My Tech Journal

On a very hot Thursday in the first week of January 2016, I hopped on a bus headed for Gulu. I was super excited. It was my first time to go to the North. Naturally, I had all the imaginations anyone could have about an entirely new place. The journey was long but to my surprise I was awake the whole, thanks to the fear of missing out on the adventure. I saw different things like rare fruits that we barely have in the Central or Western region of the country. With sights of the Karuma Bridge, one of the many beautifully nature that God blessed Uganda with. Before sunset, we were in Gulu town for the Robotics Camp. That evening, the trainers that had arrived for the camp all gathered to be taken through the materials and resources that were going to be used for the next two weeks in the camp. As a software developer without much knowledge in hardware/embedded systems, most of the terms and materials were so new to me - stuff like the PCDuino, Arduino, Breadboard, Link...

What was your experience during school and while growing up? Well, mine was not so different from the many Ugandans’ of my times and before. The school curriculum included Mathematics, English, and Social Studies and Science including other activities like Physical Exercises and outside school, I would learn how to do house chores.  All I had to think about was the four subjects, who to play with and when to play. Problems were for the grown-ups and they were the ones to solve them. Then, none or just one person in the whole society owned a mobile phone which was mostly likely to be a company phone as Technology was just in its initial stages of development. Computers were owned by very big companies if not only the government ministries. Communication was through letters if not physical. And data in schools, businesses, hospitals, police stations and banks was recorded on and stored in hard copy,  usually a huge stack of papers in enormous box files. If I was to a...

Outbox brings the Intel Ideation Camp to the West; an exciting way to begin the weekend with guidance through innovation and Entrepreneurship by trainers from Outbox to the youth in ICS Mbarara University of Science and Technology.  The Intel Ideation Camp is a 2 days long workshop in which participants go through the learning process to ideate, innovate and imagine solutions to identified problems.   It started with a speech from the institute director, aimed at guiding the youth through coming up with ideas that solve a problem that is faced by the many Ugandans, with the excitement and vigor  among the students to find out what happens, students were taken through a step by step journey. Students identified themselves as hackers, hustlers or artists to form teams. Choosing a particular sector from agriculture, health and education, they listed the different problems selecting one most pressing problem among the many with a broader understand...

Women are God made idols, they are beautiful, strong, hardworking and so loving. They smile during times of stress, grow stronger with prayers and hope. They love, cherish, bring cheerfulness to souls and peace in their communities. Women of substance create things that make the world a better place to be, they connect, make friends, live in harmony with others and they celebrate themselves, their positive impacts and their good hearts. Many women have showed it in all sectors of life, in politics, academics, economics, sports and media. And in technology there are still so many rising stars that are working hard to change this world and make it a better place to be. The women Techmakers Mbarara got a chance to spend the women’s day eve with young ladies from windows International school, Sentah Collage Mbarara, Bishop Stuart University and Mbarara University of Science and Technology full of the enthusiasm, excitement and interest to learn. Had a Lady speaker that was a ...

From the age of 12 and along the way, we start trying to find out who we really want to be basing on our interests, experiences and the environment we live in. It’s all human and natural to have a series of career dreams. Today you want to be a doctor, the next time u you want to be a teacher and at the end you turn out to be something totally different. The biggest percentage of people end up studying things that are so altered from their interests, some changing from one field to another until they get one that best suits their interests and the few lucky ones do what they were interested in from the beginning. We always sit back and criticize how our education system does not let us find out what we are interested in because, we continuously base on the points to know what to do in the higher levels. And yet we could do something about it.  If you had a chance to interact with kids in middle school or high school, they are filled with delightful dreams which are all sha...

Technology events, challenges, hack-thons and startups are the thing today. A lot of groups, organizations and companies are organizing these. They boost young innovators, inventors and those with the passion for technology developments, designs and marketing. For example Outbox, Women passion program,  Garage48  among others. Those who have got a chance to attend some of these events will agree with me. The number of ladies that attend these events is always very small compared to the number of gents. This always leaves me wondering, is the communication only made to the gents or the ladies are excluded to be among the participants or the ladies are out of ideas? But then I happened to get some answers. The ladies are in most cases scared of being inferior to the gents per the ideas and the innovations. They are always quiet and reserved thinking their ideas are not great or thinking they  can't  do anything better than the guys. So the question remains ‘wh...

In my childhood, I always wondered why kids loved finding out new stuff and most times they would mess up things, but surprisingly that never stopped them from trying so hard to learn and innovate unique stuff. Even when they were punished for their mess, they kept adventuring which eventually developed and later made them discover unique things. Their experience arose a high degree of curiosity in me, I was left wondering what keeps them going, where do they get the motivation and what sustains it? But as I grew up I was caught up by the ever increasing influence of technology in the world today. It is so astonishing that today every social, economic, political systems and institutions cannot perform effectively without technology. Inspired by the influence of technology, I applied for a computer science course at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST). Due to the passion for Technology, I learned a lot of skills which include developing in many progr...