Hey Al, You can turn that experience into a positive one. A few months ago I attended a Skunkworks meeting at Teleposta where Alex said that he had got info that Kenya will be getting USD 2M from World Bank in order to improve software or ICT dev skills. This is the meeting where THE PS talked about fibre, and related stuff. You now have first hand experience with techie issues and I hope you (since you're in the ICT Board) and other advanced and professional techies can help into putting that USD 2M to good use. o_o. --- On Fri, 10/2/09, Al Kags <alkags@gmail.com> wrote: From: Al Kags <alkags@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL: Wanted: One team To: skunkworks@my.co.ke Date: Friday, October 2, 2009, 4:49 PM Friends, I am not sure how many of you remember the challenge I posed and the related opportunity that availed itself as below. i thought it prudent to share what transpired here so that we all can reflect on the issues raised. By way of update, a team of people from here did come together and propose to work together - and they proceeded to prove that the companies were right. Only two of them made the preliminary discussions with the client and from what i understand, they could never get together enough to work out the project. More than once, they individually called me (representing client) to bitch about each other's inefficiencies and more than once they made promises - especially regarding timeline, that they did not keep. In fact, not once did they meet their own promises. The project has recently been contracted to a company (which is a member of this forum) Potential Learnings: 1. Techies cannot organise themselves to deliver on a project as a coalition of freelancers outside the framework of employment. They do not have the discipline and structure as individuals to enable them to collaborate and deliver on a structured project 2. There is need for techies to acquire knowledge in business principles as well as basic work ethic. it was interesting to speak to a techie and discover that he usually works only 5 hours out of 24 hours - except when he is under contract!! Imagine if the same chap went to live in America. There's more, but for now, this should suffice. For me it is a little disappointing but I suppose it shall be resolved in due course by some of us here. I keep hoping that I could be proved wrong... Cheers. Al Kags ----------------------- Author, Living Memories. “IF THERE IS SUCH A THING AS Kenya, these stories belong to us all, just as the pictures in Kenya Burning document the trauma of a nation during the post-election violence. The age of history written by white males is well and truly over.” - Star Columnist, Betty Caplan in the East African Weekly Newspaper. http://living.alkags.com On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Al Kags <alkags@gmail.com> wrote: Wanted: One team of freelance/ Independent Web Professionals Deliverable: Phase one of an Online Health Information Platform (Project Afya) An entrepreneur group is seeking the services of a team of freelance/ independent web professionals that would work together to deliver Phase one of an online health information project. This project will have about four phases and the team would continue to the next phase only if they successfully deliver the preceding phase on time. The team muct consist of a project manager to understand the business aims of the project, ensure timely delivery and detailed documentation of the project, designer who can deliver global quality CSS based designs from scratch (not plagiarised from other sources) and a developer who has indepth understanding of PHP5 as well as the strong ability to integrate open source applications especially those that are google based. The team must be able to incoporate other members as the case may be - especially in the future phases, which are larger scale. Interested? Send your expression of interest in the project, currently Codenamed project Afya stating clearly the following: Give your team a name Names and detailed profiles of all members of the team - including portfolios, experience and project referees Skills sets and expected roles of each member of the team Detailed Contact information Send this information to Patricia, who is your contact person for purposes of any aspectr of this project at p_mukundi@yahoo.com Only successful teams will be invited to meet with the Client team to review the project. DEADLINE: 10th June 2008. Good Luck. Al Kags ----------------------- Founder, The Desturi Trust http://www.alkags.com -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks Other services @ http://my.co.ke Other lists ------------- Announce: http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks-announce Science: http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/science kazi: http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/kazi/general