Excited to share my thoughts and experiences in agile software delivery for use within Uganda at the Google Dev Fest in Kampala, on October 26, 2019
Archive for the ‘APIs’ Category
16 Oct
Application and Data Security in the Software Development Lifecycle
This is presentation to Computer Engineering 4th year undergraduate students at Makerere University, Faculty of Technology, College of Design, Art and Technology to introduce them to concepts and approaches for application and data security in the software development process.
Looking for ideas on what I may have missed or omitted to help make this presentation more useful for others
27 Jan
Software Delivery Skills Plan 2018
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail! ~Benjamin Franklin
A new year is upon me, and looking over the horizon I am looking to do the following work streams to help better my development skills
1. Work with a new age Javascript framework – vue.js seems the rage, this is also working with webpack and new Javascript build tools
2. Make docker part of my development workflow – this will be project based
3. Distributed ledger proof of concept – the distributed ledger is the rage now, but what can be achieved to prove its capability
4. API First project – this is a separatation of the backend REST APIs from the front end, may be combined with the vue.js to deliver a working project. I will also look to leverage the OpenAPI
5. Write a paper for a scientific journal leveraging the health informatics work I have been doing over the last 3 years and present it at a conference.
20 Oct
Alternate Approach to Voice Price Wars in Telecom Industry in Uganda
My colleagues at Styx Technology Group are looking at alternate approaches to telecos in Uganda to increase their ARPU (Average Revenue Per Unit) a metric for revenue from each customer, instead of the current price war tagged to 3/= per second (US$ 0.1 per minute).
- Accept that voice is now commodity, being pushed further out by VOIP for both regular users and business, due to the improving Internet connectivity both via fixed and mobile connections. There is no longer a competitive edge to having cheaper voice, the revenues are fixed and can only go lower
- Bundled services: Currently there are separate plans for voice, SMS and data, which have to be purchased daily or when needed. The monthly plans have a premium attached, so without looking at the numbers I suspect that a majority of the regular users purchase daily plans as and when is needed. The telecoms can create bundled plans (already existing for voice) to include SMS and data without the hefty premium. Additional incentives can be provided for further discounts when a user pays consistently for a plan for 6 months, without any breaks.
- Smartphone Device and Service Contracts: While these are being gotten rid of in the US and Europe, the market in Uganda is ripe for disruption, where smartphones are paid over 12 to 24 months, with bundled services. Obviously the argument here is the risk associated with lending in Uganda, but options include partnering with financial institutions can help reduce the risk profile, work through employers to deduct the costs of the contract directly at source.
- Multiple Smartphone Data Plans: This is similar to the device plans above, however this allows the owner of the plan to register additional devices for monthly fee to share the data. This has been common with unlimited plans, and would provide a new revenue stream.
- Extending Mobile Money Services: The best service to copy is PayWay with a wide range of devices, and platforms on which to use the service based on what infrastructure the agent has. I would like to be able to swipe my VISA card and transfer money to my account without having to go through the bank interface which tends to be down more often than not.
- Bulk Sales of Devices to Schools: The new underlapped customer base, sell more devices to schools get parents to pay part of the costs to push e-education services, why do kids still have to fill Advanced Level and University Level choices on paper forms that can be lost? With powerful tablets in the $50 to $100 range only the telecoms have the clout, network and drive to push this through.
- Custom Devices and Services: These are for data collection needs, surveys etc, which can be accessed through third parties but pushing the envelope on what is possible. The key here is flexibility of service, enabling channel partners build and innovate by creating custom services and plans to meet their specific needs.
The telecoms need to think of blue ocean strategies to create new markets, provide ability for others to leverage their platform investments for new revenue channels, leveraging the example of Amazon that has created a multi-billion dollar technology infrastructure business based on solving internal problems.
What do you think?
UPDATE: This blog post follows the same thinking as The Telecom Wars in Uganda – Round 5 – 2015 and Beyond on this blog too
26 Jun
Mapping Adventures Day 1 – Introduction and Open Street Map
Mapping has grown by leaps and bounds, from the introduction of Google Maps, what was once the ode of cartographers and GIS experts is now available to the common folk like me 🙂
So wanting to learn how to map is one thing, getting the chance to do it is another, until well Fruits of Thought (http://www.fruitsofthought.org/) organized an exercise to update the information in Kabalagala, a local suburb of Kampala the capital city of Uganda.
The agenda was really simple, an introduction to mapping (and what we were going to do), the we were going to go out and collect the data, return for lunch after which we would upload the data we have collected to Open Street Map (OSM – http://www.openstreetmap.org).
The introduction to mapping was a simple affair, the concepts introduced where:
- Trace – GPS coordinates for a place, when entering these into OSM the type of feature found would also need to be described
- Track – the route taken to a point. The value of this was adding information on tracks, and side roads.
The GPS data collection devices were eTrex Venture HC Garminand GPS Receivers (https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=8707&ra=true) and android smart phones with Open Streetmap Tracker a simplified app that captures the GPS coordinates of a single location at a time.
Well then off we were down to the dirty collecting trace points and grabbing data for a few routes. The team I was in was on a mission and within 90 minutes we had a 4km route and 40 points of data. That was the easy part; next step was lunch then uploading to OSM.
First we had to create accounts which was pretty straight forward since it also supports OpenID so I used my Google Account, yes I am a fanboy. OSM requires a GPS Exchange format (gpx) file which was easily downloaded from the GPS receiver unit we were using.
An initial challenge we had was with Internet connectivity as for some reason it was very slow that evening so the upload of a 600K file took forever and failed later, but finally we got it in. Once the file was uploaded we could access the traces at http://bit.ly/KK15ql to start adding more information. This turned out as easy as drag a building and facility type and place it over the trace point, give it a name and details … A baby could do it in their sleep, isn’t that what we all say when we learn something?
Well after all is said and done we need to praise Google Maps for leading the charge, and so did this blogger “In Praise of Google Maps” (http://oleb.net/blog/2012/06/in-praise-of-google-maps/)
Stephen Musoke Senkomago 