When Should You Do Made In Naija On The Web?

I’ll start by asking everyone to stand up and give a resounding round of applause to those Nigerian entrepreneurs (or entrepreneurs focused on Nigeria) out there who are making their mark on the internet. Think of www.enownow.com, www.turenchi.com, www.walahi.com, think of www.startupsnigeria.com, www.naijapals.com, www.legwork.com.ng, www.ticketonmobile.com and all the other sites out there. Take a bow folks, you are pioneers on the bleeding edge of a new Nigeria technology industry.

As with any technology, there is a lot of innovation out there as well as a lot of duplication. Sometimes, the duplication improves on the original and gives the world something better than the original innovators give. Everybody knows the iPod, yet nobody realises that it wasn’t the first portable MP3 player. Sometimes they battle neck and neck in a historic contest that becomes the stuff of legends. Think Coke and Pepsi. Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Milo and Bournvita. Omo and Elephant. Sometimes, the copies don’t really succeed because they are essentially flawed in their model, their service offering or their product design. Sometimes one product simply fails because they don’t have enough money to throw at it or because they chose the wrong colour or the wrong name. The Microsoft product called Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere was almost totally ignored by everyone in the tech industry, but when they changed the name to SilverLight, it suddenly became the hot new product.

More often than not the product fails because it is based on a flawed premise. Maybe it wasn’t right for the market, or maybe they couldn’t provide the same thing to their customers that their competition could provide.

My point? When should I choose a Nigerian technology brand before I chose an international one that offers me what the Nigerian brand offers and a whole lot more? When should I chose Zinox over HP? eNowNow over Yahoo? Tokunbo.com over eBay? The answer is pretty simple for a service like Turenchi.com (Nnanna, you need to pay for this product placement) which provides RSS feeds of Nigerian news stories or ticketonmobile.com which provides tickets to local events. However what does Legwork.com.ng offer me that I can’t get from Facebook or LinkedIn? Facebook gives me access to form communities and groups with other Nigerians. I can indeed form communities around all sorts things on Facebook including my nation, my culture, poetry, technology, faith, movies and so on. The technologies available to me via Facebook are almost infinitely configurable. Facebook has an entire ecosystem that gives access to developers, advertisers, and users. It provides storage for pictures, event notification, instant messaging, classmates across the world and very many more things. Legwork (and I only use them as a poster child of modern Nigerian ecommerce) gives me only a small relatively unsophisticated subset of that. Legwork gives me access to 500,000 Nigerians. Facebook gives me access to 200 Million people the planet over. I am in full support of start-ups and upstarts (and want a piece of the action), but as a service user, a customer, I have to go with what gives me the best and the greatest options. So I am registered with both Facebook and LinkedIn, but not Legwork.

Yet.

However, I just might. Legwork is innovating. They seem to have recognised that they cannot go toe to toe against the global social networking sites out there. So they are providing services that are relatively hard for those other services to provide, or at least that are not yet on the radar for the likes of Google.com (never mind their Yoruba version). So for example, they are leveraging SMS for multi-person conversation on their network. SMS is a service that every Nigerian can relate to, has easy access to and is relatively in-expensive to indulge in. That kind of thinking that looks at what you can provide locally that the behemoths in the space cannot provide to your locality is the kind of thinking that can succeed. Indeed, an internet that has grown by stretching it’s hands towards the ends of the earth will actually grow even more by reaching out to provide location specific services. The only way the Walahi.com’s of this world can compete against the Amazon.com’s is if they find some way of getting themselves entrenched before Jeff Bezos figures out that 150 Million Nigerians is a market only half the size of the US.

Dej.

Sit Up Straight: Your Life May Dependent On It.

Today’s world is a mad mad one. Information technologies, as well as other technologies, have blessed us tremendously. As we discussed in last week’s post, there have been unfortunate consequences to these advances. In addition to what we talked about last week, there are very real physical consequences to the reliance we have come to have on computers for our everyday tasks.

For an increasing number of us, computers are at the centre of work and play. So we spend 8 - 14 hours tapping away at our keyboards peering at the screens in front of us, scrunched in our office chairs. We then go home and do pretty much the same thing.

Without realising it, we are putting ourselves at risk of long-term damage to our joints, our bones, our muscles and our eyes. Welcome to the increasingly painful world of repetitive stress injuries (RSI). Without going into all the technical medical terms and descriptions, the group of disorders known as RSI occurs because we spend too much time doing things over and over again in unnatural positions. The disorders also result from using wrongly designed tools and furniture for our daily tasks. The picture to the right taken from Wikipedia, shows the recommended physical position everyone should sit in when working with computers.

Most of us don’t use our computers this way. We slouch forward rather than sitting straight, we bend our wrists the wrong way and rest them on the table while typing. Our monitors are at the wrong height for us. We stretch our legs out rather than place them flat on the floor. Our elbows are not at 90 degree angles. We hold the mouse the wrong way. Our chairs are set at the wrong height. We stare at the screen for long hours without a break.

However, most importantly, even if we sit the right way, and use our keyboard and mouse right, doing it for too long without taking breaks will eventually have the same impact. Aside from how we sit and work, the tools we work with are also important. We use computer equipment and office furniture that are not designed to keep us healthy and comfortable. The technical term is ergonomics and this refers to the “scientific discipline of designing according to the human needs”.

The effect of all this may not be felt in the short term beyond the occasional stiffness. However, in the long term the impact can be devastating. The effects may include tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, muscular weakness, nerve damage, and can get as bad as paralysis. You may well require surgery. Harvard has a good resource on this subject and there is a huge amount of material on the internet about this.

I can’t emphasis enough how important it is that we be aware of this. Picture yourself a middle-aged man or woman in your fifties. You can’t stand straight, you can’t hold things in your hands for long. your arms are constantly trembling. And you are in unrelenting pain.

That is the risk.

What can you do? Take frequent breaks from your computer. Stand up. Walk around. Set up your workstation to fit the standards in the picture about. Specialists have come up with little exercises you can take at your desks to exercise those key joints and muscles. These exercises are quick, easy to do and are very effective. This is a computer problem and there are actually computer aids to help with this. My company uses a software called WorkPace by a company called Wellnomics that forces you to take short frequent breaks. It enforces these breaks by making making your mouse and keyboard unresponsive for periods from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the settings you have selected. It can track your current usage and tailor the breaks to fit your needs. It also gives you little exercises that you can take during the breaks and you can track how well you follow the breaks and exercises.

WorkPace isn’t free software, but there are free solutions that do similar things. Download.com is a good place to start looking. Get one of them and install it on your computer. It is worth the expense and the effort to replace your work furniture with ergonomically appropriate furniture. It’s definitely worth having an “industrial engagement” with your employers to get safe and ergonomic chairs, tables, keyboards and mice. If you’re the employer, then you owe it to you employees to provide them with such furniture and equipment. Lastly, if you are already in pain or experiencing any of the symptoms discussed here or in other resources, please go and see your doctor.

I started out talking about the madness we face in today’s world, well unless we take very good care, one of the casualties could well be our health.

My back hurts.

Dej

Back Pain: RSI Prevention Exercises

End the Madness

“Jimoh! Abeg! Come Carry Am”

For many people in Nigeria, the first time they ever experienced the real power of information and communication technology was the first time they had a car breakdown (or some other emergency) and they were able to call their mechanic.

A couple of mindboggling things happened in that phone call. First was the fact that as an ordinary Nigerian, they actually had a mobile phone. Remember the Nigerian military governor who declared that phones (never mind the “cellular” phone) were only for the rich? Well, he was wrong. The average Nigerian could now access the whole planet from a little hand-held device.

The second amazing thing in the moment was the fact that the said mechanic had his own cell phone. The average mechanic is several social levels below the average car owner in Nigeria. However, the mechanic was suddenly able to multiply the scope of his business,  accelerate his ability to deliver service, increase his customer base, better manage relationships with suppliers, and reduce his operating costs (I know Jimoh wouldn’t have put it in quite those words, but that is what he could now do). For the guy calling, that first phone call for help from on top of Eko Bridge, in the rain, would have justified the unbelievably expensive N18,000.00 that first Econet Mobile phone cost.

The “Wow”

For some the “wow” moment was the first time they pressed the power button on the beige box, the black and white screen came up, they typed “win” in front of the “>” and a computer program opened. Maybe it was when they opened Netscape Navigator and opened Yahoo.com or when they send their first email. For others it was when they placed an order on Amazon.com and the package was delivered or had that first Skype conversation over the web or downloaded their first album from a disk to their PC or played their first game of Doom or opened the white box from Cupertino or wrote their first GBASIC app and “Hello World” scrolled across the screen. Whatever that moment was, it was an awesome moment of absolute wonder.

Like I said, mindboggling.

Technology, right from the invention of the wheel, from the first time Adam, Cain or Seth first figured out how to start a fire has promised to deliver amazing new capabilities to society. For the most part, it has delivered. From cars to computers, medication to illumination, entertainment to education, technology has made us so much more productive. We cannot imagine living without the technology tools we have now.

 

The Catch

Technology also promised to give us greatly simplified lives. In that it has failed astronomically. I remember one of the benefits we were told we would receive from the cell phone was that we would be able to go out less because we would call people rather than visit them. Well not only do we  visit more people than ever before, we keep talking on the phone while driving along making us even greater menaces on the streets than we already are. You can’t even get away from people anymore. Your phone keeps ringing. And  you have to answer it. Every time. Do we remember the paperless office? Once we got rid of the typewriter and handwritten documents, we would have a lot less need to use paper documents as everything would be on computers. Well, I think we can all testify that we have a lot more paper on hand, because of computers, than our parents ever did. Oh and that Blackberry they gave you at the office? It’s not a status symbol. It’s a ball and chain.

Technology has complicated our lives. We are overwhelmed with information. The cell phone and mobile internet access means we are always at work. We manage 4 or 5 email accounts. We maintain profiles and relationships on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter. We are worried about identity theft, internet fraud, the compromise of credit cards, privacy issues. We have to protect our systems from viruses, worms and spam. We have to organise hundreds of photos from our digital cameras, and our worlds nearly come to halt when we lose all our contact information on stolen cell phones. Then there’s the lady I saw the other day with 3 cell phones and one of them was dual SIM. And we have to be on the lookout for the Google Street View camera van to make sure it doesn’t take pictures of our houses!

Is it all worth it?

Actually, it’s not. Not if we let it continue the way it is now. The story made the news a couple of years ago about a British businessman who banned email in his office because his employees were emailing each other rather than talking to the guy 4 feet across from them. They would email customers rather than calling them on the phone resulting in deals and services taking longer to conclude. Write a 10 word sentence. Email it. Receive another 20 email in response 2 hours later. Respond with 5 words. Receive the reply to that the next day.

Madness.

When I heard the story then, I laughed and made a crack about merry “old” England (and got a dirty look from the expatriate who told me the story), but the man had a valid point. We need to run the technology not let the technology run us.

Ending It

So let’s talk about this. How do we simplify our lives? How do we eliminate the technology that complicates rather than enriches our lives? What habit forms do we need to break? What disciplines do we need to develop? Post your comments and let’s figure out ways to end the madness.

Dej.