From experience I know either set your goals for the new year a few months before the end of the current year and be guaranteed some success or end wondering why you’re not developing as some of your colleagues and age mate. Not to mean to compete though, just emphasizing taking full responsibility.
Last year, I planned to be a better coder, tech trainer, team member than the years before.
At the moment of this writing am enjoying every moment I spend with fellow founders and employees at Gagawala Graphics limited. A branding agency located in Kampala, Uganda along Nasser road, where I double as a web developer and operations manager. We intentionally work in an open work space, producing crystal clear prints, graphics, webs and mobile apps. Doubling responsibilities has never been as easy as said however much it’s a joy to see accomplishments in a good timing and through a peaceful way. Ours is a brand where people don’t get bigger salaries but everyone reports at work everyday, inclusive weekends sometimes.
Towards mid 2016, I met someone who would actually be a fellow coder and great friend. I hadn’t found a challenge before until I met him. We shared ideas about our work and personal goals. You can really see someone energized and ready to face any code challenge in favor of helping businesses improve. He sets himself deadlines and meets them most of the time, he loves to help out friends if they are failing with a code challenge. It’s for Ronkas that I manned up and coded my first ever Hybrid Mobile app, which has taken me about 10 months. Being able to extend WordPress and build a custom API which serves our mobile app, has not only challenged me, it has made me a better coder and a web developer.
I have also held a couple of tech training classes throughout this year teaching the basics of technology in local communities, to web development at Hostalite Cyber Academy and Metajua a coffee processing company.
To be sincere am happy 2017 have achieved some and looking to 2018’s task. So what’s in the goals?
Languages.
With the availability of internet which looks to get cheaper next year, I hope to use this opportunity to learn some French and Swahili, which will be a big inspiration for the taking on Chinese. China an interesting country that I would love to visit someday maybe to import some tech items to my country or even export skills. I decide to learn French, because I love it and am looking forward to make friends which our neighbors in Kenya and would love to communicate effectively as much as possible.
Career upgrade
My path into technology started with selling translated movies to being a typing to serving in an internet cafe as assistant helping clients who were not comfortable to search on their own, repairing and troubleshooting computers and networking them to make sure they share resources efficiently.
During my free time, I could learn about coding in HTML, PHP and little bit of JavaScript. When I left internet cafes, I co-found a business offering computer repair, network setups and consultation to internet cafes and small offices. Cutting the long story short I was aspiring to be a web designer which have done for some years and now want to upgrade to web and hybrid mobile app development. That said, in the new year I should be a MEAN or MERN stack developer. Able to use Mongo db, Express, ReactNative and NodeJs efficiently.
Music
As of now all I can say is that the piano has got 8 notes which are C, D, E, F, G, H, A, B also called 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 keys on the scale. These notes run across the low and high pitch sides whereby the low pitch is the left whereas the high pitch is the right of the piano. The player has got 10 fingers numbered started from the thumb as 1 to the little(pinky) as 5,
At the moment am able to play the 8 notes as well as the C, D and F chords. Looking forward to a better piano and guitar player before end of 2018.
I have a feeling I want to communicate and connect with many people of different life backgrounds and my involvement in such things will help.
Want to advise me anything or wanna share with me your goals, let’s meet in the comments.
Category: Random ideas
-
What will be able to do in 2018?
-
"Ugandan Graduates" are not employed because they don't offer value to business!
Many of them think the money spent in school and the bachelors/masters accolade is a guarantee to a job. What a lie?Time, skill, market, labor & ideas are the value one has to offer to an employer or business partner in exchange for a job opportunity. How many Ugandan graduates posses the above?If you don’t know the fact, most of the jobs created are by younger people or age mates who don’t have access to free first hand business information, mentor-ship and interest free business funds!Yet once created, there is need to formalize, attracting hefty bills for Tax, Trading Licenses, Rent fees, Marketing fees etc… even before a business acquires the necessary tools and team for production.Well, this works against a Ugandan graduate’s dream of wanting to drive like others do, wear expensive clothes, go to bars etc… which incites the habit of undermining jobs.The Ugandan government has a great role to play as well. It should saws in it’s citizens than milking them. They’re many times when professional graduates have turned to informal business due to lack of job opportunities but they’re energy, plans and passion has been destroyed by exclusive leadership and decision making.Take for example sanctioning hawkers off Kampala streets, it’s a great move because it’s a way of supporting the businessman in a shop but the timing was totally wrong. You don’t take such a move without first informing the public and the alternative solution you’re offering.
Photo by chimp reports -
It's now – the encouraging lesson!
Hey! Hope you are doing well.
Today I want to share my thoughts about the idea of now. I’m writing about this because many people in the world are suffering from regrets.
A story
I’m an iron blogger (ibcoco.net). Here everyone of us writes once in a week without limitation of the type of content. You owe 5 euros or a good deed in the community, for every week missed. I currently owe 30 euros for missing 6 times and I don’t want to increase. That would be a bad idea, isn’t it? As of now I would have to be suspended, if I don’t write. To get back in, I would have to settle my debt!
At this point, I want you to pause and ask yourself, what if the world worked this way?
Life is a free gift to all living things, thus it’s worth all the happiness and joy!
How many times how we given it to ourselves or someone else? As I was dozing, dozing on the bed, I wrote to iron blogger facebook group chat, that I won’t be able to write. As a family, everyone was sympathetic because they knew I would be suspended for laziness though for the past week I have been sick!
Suffering from stomach ulcers, is creepy. It reminds you the days you didn’t eat well or starved or skipped visiting a doctor whenever symptoms showed themselves!
I’m lucky am feeling better, after a week of medication, following doctors orders.
This blog wouldn’t come if my team mates didn’t react to my message immediately. They showed compassion and I was encouraged.
This article is a dedication to you my readers and my iron blogger teammates! I appreciate the encouragement you give me and I encourage you to:-
Eat well now!
Work on your dreams now!
Visit a doctor now!
To avoid the punishment of laziness.
Thank you for reading!
-
This cable is all I need to start
A few months ago, I decided that I should use the raspberry PI before proceeding with the Mobile Digital Hub which I think will be ready by 4th July 2017. The objective is to increase technology literacy and accessible among the rural and suburban citizens.
So I had to acquire a raspberry PI 3. Through www.supaprice.co.ug I was fortunate enough to receive one from London, U.K to Kampala, Uganda, East Africa in just 9 days including weekends. This was really what I wanted.
However, I still need an HDMI to VGA adapter to be able to experiment with this cute little baby computer. I can’t wait.Some of the experiments I want to try first are playing a game on it. Kindly suggest me one since I have not played games in a while.
I also want to install an ftp client for downloading back ups from our online cPanel server once in a day.
Fingers crossed as I may get the cable tomorrow courtesy of Solomon King the founder of Fundibots.org
-
How to earn from a blog?
Many people from different walks of life ask me this about making an income from blogs or websites. As if everyone is looking at alternative ways of making money. Is it because of the world’s economic recession or the improved level of awareness in the third world countries like Uganda? Before sharing what I know about making money from blogging, I want to say am proud of people like Mark Zuckerberg, Adam D’Angel and many visionaries who implemented social platforms such as facebook.com, quora.com, google.com etc…
Let’s get to it.How can I earn from a blog or blogging?
First of all what is a blog? What is blogging?
Quoting from Wikipedia, a blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (“posts”). Click here to find out more.
Assuming we understand the definition above, blogging is the process of writing content and publishing on the blog.
Is it about text only? Text alone is not enough anymore. Therefore blogging is about podcasts and Vlogs where podcast is audio whereas Vlog is video.
Let’s briefly talk about the income bit.
Advertising
If you write informative content which people like, you will most probably attract thousands if not millions of readers(traffic). This is a great opportunity for you because many business people want to be seen. Simply create a space where adverts can be displayed and set up your pricing packages.
Reviewing
Some companies are willing to pay great reviewers to write about their products and publish on their blogs.
Affiliate marketing
Online stores like Amazon.com and advertising agencies such as google have affiliate marketing opportunities for bloggers. The good thing they can give you products links related to your content. These links are to be integrated in your blog articles so that people can click them as they read. If they like the product and buy it, you earn commission.
Tutoring
If you know something write about it and let others learn from you. Eventually this can turn into some of training from which you can earn from.
Basically that’s what I could rushy write about but it’s a diverse topic. My advice to you is to research more and start a blog.
-
Why entrepreneurship is not freedom?
Building myself as an entrepreneur I juggled between freelance and employment. During the time until mid 2015 the market pulled me into and I virtually identified myself as an Information Technology expert than what I truly desired to be since 2003.
You see I wanted to code and develop solutions which could help me especially. I never owned a PlayStation yet kids next door did, my playing time was boring most of the time. Such incited the desire to be creative. Later spent every penny in the internet cafes for years to learn this thing called software development.
All the way, developed desire to make money, so I instead of going at it through coding looked for the simplest way possible. I went into troubleshooting computers and setting up internet cafes. As this brought in some money, it positioned me more into the I.T arena than giving than coding. Much as had lots of ideas flowing in my blood, couldn’t find the courage to start or pick up where I left off.
When you want to be something, it’s good to discover the way you want to do it and fall that. If you don’t you are most likely to do it just like anyone else. Will this bring you happiness?
As for me solving problems through coding will be my first method, even if I run away it will always haunt me.
If anyone wants freedom or is pursuing happiness my recommendation is to try and spare sometime to discover yourself. Try so much to become as much self aware as possible so that if anyone has to tell you something they know or are observing about you, you don’t feel offended and surprised. Because you entirely know where it begins and ends.
For many coders, there is pain on start and during debugging phase but that pain has never compared to the happiness that comes at launch of our system.
If you’ve never gone through any self-awareness program, start now. Don’t let fears and thoughts like discovering the opposite that you want something or you who someone else than you’ve known. The magic here is that you will know yourself more than anyone knows you and you can now continue on your journey taking the right direction. I got a chance to attend Unleash dreams in 2016 co-found by David Reeve. One of the sessions Christine taught us about the life ecosystem, it’s my center of reflection since then. -
Pursuing happiness by building communities.
Over the years I have learned about many things including but not limited to computers, business and education. The knowledge acquired helped me develop website designing, entrepreneurship and community activism skills.
These skills help me, run a small mobile money business, with the aim of employing at least 3 youths before the end of 2017 and Gagawala graphics ltd, one of the fastest growing website design, graphics design and printing business in Kampala, Uganda employing 8 young skilled professionals who didn’t have jobs. In all the businesses I involve, I like to emphasize self sustainability.
This is the reason why I honour invitations to hold workshops in rural and rural-urban areas.
The last free entrepreneurship workshop, I facilitated was in Masese slum at Jinja(Eastern Uganda).
To make it inclusive and have maximum attention from everyone, I suggested we have a question and answer session instead of a speech kind or black board kind of class.
Everyone agreed. Questions started to flow from participants. One of the questions the participants asked was “What things do we have to consider, to be able to start a business?” Answers contributed were idea, market, labour, skill, capital and time. I emphasized that without embracing all the 6 elements, the business my not grow or even serve it’s purpose in a single day. Business the discussion, we had a little physical activity in which participants made a circle while holding each others’ hands raising it up high.
This activity helps participants to work together for productivity. And also help relieve and resolve what’s learned from the discussions.
More activities at the event were poping, breakdance, sports workshops and dance competitions happened. -
How to uplift a rural child in Uganda.
In Uganda, approximately 70 % of young people living in the urban areas don’t have access to computers. Worst of the matter is that you may find 40% of them have also never seen or practically used a computer for once in a lifetime.
They are possibly like me at 14 years of age, I had never seen one though I heard about it, I used to think it referred to a walking robot, such as the one I watched in movies. However, that happened to me a decade and 2 years ago. Shocking isn’t it? I wouldn’t expect someone today to find it hard to access a computer or be able to use one!
However, similarly to other countries in Africa; the largest part of Uganda is a rural area. Rural areas are negatively affected by having poor education, poor health care, ignorance and many disadvantages you could imagine of including poverty.
Some of the biggest reasons why youths and adults don’t have access to computers is ignorance & poverty, in my own opinion.
Other factors could be lack of connectivity to national grid hindering the access to electricity which could be used to power the computer devices. And even if the connectivity was in existence in the rural and urban areas of Uganda, many families struggle to put food on the table, which means they couldn’t afford spending on computers.
In many countries children use computers to create things like robotics, play games, have fun with friends and this keeps them curious, creative and productive. It also helps them not to get involved in drug abuse, sex abuse and many other bad habits.
The same or better, is what I also want to happen in Uganda. At least by 2030, it should be very easy for someone to access and effectively use a computer. Employment opportunities among the youths to have improved due to skills acquired through using computers.How is this possible.
We can start by building less power consumption, portable and affordable computers.
With only $100, it’s possible to build a portable DC powered computer for a youth. Two or more youths can even use one in intervals so that everyone gets to learn how to use a computer and leverage the opportunities that come with it.
Since Uganda’s population is largely young people, actually 78% all being below the age of 35 years; according to wikipedia and the Uganda’s recent census in 2015. This is not a one man’s task.
What shall we do together?
We shall build portable, DC powered functional computer kits, installed with open source software.
Though we shall be able to build sellable computer units, our major aim is to uplift rural communities for free. And we hope to approach impact & climate change funders, to invest the initial capital to support us to build the first 50 pilot units.
Our pilot phase, will involve introducing community labs comprising of 3 to 5 units per lab per community. This means, in a day of 8 hours, one lab will be able to give access to 24 up to 40 youths at a rate of 1 individual per computer per hour.
The computer kits!
Each computer set will be a composition of a Raspberry PI, Memory Card, LCD monitor, USB keyboard, USB mouse and other necessary cables. Each full unit could cost between $120 to $145. Approximately UGX 407,249/= to UGX 492,093/= according to Google currency converter as of today 09/Oct/2016.
Initial training
In the first week, after setting up the lab, we shall conduct free workshops, to train youths and citizens of that particular community, on how to use these computers, troubleshoot them and in partnership with other social enterprises, we will educate them in personal development and leadership.
Our aim for these workshops, is to build/develop a self-sustaining project in which the citizens of the community have a bigger commitment and responsibility. -
Why the way you treat money determines your financial freedom?
I have had a chat with someone who has seen me struggling to clear debts and going after my goals. In our conversation, he asked. David you’re an entrepreneur, ain’t you?Me: Yes, I am.Him: How comes you don’t live a life of a smart entrepreneur?Me: Why are you saying so?Him: David whenever you receive an income, you have a debt to clear. Why is it that way?Of course, I had answers like, I don’t have a stable income because my businesses are not profitable at the moment. Also a lot of people owe me money that in total the amount would buy me a good brand new car or a plot of land or even better make me a great investment in one of my businesses.That’s it David. I see a lot of that among aspiring entrepreneurs and it’s one of the difference between those who succeed and those who don’t.Money is money, it’s a necessity everywhere in the world. The only difference is how it’s treated.What if you lay down a strategy for your income. For example break it into percentages, so that whenever you receive it. You save part of it and part to spend on paying debts. That means you don’t all of it paying debt at once but you remain with some. Of course the savings you also be done with a goal in mind.You’re just not saving just for it. You are saving for the money to help you live fully. Otherwise like most unsuccessful people in this world, they become slaves of money. Because they’re live expenditure, they borrow, they work then they pay debt, and the cycle goes on.They will blame the poor economy and systems as the cause for their failure. On top of underestimating their potential and responsibility in playing a role to make everything around better. By forgetting that at some point, you will grow old and be the one to blame or thank. You become a prisoner of poverty. Success is a journey, so live by traveling it.Me: I’m listening and learning.Him: Have you ever worked for low pay because you badly need money?Me: Yes of course, because sometimes I need pay my bills and if I don’t settle for this less I won’t be in the position to take care of my bills.Him: And I tell you that is what is called not to live fully. Producing quality comes at a good pay. Of course people negotiate, and pay slightly less your quotation which is totally different from accepting a low pay because of the need to work on bills. By the way, would you work on this particular client, if you were sure you have a saving that can take of everything as you hang for someone who is able to pay you what you want? Of course not. -
How do you find courage to push on hard for success?
Many of us have a vision and dreams which we really want to achieve in this life. In fact, we try to work hard, set goals and objectives but it just doesn’t happen or it is about to happen before we quit. Don’t give up, read this article of series in which am sharing 10+ important lessons which have discovered and embraced to keep me on track for success.
First of all, many people treat success like a destination though in actual civilization success is a journey we travel to create reality from our dreams and visions. Paint your vision.-
Find your passion
I like to agree with one professor who said “Passion is the fire that lights your way“. Put yourself in a position of tasking in a dark cage without light, how far will you go?
-
Know WHY
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” – Mark Twain
If you don’t have a reason, then you purposeless/directionless take a journey. Such journeys end nowhere. The WHY is the reason you are here on this planet, breathing and perhaps do whatever you do.
Let me share something with you about me.
I’m passionate about developing solutions using computers, and various skillsas resources available to me. I’m also passionate about talking to people about the positive side of things.
I didn’t know how to do this effectively to benefit myself without wasting resources or being used to advantage. When I was introduced to David Reeve, Unleash Dreams and Unleash culture founder, I put in time to learn about the reason “WHY”. I’m happy that I can stand before you with my head high and say my purpose to you in a simple sentence. Everyday I live, everything I do, the question is am I fulfilling my purpose? -
