inbetween. BTW, I just got a company, a very pretty lady whom I think is a commercial sex worker, we talked a little and she seem to be curious about what I was doing on my phone. I told her that I was preparing a blog post and asked her if she wanted to read it, she answered in the affirmative and I gave her to read.

Now Samuel is awake and he has to drive us home. My freind tells me her name and asks me for my number.  It‘s 5:30 AM and I‘m on my way home.

Scala Boot-Camp

My last post was about Java programming language becoming less relevant. This does not mean the JVM won’t be useful anymore. As far as I’m concerned, currently, the JVM is the development platform that’s best for real programmers because, among other things, it balances the old with the new. This is why am creating more apps on it. Lately I’ve been doing this on Scala programming language.

I’ve been writing Scala for some time now and I think it’s a very cool language, I also discovered that there are very few people (if any at all) at the local developer community who codes in Scala. This inspired Samuel and I to put together a boot-camp for programmers to get a head start in Scala programming language.

The detail of the boot-camp is as follows:

Date:  3rd and 5th of November 2011; 10:00 am to 3:00 PM

Venue: F5 (2nd Floor), Block 504 MQ, Besides Ikeja Shopping Plaza, Kodesoh Street Ikeja, Lagos.

The three-day event aims to cover the Functional programming and the basics of Scala Programming Language at the first day; a little of advanced Scala on the second day and Scala-based Web development using Lift Web Framework on the third day.

To take part, you would be required to pay a fee of 5, 000 NGN (approx $30) upon arrival.

To RSVP or for any questions, contact me on +2348093773683 or Samuel on +2348029056826. Or email me at celestocalculus@gmail.com. If twitter is your thing, just mention me, I'm @celestocalculus. You could also join the Fcaebook group for more information http://www.facebook.com/groups/122560751178514/

UPDATE:
1) Date has changed, please check up the new date ;)

RIP Java... Umm, maybe

Java as we know it may soon be considered a legacy language.

On Tuesday 13th of September 2011, between 5:00PM and 7:30PM, Nigerian time, at the local Microsoft office in Lagos Nigeria, I watched a live streaming of the official unveiling of Windows 8. Stephen Sinofsky lead a team of presenters who showed the world what the future of Windows (and invariably, PC) would be. Part of what was demo'ed is the new platform for windows development. Developers would now write their apps in erstwhile web-only development languages: JavaScript, HTML and CSS as native Windows App. There was an overhaul of the Windows development platform the Windows sack now has: Windows Runtime (WinRT) --> JavaScript --> HTML & CSS OR WinRT --> C#/VB/C/C++ --> XAML. The same app would run unmodified on desktop, game consoles and mobile devices. I'm still WOW'ed.

Now my arguement is this: The main promise of Java which is Write-Once-Run-Anywhere is (almost) finally broken by a sexier language. Before I continue, let me point out that I am a passionate Java programmer. I've been writing Java since 2005 and it's currently my favorite language (I'll choose it over any language -- Human or Computer). People who know me know that I'm very passionate about the language. And when I see posts which asks when Java would disappear, I just laugh at them. But with windows adopting JS as a native language, all I need to do now is write JS and it would be executable on all platform. Considering that Node.JS has already made it possible to write JS  apps for UNIX-based systems, even though it's not native, it still (kinda) works. I strongly believe that many OS vendors would love to replicate the ubiquity that JS brought to browsers; noting that JS is also backed by a set of standards.

Anyway, I'm still gon code Java passionately while it's still relevant, though I doubt Oracle would fold their arms and watch Java die.

BTW, if you want to try the new release of Windows before it is finally released, then visit dev.windows.com and download it. I'm not a fan of pre-release versions so I'll just wait till it's finally released.

Image is courtesy of http://cybergyaan.blogspot.com.

P.S. Why is every top personality in Computing named Stephen? Stephen Jobs (Apple), Stephen Balmer (MS) and Stephen Sinosfsky (MS). Ok, I'm changing my first name to Stephen too :)