Maker Faire Africa, Accra, Sunday: Sessions

Notes from the Maker Faire Africa 2009 in Accra, Ghana from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th August.

Follow the MFA09 aggregator on Maneno.

MFA09 program available here.

Emeka Okafor - Announcements

What is happening after Maker Faire?

Announcing of prizes:

Multi machine prize: encourage individuals in Ghana to put together multi machines by the end of the year - 500$
Next Maker Faire - hopefully in Kenya, Nairobi -> looking forward for a Maker Faire price - 1500$

Acknowledgement of the partners and sponsors

Emer Beamer, Patricia - Match a maker

Searching for people with AutoCAD skills, for a sys-admin internship in Ghana or somebody with skills in Shae-butter production - look at Match a Maker, soon to be announced on Butterfly Works

Mark Davies - Esoko, Wayan Vota - Inveneo, Miquel - Maneno; Building SMS applications and bandwidth ICT models

Phone is perfect for applications as the reach is really good

Various examples:

Esoko
Mobi Game 2 Sure
YoohSMS

Various free APIs

RapidSMS
FontlineSMS
InfoBip
YoohBulk
IntelliSMS
Clickatell

SMS - the lowest common denominator, but also hightest cost per data

Maneno - specifically designed for low bandwidth

everything compressed (images, …)
design very light-weight

Advice

low number of requests
Google page analyser
Ajax has to be used cautously - can be very annoying

Where do web developers in Ghana host websites?

usually in the US
because of price reasons
web hosters in Ghana can’t assure 24/7 availability
maybe hosting content in Africa would be a good idea - or at least Europe as it’s closer to Africa (lower latency)

What about only designing websites for only Africa and not caring about the rest?

For technological discussion - new Accra technology group, meeting every month

Prizes for engaged people