I attended Mindspeak on Saturday 24th September where the guest Speaker was Bob Collymore.
I had never attended one of these despite having received several invitations, and I must say I was very impressed. All along I had the impression that it was a small club ( 15 people max), but the ball room at Intercont was FULL!! I was especially impressed by the high number of young people, a good portion of them ladies, which made me note the sessions as my next hunting ground for mipango…..
I was struck by the liberal use of technology. There was Bob on his ipad, Satchu was working his apple, the audience was busy away with their phones sending tweets that were being displayed on the screens – impressive. I was particularly impressed by the presenter from Shimba Technologies who showed us the real time price updates app of the stocks exchange from his nokia. This free app is available on ovi store and I have since unearthed my nokia (am an idiot convertee) and downloaded it, now waiting for the markets to open. Shimba if you are reading this please put the app on android. Even Jeff Koinange called in from wherever he was and the conversation was put over the public address system.
Bob spoke about many things, his life, Safaricom 2.0, the share price.
On his life, he let it out that he never went to college.
On Safaricom 2.0 he took us through what they are doing, new modes of communicating, possible increase of calling prices, falling prices of data and his worst nightmare, cable cuts. The classic line I took from the presentation is that broadband is a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT, and scom will work towards availing this MDG to Kenyans.
On the share price, he asked the audience not to look at the share price, but the share value. On this he mentioned Kenyans4Kenya, the work he is doing in Kibera with a retired nurse, the work they are doing with breast cancer, their contributions to the dairy industry and stuff they are doing for the disabled (after a very moving speech by a young stuttering man) which all enhance the share value, not necessarily the share price. He also mentioned that this value has been noticed as far as the UN where he had just come from the previous two days. I was particularly pleased when I noticed that ALL his staff who accompanied him were ladies – talk of taking the gender balance thing to a whole new level (the same can’t be said for that hotel chain in which I have considerable shareholding)
BTW, Edith Kimani is a petite as he looks on air
