This past weekend, Oshani and I decided to once again combine work with travel. Mombasa Polytech University in Mombasa hosted a mobile bootcamp, a two-day intensive course on mobile applications. The two of us taught Python and Django to about 90 interested students, while Evans (one of our TA's) and Dominic (another student at Strathmore) administrated the program and instructed other students in Android programming. Attempting to teach in two days the same material that we've been teaching here in Nairobi for five weeks was a monumental task, but we did our best to give them both a general overview as well as some basic skills for them to start developing themselves. Afterwards, Oshani travelled to the Maasai Mara, while I spent the long weekend on the beach in Diani.
Today, back in Nairobi, we had a guest lecture by Nathan Wyeth of FrontlineSMS:Credit. Most of our groups are eventually planning on implementing a framework to allow basic phones to access information from their web apps, and are thus interested in the different software available for that purpose.
This week is gearing up to be the climax of the Kenya Summer 2011 program. The pitches are written, the demos are ready, and the event is planned -- this Friday, each of our nine teams will present their ideas and proposals to businesspeople, entrepreneurs, investors, and the media. We will be holding a full run-through tomorrow, two days ahead of the final presentation, in order to provide the students with last minute feedback and fixes for their projects.
