Mechanics and Mountaineers-Workshops and Summits!

This was a very intense week for the country especially for the gate keepers of its technology space. There we gathering that were designed to attract technology ministers from across the region as well as other business providers.

I could not help but think about the average basic organism. The single cell organism is most basic in its structure and functions at two basic levels. The first is internal. Dealing with food, growth, cell division and taking instructions from the nucleus. The Second has to do with its interactions with its environment. Movement and growth, dealing with neighbors and finding food...and yes dealing with threats.

So the structure of the meetings that took place this week will be viewed largely in this method.

Internals

Your organization and its interals whether that has to do with growth and expansion of your group and its brand. And so many signed up for this meeting with the hope of learning a lot more about internal dynamics. How are other companies organizing their staff and their products as well as technologies.

The need to hire more staff and to train and develop the staff that you already have.

Externals

Government to Government

Business (Local) to Business (Global)

Business (Services) to Governments

Business (Products) to Governments

Business (Products) to Business (Products)

Business (Services) to Business (Services)

Business (Services) to Business (Products)

Education to Business (Services)

Education to Business (Products)

Education to Government

Approach

The need to interact with additional players in your field of influence both for nourishment and for growth. In this regard we spotted some interesting appearances at the meeting. The government of Uganda for example split up its teams to ensure that they covered all the relevant possible players.

The Ministry of Education and Sports split up their participation (for the roundtables) to include:

1. Curriculum Development and Teacher Training
2. Higher Education Technical Vocational Educational and Training
3. ICT for Education
4. Ministry Top Table
5. ICT Ministry

As a sub-group, the larger Universities sought their own spaces Kyambogo, Mbarara University of Science and Technology and Makerere University were represented in the local and international space.

The South Africans chose to split their teams largely between education and technology.

1. Basic Education
2. Education, Gauteng Province
3. Ministry of Science and Technology
4. Ministry of Telecommunications

Larger groups simply sought to gain more coverage for their brands as well as to find links in which governments would directly sign contracts with them for hardware, software and other services (and possibly collaborations).

Visibility

In the advance of across the Education space we spotted innovations such as the MTN Educational Internet Bus which is a great way to make inroads into the educaiton sector as well as push the companies mobile internet platfrom (and speeds). This is probably a global trend with other players such as facebook and google also attempting to bridge what they see as a technlogy and internet divide across the third world. Both have pushed ideas where they sought to place satelites and internet balloons into the upper atmosphere to increase acess to the internet.

Samsung was also on site to demonstrate what a solar powered mobile internet school would look like.

It should be noted that the marked difference between the Samsung and MTN approach is that they have both chosen to be visible. Both google and facebook have a seeking to create solutions that are long term-yes but nom-visible.

Interaction

The interaction between Education and Business (Global) has been interesting because international businsesses have found that it might be much cheaper dealing with fresh recruits (students on campus and at innovation centers) to help develop new ideas as opposed to having to mine for innovations from entrenched staff members who may often also be much more costly. In addition to this, these companies have held ntohing back in making sure that young students (talent) from top universities have access to their devices both for advertising as well as for devleopment (student led google developper days).