Archive for July, 2007
Football is not just a matter of life and death: it’s much more important than that!
Bill Shankly
It is wonderful to read some different and good news about Iraq for once. This victory and the excitement it has generated is yet another example of the positive role sports can play in uplifting a country. If you do only one thing today then make that one thing reading what the Iraqi bloggers are saying!
Well done Iraq – winners of Asian Cup 2007.
See you in the World Cup 2010! Final: Kenya – v – Iraq!
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Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 1:11 PM
My Scandinavian connection, Serina, tagged me and precedent dictates I respond! Besides she is a Rising Voices buddy so how could I not eh? There can not be much left unknown about me that is of interest to the wider world so let me hit you with 8 random things loosely related to Kenyan blogs. Now this started out as a simple list and has instead grown into a long post. Let this serve as a lesson for those who dare tag me! Hehe.
But first I have to post The rules:
- We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
- Players start with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged need to write their own blog and their 8 things and post these.
- At the end of your blog post, you need to choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names (scared yet…..you better be!)
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they are tagged, and to read your blog.
And my list of 8 things:
1.) KenyaUnlimited is rocking a brand new spanking aggregator. Have a look and let me know what you think, how fast it loads where you are, and any problems you may encounter. I am especially interested on those who’s posts should up on the old aggregator but do not show up on this one.
2.) Related to number 1 above, KenyaUnlimited has a new aggregator help page. If you have any questions about the aggregator and aggregator policy, please read the help page. We have answered the most frequent questions we receive about the aggregator on this page. If you still have any questions drop the Admin Team an email.
3.) Facebook rocks! There is a group for Kenyan Bloggers on facebook. Other notable Facebook groups include the Afrigadget group and the Free Oiwan Lam group amongst others.
4.) The Digital Citizen Indaba blogging conference is on again at the Highway Africa Conference this year. Registration is open and it is free. You can also apply for a scholarship to attend. (Warning: this conference may actually require you to think and participate.)
Coming soon to a town near you an African Bloggers’ Conference and a Kenyan Bloggers’ Conference. Watch this space and get involved! Ask not what bloggers can do for you but what you … etc etc
6.) I feel like registering a group called the “Do More Collective” (DMC). Increasingly I hear Africans telling other Africans, to get up and, “do something”. I admit even I have been guilty of that. I feel that is wrong and here is why.
In the online world in general and the blogosphere in particular, just as in the real world, there are people who get up and decide to contribute and get on with it without a fuss. Because of their nature they end up taking more and more on and usually excel. This is not new, if I think back to my school days, my sports captains were usually amongst the brightest students, and were usually also prefects and probably sang in the choir and headed the school community projects as well. The Americans have a term to describe these characters: All Stars.
I find that instead of asking people to, “Do something”, to be fair I should recognise that they are already doing a lot and instead should be asking them to, “Do more.” Take the example of my brother Ndesanjo. This guy is the force behind the Kiswahili blogosphere starting it AND putting it on the map in a big way, he is also is pushing the Kiswahili Wikipedia, is Sub-Saharan editor of Global Voices, was one of the wise heads that formulated the Tanzanian Bloggers Association, is passionate about citizen media and developing tools to allow people to share their stories and still finds time to run his own collection of blogs (and I haven’t even mentioned his “real” 9-5 job).
It is ridiculous to walk up to someone like that and to tell him to “do something” what you really should be saying is, “we need your help to do more!” I am sure this is true of many of us online and I have many more examples I can throw at you.
We need to recognise that even though someone way not be working on our pet project or on what we may personally feel is THE most important thing around, they are probably already contributing in a big way to the empowerment of The Continent and Her People. Forget asking people to, “Do something” instead ask them to “Do more”.
7.) Since I moved back to Kenya a year ago the number of people reading my blog has gone up, but the number of comments has gone down. That in itself is not news. What is interesting is that some people who used to write comments before now send me SMS instead. They SMS within minutes of a post going up on the blog. I would say around 80% of the comments on my blog posts come via SMS. The Skunkworks team at the University of Nairobi Tech Day reported that a programmer was developing software to blog (and I guess comment) through SMS. Now that’s what I need! I tried the Email2SMS service by Safaricom but that died after a few days.
8.) The number one question I get asked by new bloggers is: How do I get more comments?
The easy answer:
- Write original, good, content
- Visit other bloggers and leave original and intelligent comments
- Link to other blog posts in your posts
- Use tags to get picked up by blog engines such as Technorati.
- Be patient, it takes time to build up an audience
The less obvious answer:
Do your thing. Write your posts. Make your blog a reflection of you. Forget chasing comments. They are not a true indication of how popular, how widely read or how influential your blog really is. For example, if the first five comments on your blog are
- I got here first
- Damn I got here second
- Boy oh boy number 1 and number 2 are fast, how did they get here first
- hehe fast rhymes with first - written by number 3 above
- I swear I was first but blogger ate my comment
And no one has commented on what you actually wrote or what issues you raised in the post, how do those comments add value to the price of oranges really? OK sure some people love getting those comments and it can be said they add to the sense of community, sure. But really, you should be chasing after those. However, this after all is my opinion.
At the other end of the scale check out Ethan’s excellent guides/blog posts/transcripts of the TED Global conference. Every blogger, journalist, columnist, researcher who writes about TED Global consult Ethan’s posts. They are an authoritative, well written, accessible online resource. Because so many bloggers link back to his blog, these posts are essentially the blogger equivalent of a peer reviewed professional article in a professional journal. Yet the posts do not carry a ridiculous amount of comments. The posts do carry a lot of influence though.
Forget chasing comments. Do your thing. Free your mind!
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Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 12:20 PM
Assistant Director of Meteorological department Peter Ambenje said some areas will experience a decrease in temperatures which will drop as low as five degrees Celsius at night.
Ambenje said the cold spell would run from this month to August this year.
The Kenya Meteorological Department in its monthly report states;
The Highlands East of the Rift Valley (Nyeri, Muranga, Kiambu, Embu, Meru) and Nairobi area (Dagoretti, Wilson, Eastleigh) are expected to experience cool and cloudy conditions with occasional light rains / drizzle. A few days are expected to be characterized by persistent cloud cover (overcast skies) for long hours leading to extremely cold and chilly conditions with maximum (daytime) temperatures falling below 20°C and minimum (nighttime) temperatures falling below 10°C.
Bollocks to this, I’m off to England.
Any KBWers, bloggers, TEDsters, Skunkers, anyone at all, in my old stomping grounds of Maaaaanchesysta, Lahan’dan (innit),and Awwwwxfod who wouldn’t mind a good discussion over a couple of pineapple juices this week drop me a line.
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Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 8:42 PM
There are gyms and there are gyms.
The first type of gym most of us would find familiar. They are mushrooming all over Nairobi in a pattern that is repeated in any big city in the world. These gyms have rowing machines, exercise bikes, a wide variety of pulley driven machines with digital interfaces informing you of your heart rate and exactly how many calories you have burned in the last 60 seconds. MTV Base on one flat screen TV in one corner, CNN on another, local news on the third. Chargers for mobile phones and iPods are available if you ask nicely. They carry a selection of free weights, starting from 0.5 Kgs (which you are encouraged to hold as you “power walk” on the treadmill). These gyms offer a dazzling amount of extras outside the immediate gym room such as aerobic classes, massages, power showers and complimentary towels, a sauna here, a steam room there and of course a hefty membership fee. Examples of this kind of gym, to name just two of the hundreds across Nairobi, are the gym at Silver Spring Hotel and the one at Sarit Centre shopping mall. Those are gyms.
Then there are gyms. If you ever find yourself in the NEWA part of Ngummo in the late afternoon or very early morning and are feeling brave, stop any of the young men and ask them for directions to The Jungle. A walk down one of the side alleys, a quick side step around some dogs and you will find yourself in a backyard which has one gym bench (refurbished), a barbell (welded), and many many free weights, usually made from pouring cement into paint tins and chipping away to ensure the weights are balanced. No rowing machines or treadmills here, if you want to warm up, well that’s why the government is laying tarmac on the roads, get your jog on.
For the most famous, or perhaps infamous, example of this kind of gym in Nairobi you need to get yourself to Ololo better known as Kaloleni and ask for Big Boys. Have you ever wondered where those gorilla bouncers, gorilla freaks, muscle bound nutters you bump into work out? Most probably Big Boys. I remember being taken there by one of my bros, who is one of those Gorilla bouncers, and sitting outside listening to a bunch of muscle bound nutters talking about beans. Beans and beans and beans, the poor mans substitute for those crazy and very expensive muscle supplements.
Big Boys was what people in the gym trade call Chuma (chuma is Kiswahili for iron/metal). You don’t say you are going to the gym, you say you are going to Chuma (usually holding both hands in a fist around your chest and saying, “Chuma daddy!”. It certainly lives up to that name. A look around the room and you will see many weight lifting benches, many barbells and dumbbells and the craziest collection of free weights you have ever seen. We’re talking about 100 kgs dumbbells here and the like. (Although I understand that these days Big Boys has become gisty!) Want to warm up, forget treadmills and the like, grab a skipping rope. Apart from the numerous mirrors everything else in there is basically hard, cold, no nonsense metal. CHUMA daddy!
So what has all this got to do with presidential motorcades? True, Moi’s motorcade when he was president and Kibaki’s motorcade now share a lot in common. Both are packed full of brand new, armoured plated, dark blue Mercedes Benz. (Moi’s guys tried BMWs for a year or so but I do not see them around now, I wonder what happened to them.) Both motorcades are packed full of the crème de la crème (or total nutters depending on your point of view) of the Kenyan police force, the Presidential Escort Unit. Both motorcades are extremely secure, both are extremely lethal if you have the audacity (or stupidity depending on your point of view) to cross them.
There are some notable differences between the two.
Moi’s motorcade was like Big Boys. Big, powerful, no nonsense, hard, get-out-of-the-way-now-if-you-want-to-live and fast. Very very fast. Very very very fast. You never ever got a good look at Moi’s motorcade. To be honest you probably didn’t even see it coming. You would driving along, minding your own business, smelling the roses and all of a sudden you have a powerful police motorcycle next to you and police man shouting in your ear, his face so close you can smell the Embassy Kings on breath, telling you to pull over NOW. Usually by pointing a finger off the road and saying “huko” which is Kiswahili for “there”. It didn’t matter if “huko” was a bush, a ditch, a rock, just get off the road and do it fast. A couple of seconds later a big Mercedes, dark blue on the bottom and white on the top, with a single blue flashing light and constant high pitch siren, with no number plates, a big red sign which reads “Presidential Escort” would fly past, windows down with four scary looking “Echo Charlies”, as PEU are known, staring out, then a flurry, a blur, of motorcycles, Mercedes, Range Rovers, and 504 station wagon Peugeots carrying the Presidential Press Unit would fly past. Then another motorcycle and then, suddenly
silence.
Just like Keyser Söze, they are gone.
It may not have been pretty, it may not have been fancy, but damn, it was scary, efficient and effective. CHUMA daddy.
Then there is Kibaki’s motorcade.
First difference, everybody knows when Kibaki is going to pass. Why? Because these days they close roads almost TWENTY BLEEDING MINUTES before he turns up. You sit and you sit and you sit, people switch of their engines, get out of their cars and lean against the bonnet, newspaper vendors make a killing selling copies of those weeklies no one ever buys, and everyone is on their mobile phone saying, “I’ll be late, Baks is passing.”
Second difference, when the motorcade finally does turn up, boy oh boy, those guys must be listening to “Summertime” by Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff
Every moment frontin and maxin
Chillin in the car they spent all day waxin
Leanin to the side but you can’t spead through
Two miles an hour so everybody sees you
Whereas Moi’s motorcade would constantly break the land speed record, Baks motorcade, after making you wait for 30 minutes, drives past moss moss like they don’t have a care in the world! Two miles an hour so everybody sees you!
Third difference, Kibaki’s full ceremonial motorcade is like whoa! I’m not taking the everyday, working-at-state-house version. I am talking about the one they unleash for state occasions or big events. The first time I saw the “full” motorcade was on the way to Nairobi Show on Wednesday which as we all know is “President’s day”. (What do you mean you didn’t know!). I was on Ngong Road when we were pulled over by the cops for the now customary 20 minute wait.
And when it came, my goodness. I like to think I am not easily impressed but I will readily admit that motorcade made the hairs on the back of neck stand up. Unfortunately it is illegal to record or take pictures of the motorcade otherwise I would have been snapping away. There was a row of brand new Rav4 Police SUVs, the PEU Recce team Mercedes and Range Rovers, then came the Presidential limousine flanked by six big, armoured plated S-Class Mercedes and they were flanked in turn by a squad of around 20 big BMW police motorcycles. Remember that Peugeot station wagon 504 that was used to ferry around the Presidential Press Unit in Moi’s days? We’ll they’ve upgraded it. A brand new Mercedes E Class station wagon, they stuck a metal rack on top of the merc and the journalist climbs on top with his video camera tripod and video camera. On top of a Mercedes! Have a look for yourself!
Click picture for a larger image.
Yes, this motorcade is impressive, 878 Million Kenyan shillings (12 million USD) impressive.
It is like there are two different philosophies at work here. Moi’s motorcade is a big no nonsense bouncer saying, “Do not even think about it” Kibaki’s motorcade is a bouncer saying, “Come on, have a good if you think you are hard enough.”
Moi’s motorcade – hard, no nonsense, CHUMA gym.
Bak’s motorcade – hard, fancy, Hilton gym.
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Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 1:27 PM
In the early morning hours of the 5th of July 2004 the Kenyan Blogs Webring was born. Today we are three years old. Happy birthday KBW! It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting down to write the post celebrating our second birthday. Time flies when you are having fun!
Thank you to all KBW members for making this one of the most vibrant online communities on the internet. As always it has been an amazing experience.
The Year of Emergence
Emerge: become known or apparent;
The emergence of Kenyans built for blogging
When I think back over the last 12 months what I notice is that this year has been a year of emergence for KBW and her members. If you will forgive the farmer in me for a moment, in our first two years we were finding our feet, exploring this blogging thing, figuring out if we wanted to do it or not, we were germinating.
The most frequent support question we would be asked in the Admin Team during the first two years was, “Why should I start a blog?” or “What is a blog?” or variations on that theme.
In the last year we mainly get asked, “I have a blog, how do I join the webring?” or “How do I get your aggregator to syndicate my content?” or variations on that theme. They “why” and “what” questions are decreasing, the “how” questions are increasing.
That is a good sign and KBW members have played a big role in convincing Kenyans to blog. These days when someone asks me why they should blog I simply point them to the KenyaUnlimited aggregator. I can almost guarantee you that they will read something that they either agree with whole heartedly or disagree with completely, that fuels an urge in them to get to a keyboard and start typing to contribute to the debate.
In this way we have emerged from within ourselves. Where else will you find a community composed of Maasai Market traders, IT geeks, undergraduates, pastors, self styled “sex therapists”, financial journalists, university professors, professional sports players, political commentators, rural farmers, many times many of these all rolled into one person?!!
Emergence within KBW - Internal
This is where we crunch the numbers.
- In our first year we signed up: 69 members – for a total of 69 members
- In our second year we signed up: 171 – for a total of 240 members
- In our third year we signed up: 293 members – for a total of 464 members
293 new members. Remember this is not a web forum where we have one central site where each member writes a sentence here or a sentence here. These are bloggers, generating new and unique content (in the most part) every single time they write. 293 new people giving us their unique insight on the issues they feel are important, in the way they want. You are effectively talking, in web 1.0 terms, of 293 new webmasters and web content editors joined together in a single community. Now those are numbers to be proud of. This has been achieved without a single penny spent on advertising; the only emails we send out as KBW are to bloggers who are already members.
However what is increasingly clear is that the majority of these new members had heard about KBW either through word of mouth, through reading a KBW member or simply by bumping into us online. Many start a blog so they can join KBW rather than joining KBW because they already had a blog.
If this rate of growth continues soon we will be signing up more than 400 bloggers a year, that is over a blog a day!
On the technical side, we have moved from an ordinary shared hosting account, to a more advance shared hosting account, to our own VPS, and soon to our own full fledged dedicate server.
KBW in the world - External emergence
This past year has also been marked by KBW and KBW bloggers being recognised outside our own community and emerging as leaders in some of the most interesting projects that use web 2.0 Here are some examples of this:
- KenyaUnlimited was Kenyan’s ambassador on Blog Day 2006.
- KenyaUnlimited was nominated as a Finalist in the 2006 Black Weblog Awards.
- At the Digital Indaba held at Rhodes University, South Africa KBW was frequently mentioned as an example of bloggers organising themselves into a online community.
- At the Global Voices Summit 2006 in Delhi, India, KBW was again highlighted as an example of how to organise a blogging community.
- At TED Global again the importance of the KBW to the African blogosphere was frequently mentioned and clear to see and on and on.
- Three dedicated women, KBW Admin members Mshairi and Kui led by KBW member Sokari are the forces behind the African Womens’ Bloggers website and webring.
- KBW members, lead by the indefatigable White African, together with JKE and Afromusing are pushing AfriGadget to amazing new heights.
- The most radical, innovating forces in ICT in Kenya a.k.a the geekosphere a.k.a Skunkworks-KE are active members of KBW.
- The Kenyan main stream media, while still feeling threatened by blogs (why??!!), are beginning to understand that ignoring us is a mistake, ironically the main stream media outside Kenya can not seem to get enough of Kenyan bloggers.
- ICT magazines within Kenya have started carrying regular blogging columns for example KBW member Al Kags’ regular column in ICT Village magazine.
I could go on for hours about this, The Year of Emergence.
Remembrance
As we shared good times, as mentioned above, in these past 12 months we have also shared some sad times, in August we learnt that Kachumbari author of Kenyan Villager had passed on. As the tribute to Kachumbari on KenyaUnlimited reads, “Gone for now but forever a member of the KBW family, Kachumbari’s presence shall be missed.”
The Kenyan blogging community through the Pamoja blog on KenyaUnlimited led the online tributes for the victims of Flight KQ507.
KBW in the community
Sylkwan has used her blog to mobilise resources for St. Francis Children’s home in Karen/Langata, Nairobi and JKE has done the same for The Nest children’s home in Limuru. In the past 12 months I have been lucky enough to visit both homes in the company of other KBW members and it is fantastic to see what positive change a few individuals can make when they decide to take a stand. The staff at St. Francis and The Nest are an example to us all.
Challenges
As many of you know KBW and KenyaUnlimited are run by a team of three volunteers. This year, in many ways, we have been victims of KBW’s success. As more and more bloggers sign up and join the webring we spend the vast majority of our KBW time dealing with support questions and various sign up queries. It is not unusual for KBW Admin Team members to spend 2 hours a day everyday of the week dealing with various support queries. Then take into consideration that the three of us have full time jobs, are located in three different countries and in three different timezones! While the primary task of the Admin Team is to provide this support and we enjoy it (in the most part) we have noticed that other KBW projects, especially those which are manpower heavy have suffered.
For example, last year it took a team of 6 of us to run the Kaybees. Towards the end of the process four of us basically gave two full days to counting and verifying the nominations and counting and verifying the final votes, sometimes roping in boyfriends and girlfriends to help with spreadsheets! LOL. The main, in fact the only, reason we have not held the Kaybees this year yet is because we understand immediately that we would be spread too thin with the team as it stands. This has also extended to other KBW projects such as Kenyan Bloggers’ Day.
In the past we have expanded the Admin Team by sending out invitations to one or two bloggers. This time we have decided to do something different and instead send out an invitation to all of you! We shall soon be advertising Admin Team positions on KenyaUnlimited. If you are a member of KBW and want to contribute back to the blogging community, want to get involved in some interesting and innovating projects, like helping people and are dedicated we would be grateful to hear from you. Watch this space and the Admin Team blog as we shall soon be putting up a profile of what we are looking for and what you can expect as a member of the Admin Team.
Finally
KBW members – thank you!
Non KBW Kenyan bloggers – join us!
KBW supporters - members or not, especially those from far and wide who are always ready to lend a hand, share advice and are constantly encouraging us, thank you. An extra big shout out to the Global Voices crew, from php and cron jobs code, to translations, to moral support we owe you big!
Thanks
PS/ You would think that having had a year to prepare I would have started writing this post in good time instead of 2pm Nairobi time on the bleeding day eh! Any typos, missing links (no not that one), broken links please let me know!
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Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 7:01 PM
