On Saturday, the 22nd of February 2014 Mombasa Tech Community members joined in on the International Open Data Day Hackaton

Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world's local, regional and national governments.

Open Data Day Kenya was organized by Open Institute. In Mombasa the event was done in partnership with The Mombasa Tech Community in Mombasa, Kenya.

Open data simply implies freely available content which virtually anyone can use and republish without any restrictions whatsoever. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open hardware, open content, and open access. Indeed, data is making our lives evolve gradually with respect to how we communicate, work and live. This is portrayed by the move towards digitization, and companies moving their transactions from manual based to computerized and cloud storage capabilities. There is a surgence of online information exchange with the likes of e-government initiatives and so forth
So how then does open data benefit us? Having open access to data is vital for research and innovation. It decreases the monopoly on infrastructure and data held by only a few large companies today. Open data lowers barriers to market entry for new startups and allows existing businesses to cost-effectively compete. With that said, going open data is the new “green” thing of the information world.

UpStart Africa: The Secret Recipe for Entrepreneurship

TV, it is that thing that sits in the corner of your house that gets turned on when there is a football game, but what does it really have to do with tech and young entrepreneurs? Well, when you come across a guy like Sankei Ole Kenga, who has a background in TV production and has a strong interest in youth and tech, you put all those interests in a bottle, shake vigorously and come out with an explosion that is UPSTART AFRICA.

A recipe calling for 1 part Shark Tank, 1 part Apprentice, 1 part Big Brother and the last part can only be called PURE GENIUS Imagine auditioning for 24 individuals all around Kenya, bringing them back to Nairobi to live in one mansion for 13 weeks. It will be entertaining, yes we have seen this with all reality shows over the last decade, but when the 24 people that you recruit are young Kenyan developers, creatives, entrepreneurs and marketers the result will be innovative, amazing startups that will take the African continent by storm.

The event kicked off on 19th September at 8.00 AM at JKUAT Mombasa with over 100 attendants being welcomed and ushered in by the registration team; Khamis Suleiman, Bryan Opiyo, Magambo Gatobu and Harris Mwashalo who also provided the attendants a kit of freebies.
In no time, the MC, Andrew Mwangi gave the welcoming address and introduced the host, JKUAT Mombasa on stage to also give out a welcome address to everyone present, Dr.Fred Mugambi, Director JKUAT Mombasa CBD Campus gave out a short but captivating speech after which Mr.Collins Ondago, Head of ICT Department JKUAT Mombasa also spoke a few motivating words.

Next on stage were the co-organizers, Mombasa Tech Community who had its community leads, Alifiyah Ganijee and Said Fuad having a brief presentation about what the community is all about, the journey and brains behind it, the achievements made so far and ways to connect with the community, they ended with inspiring and encouraging all the members to create awareness of the same on social media and spread the word around.

The Mombasa Tech Community was pleased to host the BlackBerry Community Kenya in Mombasa on 17th and 18th July 2013 at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
Members who had earlier on registered for the event had gathered in good time on 17th July, the mood was perfectly set to get started

Without wasting time the event kicked off with opening remarks and an introduction to the BlackBerry Community by Michael Kimathi. Thereafter, we had all the attendants get registered and join the BlackBerry Dev Spaces group (http://groupspaces.com/BlackBerryDevsKenya/) after which we were introduced to the community programs that BlackBerry offers. Later on we had the Tools distributed around which were to be used the next day for the actual hands on session. The day came to an end with attendants installing the tools and closing remarks.

A Mobile Bootcamp by AkiraChix on Android, JAVA ME, Mobile Web & SMS/USSD

The Mobile boot camp by Akirachix in collaboration with the Mombasa Tech Community kicked off at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology Mombasa with opening remarks by the leads Mombasa Tech; Said Fuad and Alifiyah Ganijee, who welcomed all the attendees and introduced Madam Fridah Theuri, the Deputy Director Jkuat Mombasa CBD Campus, who in turn introduced the Akirachix team after giving her opening remarks. After introductions were made plus a word of prayer, Ambrose Njeru who is a lecturer at African Nazarene University took us through a brief overview of what was to be covered in all the respective units to be undertaken during the course of the boot camp.