jwesonga

I just came from BarCamp08 Nairobi which was held at the Pizza Garden, the event was awesome with over 200+ attendees. I didn't manage to catch the morning session but luckily my t-shirt was reserved thanks to Hash, the afternoon session proved to be very interesting with one discussion drawing the attention of many techies and non-techies. The discussion that was led David Kiania was centered around Developing Solid Business Cases for Great Ideas/Projects, why aren't this ideas turning into successful businesses?.

The reason this discussion was of major interest to most people was that techies come up with some of the most amazing ideas and projects, many of them with minimal resources but armed with a lot of passion and talent, the sad thing is that many of this ideas have no business case associated with them Example a person tells you they have built an app to sync mobile contacts with their laptop/PC, the app is worling very well and is flawless, you then proceed to ask them the hard questions "why did you do this? how do you intend to make this sustainable as a business?", those questions require an understanding of the current environment one is in, a vision of what you want to do and how to make it a profitable venture and not a class project. It's after listening to many ideas that you realise that most people haven't taken the time to develop the business case for those ideas, the question is why haven't they done this? many times its because of a lack of knowledge on how to develop a business plan.

The educational system has been pointed out as a culprit since it lays to much emphasis on equipping people with the technical knowledge but not the business knowledge needed in real life situations, laying the blame squarely on the educational system isn't fair because even with that  educational system in place many entrepreneurs have come out of it some successful others not as successful.

Other reasons presented by the attendees was lack of financing for the ideas. In as much as this is true in most cases it doesn't hold much water for the simple reason that even a willing a VC cannot fund an idea that has no business case.

So what do we do? do we blame our parents for not instilling in us a sense of entrepreneurship? or do we blame government for not laying down policies that celebrate the entrepreneur? we could do that but at the end of the day very little would come of it. We need to focus on addressing the issue now through innovative and creative methods such as:

1. Training-Organising training sessions for budding entrepreneues to teach them equipping with knowledge on things such as developing a business plan, project management etc.
2. Networking-Encourage partnerships through professional networking forums between technology and business. If we expose this young techies to business early so that they can understand the importance of taking ideas and making sustainable businesses then we will have set them on the right track.
3. Policy Change- Lobby government to change the way the educational system is structured. To place more emphasis in building the individual instead of churning out mindless drones geared for employment and not innovative thought. (NB I have nothing against employed people)

There and many others are things we can do, probably I haven't given the session the justice it deserves by not mentioning other interesting ideas and comments that were presented by the attendees, but in my defence I'm a blogger not a journalist :-)

I've always said technology cannot survive in vacuum, it needs business to turn those ideas/projects/tools/apps into money making ventures, let's focus our energies towards equipping this generation of talented tech savvy people with the necessary skills to build businesses from their ideas, let's have them expose their ideas to masses and have them refined through rigorous examination so that in whichever place they are implemented a business can grow and succeed.

Short term what can be done is:

• Training- The Kenya ICT board is in a very good position to provide relevant training e.g. Project Management, Entrepreneurship etc to this upcoming business men and women. As part of capacity building it's in the best interests of the board as well as the techies to engage in training programs that will equip them to best take advantage of the vast resources that will be availed to them.
• Business Emphasis- the techie community needs to give attention to the importance of business, more often then not there is only focus on the code.  Lets get Venture Capitalists involved in the techie community. 

Long term:

• Policy change through effective lobbying.

My hope is that from that discussion we should see some positive steps towards giving our techies the "right stuff" needed to monetize those ideas.

Some pictures from Barcamp Nairobi:

More images here