[Interview] In The Bubble Of Jean Luc Houedanou: "a fleet of drones that prevent theft and abuse"

[Interview] In The Bubble Of Jean Luc Houedanou: "a fleet of drones that prevent theft and abuse"

1. Quick (but effective) introduction of the personage and his achievements? Jean Luc Houedanou, currently Head Of Design in a startup called WeDev Group and having 7 years and several months of experience as a web consultant (including CERAP Inades, as well as the Electoral Reform International Services). I have a Masters degree in E-commerce and a diploma in Information and Systems Management, both obtained from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada. In terms of skills, I am a web integrator and a web design/strategy consultant. I am also involved to some extent in SEO and Training. My achievements that I am most proud of are related to the field of Training: I have had the opportunity several times to train journalists or media professionals in the use of social networks, a web radio deployment, content creation and blog management. It's a real pleasure to see every person negatively biased towards these technologies who ends up fully embracing them afterwards and even becoming advocates of journalism 2.0....

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[Interview] In The Bubble Of Holty Sow: "for more efficiency, I prefer to work in an agile team"

[Interview] In The Bubble Of Holty Sow: "for more efficiency, I prefer to work in an agile team"

1. Quick (but effective) introduction of the personage and his achievements? My name is Holty Samba SOW. After having started my higher studies in Maths-Physics, then completed a professional degree in Computer Science in Senegal, I went on to further my studies in France and obtained a Master's degree in Electronic Documents and Information Flow in 2009. This allowed me to get into the professional world of computer programming. Currently I am a consultant and developer, mainly on the .NET platform, at SoftFluent, which is a software publisher but also a service company....

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A Practical Guide On Open Data From The World Bank

A Practical Guide On Open Data From The World Bank

If you have ever checked the weather online, used the navigation function of your smartphone to find an on-duty pharmacy, or calculated the road expenses of your municipality, then you have already used "Open" Public Data. But maybe you didn't know it... For a long time, it was difficult (or even impossible) to access this information from the public authorities. This concept was born from the belief that the huge amount of information systematically collected by public administrations should be accessible to all citizens. In the late 2000s, states and their various services began to grant access to these resources to a greater number of users. The first government open data policies were introduced in 2009. Currently, more than 250 national and local governments, nearly 50 developed/developing countries, and institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations have launched initiatives to release the data, and these are growing every year. Data is considered "open" if everyone can use, reuse and redistribute it freely, free of charge, for any purpose and without restrictions. Many data sets are published on government websites, but most of them are only meant to be viewed in isolation, and are not reusable for other purposes. Open data must be reusable, that is, downloadable in an open, software-readable format, and users must be legally permitted to reuse it....

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Did You Just Say Crowdfunding?

During the month of August, I was helping out the TechOfAfrica team with the organization of an afropreneur afterwork event in Abidjan. So I was talking with a friend about that session, I was explaining that the purpose was to present the Afropreneur project and to promote the related crowdfunding campaign. But, as soon as I mentioned the word "Crowdfunding". my friend immediately shifted to a shocked face. "Huh? What's that, Nanda? Some of your geeky stuff again?", She asked. And then, I realised that what may seem obvious for some of us is not always that clear for others. This situation is amplified by the fact that many are not particularly comfortable with the language of Shakespeare. So I wrote this little article just to clear things up for everyone. Happy reading....

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Web Citizen And Media Coverage: Yes, But...

Web Citizen And Media Coverage: Yes, But...

These days, with the advent of social networks and blogs, every citizen yearns for information as mentioned in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." By virtue of this right, some citizens may sometimes tend to disseminate information without respecting certain rules of journalism that we will recall later. It's worth indicating that elections are a time:...

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WARNING: Web Municipality And Community Freedom

WARNING: Web Municipality And Community Freedom

This is just a warning with respect to the recent 'web municipal elections'(!) in Ivory Coast. Revisiting the facts It all started like a joke, there was even an agama reptile among the candidates (obviously a fictive character). The initial idea seems to be some elections parody, some way of showing that technology and its users were able to come up with peaceful, transparent elections. The project appears online a couple of months back, then follow some online promotion through Facebook and Twitter and a few weeks later, about 500 people take part to the said election. A few local and international blogs relay the story, it all suddenly gets serious, there's even an investiture ceremony(!), the Ivorian Web population(?) would purportedly be having a mayor... The parody assumes a new form, and with baby steps, some projects of taking over responsibilities and placing regulations are starting to raise......

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1. React to the global and local marketing environment (on marketing for programmers)

Whether you are an independant developer or a company, you can't just do your own thing and make programs that you find cool. You have to consider the microenvironment and the macroenvironment in which you operate, to adapt and take advantages of emerging opportunities and to minimize potential threats. Your microenvironment consists of actors that affect your ability to produce effectively in your chosen markets. Those actors are...

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Marketing For Programmers (or what I learned from my marketing classes)

I had to take a marketing class in my last year. At first, I didn't see the point for a software developer to learn those things, but then I realised that it's very important. I am sharing here, the key points I am keeping, regarding how marketing applies to the software business. I hope this note would be of some interest to both (aspiring) programmers and marketers. Now there is a lot that could be said on that topic, here I just try to stick to the key points, and as it’s still a lot of information, I would rather not send it all at once. Instead I would spread that as small blog articles. Let's first define "Marketing". It can be defined in many ways but it's basically the achievement of corporate goals through meeting and exceeding customer needs better than the competition. Indeed, the marketing concept is a philosophy of business that puts the customer and customer satisfaction at the center of things. Why should developers care about it?...

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