Why We Desperately Need Women In Stem

Many think pieces have been written on this and I’m sure many of you are tired of the topic but I feel it needs to be rehashed until dramatic change occurs. Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a briefing for a hackathon that is going to be held by Marie Stopes Uganda(MSU) for a reproductive health solution. During the three-day hackathon, developers will be expected to create mobile and web-based solutions to address real healthcare challenges in sexual and reproductive health. The organization’s core services include family planning; safe abortion and post-abortion care; maternal and child health care, including safe delivery and obstetrics; diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections; and HIV/AIDS prevention.  MSU are doing a lot for their mission : ”children by choice not by chance” and are looking to technology to further the impact of their efforts. Technology, always the universal enabler.

During the briefing, though there was a good showing of women, 99% of the techies present were men. I guess you are thinking gender shouldn’t matter because reproductive health is universal. And it is. But in Sub Saharan Africa, the brunt of the challenges with reproductive health lie with women. A man can sire a child and have his life continue as it was, uninterrupted. A woman simply cannot. She’s left to grapple with a myriad of issues, made even more if the pregnancy was by “chance” not choice. Whether to keep the baby? Finances? Childcare?  Nature and poor governance have deemed it so. 

I digress, back to developing solutions for family planning. See, most interventions for family planning are for women; pills, injections, IUDs and Diaphragms. Only one (thus far) is for men; condoms. Ha! Though one would think that it makes more sense to unload a gun than to wear a bullet proof vest.The biggest challenge that Marie Stopes faces with disseminating its interventions is awareness. Now, go back to the interventions and think, how many condom ads have you seen?  

How many IUD adverts have you seen? (Dear man, an IUD is an Intra-Uterine Device. Read here) Now, as a developer, it is not prerequisite to be a sufferer of the problem that I’m solving but  I should at the very least be able to understand and empathize with this problem. And men have. Their problems with their interventions for family planning are; awareness and access. Solutions have been devised. Respectively, heavy aggressive marketing on all media (heck, I follow the Durex account on twitter) and instant delivery (see this ingenious startup that delivers condoms to your doorstep)  

Women’s problems?! *crickets*

Bu then awareness is not of just family planning interventions, even just a better understanding of one’s cycle would go a long way in helping a woman gain some semblance of control of their reproductive health. Like me, most women's period is a travelling salesman, never to occur on the same day.  But imagine, even the great big Apple doesn’t have a period calculator. HealthKit, Apple's health-tracking app, apparently thinks that its female users don't menstruate. The app, which includes dozens of metrics like blood type, body temperature and exercise, does not have a single way to track one's period. This is befuddling because the IOS operating system is preferred to Android by women. How can they ignore something so essential for women?

And this is not just about reproductive health. Every sector is lacking in technological interventions that can make a lot of women’s lives easier just because women are not at the table. Watch here as Chris Sacca, a famous VC talks about how he almost passed up an opportunity to invest in a hair services startup because he didn’t see value in it. He only appreciated it’s value after his wife told him how much she spent on her hair in a month. Then he saw the hugely untapped market opportunity sitting right in front of him. So, from healthcare, beauty, retail, manufacturing in fact all sectors, there are pain points (I like to call them opportunities) that only women can see.  And for these to get the attention they require, we need women to sit on development teams for these solutions. Unlike the saying that goes that you can only know an experience unless you have walked a mile in the other person's shoes, there are some experiences you simply cannot know by proxy. For example, I can never know or even understand the discomfort of an erection. I can try but I cannot even imagine it.

Like my mother likes to say, if men had to go through child birth, they would have found a way, a long time ago to deal with the trauma of it. Technology can and should solve many of women’s problems but we need women at the forefront to get anywhere with these endeavors. Women need to have easier lives because then we can be happier and inadvertently, everyone else will be happier. Happy women, happy homes, happy earth. We need more women in STEM. Desperately.

On Being Each Other's Keepers...

I’ve been writing this for weeks on end and I’m sure it will still not be as coherent as I’d like it to be.  I’m sharing now because ;

 I receive those quite often but these days I just buckle up and wait for the next opportunity to apply. But a dear friend of mine can’t even go so far as applying. Why? Simple. Fear. This might seem like a flippant reason but it’s not. See, I was her just a few months ago.  Self-doubt plagued (still does) me till it crippled me. I was my own worst enemy. The only reason I got (still getting) over it is that I have an amazing support network. God created the most passionate cheerleaders a girl could ever need and placed them in my yard. From my co-founders, my friends to my family (in its own interesting way). 

I got possibly the biggest rejection of my life recently (professionally). I was thousands of miles away from my troupe, my army. I couldn’t leave my bed. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I felt like I had failed myself, my daughter, the company, everyone. Somehow, one of them (my awesome cheer-leading troupe) managed to get through to me and what followed was a whirlwind of crying on Skype together, pep talks and lectures for the entire duration I was huddled in my bed. Slowly as the day went on, it didn’t feel so terrible. My jar of hope started to be refilled. I managed to get out of my room at the end of the day and face the world again.

But that is not all that this troupe provides, emotional support is great but man cannot eat hope. I don’t know how many emails I receive in a week with opportunities, people to meet, and customer referrals. Frankly, it overwhelms me sometimes. (I’m not complaining ooh. Don’t stop!) But yes, people out there really have my back. And that is why I fiercely (sometimes too much) support the entrepreneurs around me. Because I know what I have, not many people do. In fact, I’m the exception. 

Entrepreneurship is a lonely lonely journey.So it befuddles me to see entrepreneurs tear each other down, knowing this first hand. There’s been a lot of talk lately about African startups not sharing, first it was being whispered in hushed tones but now we are out and proud (See Tech Cabal article here). I’ve ranted several times on twitter about this. My tipping point; I just got invited to a B2B event with investors/business owners from the UAE. The RSVP had strict instructions; COME ALONE. DO NOT SHARE! What the hell! This mind you is a not a private function. It is organized by an agency that is run by tax payer shillings. So I wonder at the secrecy. Why are we hoarding investors (and other resources) from each other? To what end?  What is this poverty mentality?! Why are we so bent as a society on holding each other back?  

But then I guess misery revels in company and we are a miserable lot. I thought I’d tell this story when I’m old and grey and when it has seized to be relevant but apparently not. It seems, it needs to be told and told urgently. Just months into launching Zimba, someone I highly respect(ed) in the Tech Community dared to try and bad mouth the company to one of our partners, luckily for us, our partners saw through their lies and petty and paid them no mind. But this baffled me, why would someone go out of their way to try and sabotage a company that wasn’t even 6 months old. We already have so much working against us (lack of funding, novelty hard to understand product), there is no need for vindictiveness to get to us. Thankfully, this just spurred us on. But I will wonder to my grave.(No, being me, there will be a confrontation. I’m just bidding my time) The target market for our companies is very different and even if it were the same, I’m sure as Zimba we are never going to reach even 40% of the people we would like to reach, and here is someone squabbling over virgin territory. What shall happen when the market is saturated, shall we turn to physical violence then?

Anyway, I digress. I truly believe that the only way we will get to be competitive as the rest of the world is when we start to work together as opposed to silos. We have to so much to learn and gain from each other, different strengths that if brought together would be formidable. Across startups, across ecosystems even. There are components of Zimba and The Baby Store that I’m happily handing over to other startups, business for them and time for me to focus on my core strengths. Imagine if instead of duplicating each other’s ideas, we just complimented each other. Even across borders, I’d be happier to help another African startup scale to Uganda than set up local competition for them.

The gist of this long incoherent tirade; we need each other. Urgently. Desperately. We need to be our brother’s keepers.

On Startups; From Ideation To Exit...MWF Chronicles V

This week we had what I will term as the most thought provoking session for me. KP Reddy, and amazing serial entrepreneur was invited by Duncan, one of the faculty to give a presentation on startups. He started his first business at age 19 and by 27 he had grown his startup to a publicly listed company. At this point, he handed over the reigns and took off 3 years. In this time, he was growing his own food and doing yoga everyday (Yes, seriously) 

Currently, the techie turned investor and speaker is highly sought after due to his candid counsel to both startups and Fortune 1000 companies alike, he has been requested by organizations such as IBM, Coca-Cola, UPS, Cox Communications and Autodesk. K.P. has spoken at universities all over the U.S. including: Harvard, Georgia Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Emory, San Jose State, University of South Carolina, and Cleveland State.

Innovative and witty, K.P. speaks to leaders with intriguing topics such as: Your Culture Sucks Because You Suck, Why Big Companies Can’t Innovate, Disruption Is Not A Marketing Campaign, Why You’re Not a CEO, Yet… and Why Every Recent Grad Should Work at a Startup.

In 2012, K.P. published BIM for Building Owners and Developers, a book on the adoption of advanced technology in the infrastructure space employed by leading companies and universities.

K.P. is also startup Catalyst, helping organizations accelerate through coaching and programs such as: Startup Weekend, Customer Discovery Classes, Accelerators and Hackathons. These can range from one day to six week cohorts, depending on your needs and timeline.

From this session, I was able to see clearly what I’m doing right but most importantly , what I’m doing wrong and how I can start to correct it. I wished that my co-founders and all the startup founders from my eco-system were there. There were so many take-aways and here’s a few of the gold nuggets that K.P shared ;

1.Be an expert in a field of study. Find something that you are really good at and become king at it. Whether it is a particular form of technology, marketing or finance subject. For example, you should be able to say something like, “I’m among the top 5 experts in cryptocurrency transfer services among the unbanked in sub-Saharan Africa.” For you to achieve this, it means you have to dedicate an insane amount of time to reading and research. You should achieve top of mind status for your field.

2.Don’t rush and quit the day job; Learn new skills first to de-risk yourself. Secondly, learn about the market you want to enter to de-risk the business. You have to be realistic based on the experience you have, because this is what drives results. DO NOT QUIT UNTIL YOU HAVE A PLAN.

3.Build your equity; Ideas are a dime a dozen, they do not matter. You cannot base your equity on an idea. What matters is deliverables. What have you done with your idea? Have you documented your work? Before you go out hunting for investors, have you done your own due diligence? If any mistakes are to be made, make these on your own dime. Realize that some ‘founder’ have unfair advantage, be it a degree (and hence connections) from Stanford or celebrity status. Find a unique way to compete.

4.Capital; Capital is not to be used for founder salaries or exploration of business models. Capital is essentially meant to be used to build production platforms and to scale sales teams that a utilizing a proven methodology. Do not raise capital to a “dead end.” You must always know how much total capital is needed to execute on your plan. Your gross margin must be able to support your cost of capital. For early stage investment, you need to have revenue to validate the customer need. Think of capital as a highly structured supply chain.

5.Start with the exit in mind. This was my biggest takeaway. I am essentially building a business to handover to my children and all this talk of exits that is trending has had me worried for a while. I do not want to sweat blood and tears all for some guy in a suit to come and slap a value to my work and walk away with it.I expressed this to Reddy and he allayed my fears. An exit doesn’t always mean selling your company off to some huge corporate investor. An exit strategy can be handing over to the next generation. Do not build a company around yourself. It should be able to exist successfully in your absence. This for me was key because most successful businesses in Uganda collapse soon after the death of the founder. And it is because of this very reason, not having the end in mind so there is no business continuity plan set up. I am glad that he emphasized that we should always be cognizant of this fact.

I got such deep insight for my startup and I can’t wait to get back home and start implementing what I learnt.

Not having linux skills is IT Malpractise.

Hi dolls,

Apparently all ye windows admins should be scared. Linus Torvald's friends are coming to get your effing jobs. Read the rest of the article here. Interesting, hmmn!

Virgins?!...Yes,really.

Hi dolls,

Just broke (why do they say broke..sounds so physical! But I guess it is a physical activity) my virginity quite recently(or not depending on how you look at it, been almost a year now). So I was looking for a website(which funny enough is the reason for this post) which can help other virgins break(for lack of a better word) their own virginity. Now I know all y'all are scampering throught the words(Pervs!) trying to get to the juicy bits.
Well, my first time was not easy at all. I frankly did not know what I was doing and my hands were all over the place but I had a good guide. She eased me into the whole process! Unfortunately,I know people like her are rare so here's a website to help all ye virgins out there. http://www.linuxvirgins.com/index.html

Go figure!

Diary Of A Linux Newbie: The First Year Pt.2

First Operating System Installation, FUDcasts

I started looking around at once for another computer, one on which I could make all the mistakes I needed to without endangering my original box, and soon got the eMachine. And here's the measure of my lack of sophistication at the time: the machine had been wiped, and I was suddenly aware I didn't know how to do anything at all with it. I did know I couldn't even get the DVD into it unless the power was on, so I pushed the button.
Almost from that moment on, there was little doubt what to do next.
Success!Find the machine's BIOS boot order, choose DVD drive, let it do its thing. Don't hesitate, choose Install to Hard Drive, and answer some simple questions (go ahead, use the whole drive), then bite my nails while the drive grinds and whirs, incomprehensible messages appear and vanish, and a great blackness descends. I know to wait (I've read the books, I know it takes a while), and suddenly there it is! Ubuntu 8.10! I installed it! Well, it really installed itself, I just sort of facilitated it a bit.
For the next few days I explored the rich stew of programs that were either installed or offered via the Synaptic Package Manager and I even -- gingerly -- my toes in the waters of the terminal. Not to DO anything at first, just to read some man pages, but it gave me the sense of how to get into and out of that powerful area. It all went so smoothly, at first I was almost disappointed at the lack of challenges. Of course those came along in due time, but fortunately not until I was better prepared to face them.
FUDcast BackfiresI'd not been at it very long when I came across an article by Lance Ulanoff titled Diary of a Linux Virgin. I am really glad I had already done my own installation, because I might otherwise never have done it at all.
You see, Mr. Ulanoff was apparently intent on generating FUD in support of his publication's proprietary-system advertisers like Microsoft and Apple. He described his experience at installing Ubuntu 8.10 as if it were the most computer-threatening, nerve-wracking, brain-challenging experience of his life. Zapped computer. Several required reinstalls of Windows XP Pro (which he made sure to say he tossed off quickly with his indominatble expertise). Finally, with a lot of help from experts both in his office and online, he heroically managed to get it up and running. There was no account of what he actually DID with it.
And here's a thing for all Linux fans to take into account: the working (read "paid") reviewers derive their income from corporations that advertise in the publications for which they write. How likely is it for them to heap praise on a system that offers a viable, inexpensive, and sometimes superior product to the ones which are the ultimate source of their pay?
Most of us know this already. We gripe a bit, grumble, comment prolifically on their articles, and let it go at that. But what about all the people who haven't yet tried Linux -- or even heard of it? Is their only source of information the Fudcasts of the advertising-driven press? And to put it in the bluntest possible terms, how the heck is Linux going to grow additional market share if it doesn't quit preaching to the choir and start marketing to The Public? That means writing about Linux in a way that assumes the reader is a very intelligent but severely underinformed user of a computer who is interested in learning more about it. I'll probably get flamed for the following, but even offering Linux as simply an inexpensive potential hobby could bring a whole lot of people close enough that they'd soon be won over.
Herd of LinuxesOkay, I lied in the title of this article, to compare it to the Ulanoff piece. I didn't say much about my first year. What the whole year really amounted to is that right now I'm up to three computers running a bunch of distros to see which I like best in the long run.
At the moment I have Ubuntus 9.04 and 9.10, openSUSE 11.2, and Mandriva 2010 on computers, with Knoppix 6.2 on a thumbdrive and DSL and a beta of TinyMe on CDs. Windows XP remains in double-boot on my original Compaq, but has been permanently disconnected from the internet to serve, for the present, as my version of clod storage (no, I didn't misspell that). I am an unabashed Linux fan, still a beginner but learning fast. I've had my share of temporary disasters and unbootable systems, but nothing my well-used CD of Parted Magic didn't get me out of. I compare that to what it would have been like if I were still a standard Windows victim way off in my remote little mountainside home!

Love Hate affair......

Hi dolls,

So I've been working on this project where am supposed to demonstrate the capabilities of a FOSS network management software. I felt this was a good way to put my newly learnt *Nix skills to use. But so far all its done is given me a headache and shaken my faith in the user friendliness of all *Nix systems. Here goes the sorry tale.....so far!

Firstly..after alot of research into what software I should use, I decided to use VMware because it seemed like the most user friendly out there. After downloading and installing VM workstation (which was a breeze after an hour of reading up on ALOT of ubuntu forums)I noticed that I did not have a serial to use it. So,I asked around and the only one everyone had was of a lower version so I had to uninstall it so that i can downgrade. Uninstalling was so shitty,it took a whole day because I did not know how to(apparently, when i was reading up on how to install the damn thing , i did not figure that i would need to unis tall it so soon so did not bother reading about that! Tip for next time) and neither did most of my colleagues and all this was in between trying to pretend that am actually doing official things as all this was during office time.

After the uninstall(done by the 5th person who tried), I tried to download the lower version...then I noticed that the website actually has a key for one month trial use which is fine with me because I had not intended to keep it after am done with this project.. so I install VM workstation again!!! Then after going through the hassle of installing...I find out my processor cant support that version and I need to downgrade!!!AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!(Another Tip-always check hardware compatibility before installing any kind of software.)

After that, I decide to leave VMware and all its issues alone.I decide to try virtual box since apparently its open source(hence no serial key fiasco!) and is apparently well suited for linux machines.So I download virtual box and try to install that...but apparently the package I had downloaded had some bundles missing! And the installation could not be completed.

At that point the day had come to an end and I was frustrated as hell. So I have put the whole thing on hold for some days untill I find a way to install virtual box on my ubuntu box. As for now,am back to friendly and familiar territory-Windows XP! My love affair with linux is officially on a break!!

Ubuntu craziness!!

Hi Wendall,
This post is directed at you. I needed a bit of help (understatement-alot of help!) and i tried looking for your messenger ID so i could IM you to no avail. Problem- am trying to set up a virtual network that i can monitor using nagios (that's the really summarized version of it all). Firstly, what virtual tool should i even install on my ubuntu? I was thinking of installing Virtual box but OMG the headache am getting over it. Also, is there a way i can install it offline? Having a reliable internet connection has also become a problem for me. I think that's all for now. Waiting for your reply.(seriously, I really would have preffered to send you an email though.)

Awesome Linux Newbie Site

Hi dolls,
I just stumbled upon a site that all you linux newbies (am sure even advanced users) will love. It has a good number of articles,tutorials and various resources to get you up and running with Linux. It has 3 homes;for a desktop user,a windows admin and a Linux admin.I am especially loving the forum. It has been abit hard for me to follow or even contribute to most of the Linux forums I have found because most people assume that you are already an advanced user but this one caters to the Linux babies like me. Check it out here.

Progress Report..Numero Uno

Hi dolls,
Since this is essentially a blog about my progress in my IT career,I will give a report occassionally about my progress IT wise. This way i can be forced to actually do stuff to improve.
Attending the LUG meeting actually motivated me to start using Linux and since then I have downloaded an Image of Karmic Koala(Latest stable version of Ubuntu)to burn and install on my baby(aka my laptop) But am still debating on wether to install virtual machine instead and run Linux on one of the virtual machines. This way i kill birds with one stone;I learn Linux and get familiar with Virtualization.
Oh well, that will be decided upon soon as i have to have Linux on my baby by the end of the week.
Also, I bought a book- Introduction to Linux a Beginner's Guide by Kamil Shappa. And so far its been a really good read. Am down 2 chapters already. Am sort of excited by this whole Linux thing, cant wait to install LAMP server already so I can show off to my windows using group mates.

Unfortunately, the progress report posts shall definitely be the most boring. But it cant be helped, they are the reason am blogging in the first place. For all ye chick geeks out there, here's an article to inspire.