Phares, some comments inline below. :-)<br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Phares Kariuki <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:pkariuki@gmail.com">pkariuki@gmail.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote"><font color="#000066"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif">Aki,</font></font></font> 
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<div><font color="#000066"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif">There are problems, we don&#39;t refuse, but that does not mean we should suffer from the Ostrich effect. </font></font></font></div></blockquote>
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<div>Ostrich effect, not really. Its the broker effect that we really need to watch out for. This is far more dangerious to the economy than hiding one&#39;s head in the sand.</div>
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<div><font color="#000066"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif">There is a lot that can be done, one of them, and key is education... what people like iHub, Nailab etc are doing. If you know how to engage with a VC, you will benefit... There are many companies today which have benefited greatly from VC and employ hundreds of people and really are entrepreneurial success stories... What we should be trying to figure out is why the companies succeeded....</font></font></font></div>
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<div>Nailab and Ihub are good examples, however they could also breeding a VC dependency culture and outlook. The same could be said of Mobile apps and partnerships with Mobile operators is breeding the same mentality. Success stories are inspirational but the bottom line is results, and results can only take place if the structure around the potential successes of any projects is possible. Nailab and iHub do not need to exist, are they trying to duplicate what KICTB should be doing in the first place, seems to me the board is using the Ostrich effect too well, especially when Kenya is looking at becoming a tech hub in some way.</div>

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<div><font color="#000066"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif">Kenyan software developers also need to learn a lot... It&#39;s telling that the largest IT firms in Kenya are run by accountants/engineers, not software developers... We need to learn from people like Google and get some &#39;adult supervision&#39; as it were, as in the formative stages of a business, fiscal mismanagement spells doom for an otherwise promising organization. </font></font></font></div>
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<div>Absolutely, it is the business community that sells, not developers. Therefore, and as I wrote in some of my listed points, it should be imperative that KICTB look at monthly get together&#39;s between the developer/software companies and investors/VCs etc to charter a plan and goals towards becoming effective. Talk shows are nice and informative, but the bottomline is very evident when nothing surfaces in terms of results. Please try and give an example of someone who attended Google talk etc ( google trying to sell its apps in the market therefore looking for brokers, same goes for other vendors )  and found it inspirational enough to create their own search engine or some crawler. </div>

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<div>Are we saying that we lack the capacity to think? That is definately depressing if the case so. </div>
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<div><font color="#000066"><font size="2"><font face="tahoma,sans-serif">Tech parks are useful if you think about the cost of infrastructure... It&#39;s easier to design a city rigged with fibre from day one, then to deal with all the problems Nairobi has... The challenge of course is getting the requisite pull to get the developers etc there... <br>
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<div>Before we think about the locations and a Tech Park, let us first build on successful high tech ( e.g. software developer companies--includes web design companies that can have an annual turnover ) businesses that are able to take advantage of the environment and create the lounge/modern tech sector look and appeal. Without the minimum threshold, we are most likely looking at a Tech Park that closely resembling a free rent and almost zero output facilities. This is why I believe that we need to do a country summary and see which country offers developers a proper business environment and compare what kenya is not doing. Then it will become very clear that developers have no excuse not to develop, even from home keeping overheads to a bare minimum, while the bussiness aspect would later need some capital injection before taking on any VCs. </div>

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<div>Rgds. :-)</div>
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