NexTech Africa 2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi
Know Before You Go
Contents What to Expect ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3
Agenda .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Demo Zones ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3
Check in ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Meals .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3
Networking Cocktail ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3
Attire + Bag/Coat Check ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Internet Access ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Parking and Transportation ................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Speed Collaboration ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3
Social Media ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3
Travel + Hotel .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Airport ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 4
Visa + Passport ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Vaccination ................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Venue ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Hotels ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Agenda ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Day 1 ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Day 2 ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Speakers .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Appendix ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 15
Sources ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
What to Expect
Agenda
Doors open at 7:30am on Thursday and 8:00am on Friday. Our programming starts at 9am each day. Click here to view
the most up to date agenda and plan your time efficiently at the conference.
Demo Zones
We will have showcases of both Microsoft’s and local innovations. The companies showcasing on the exposition floor
change out between the days, so you will get to meet a variety of startups and Microsoft product teams over the
course of the conference.
Check in
REMEMBER: Be sure to bring your photo ID every day of the event as we will be checking it against badges
throughout the event
Meals
Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided each day for all conference attendees.
Networking Cocktail
Don’t miss the NexTech Africa networking cocktail which takes place at 6:30pm on Thursday at the Radisson Blu. You’ll
need to bring your NexTech Africa badge to attend this event.
Attire + Bag/Coat Check
Suggested attire for the event is business casual. There is no bag or coat check at the conference.
Internet Access
There will be free Wi-Fi available at the venue.
Parking and Transportation
NexTech Africa’s location at the Radisson Blu, Nairobi has ample parking space and is accessible using public transit.
We do encourage attendees to arrive early to go through hotel security and event registration as quickly as possible
and get good seats for the opening keynotes.
Speed Collaboration
We will be hosting several speed collaboration sessions for attendees across both days which will create opportunities
for networking between experts and enthusiasts from Microsoft and the community on a variety of topics of interest
to attendees. Sign-ups will be at the event so come excited and ready to collaborate!
Social Media
Follow and share your experience before, during and after NexTech Africa 2017 on social media with the hashtag
#NXTA
Highs in the mid 80’s/Lows in the low 60’s
Humidity ranges between 30% and 90% on average with a few thunderstorms/showers
NexTech Africa
2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi
Travel + Hotel
Airport
For easy transportation once on the ground, we recommend flying into Jomo Kenyatta airport(NBO)
Visa + Passport
If you are travelling from outside Kenya, you’ll need to apply for an eVisa.
The fee is $50 for single-entry visas and $100 for multiple entry visas for each applicant, regardless of age and whether
obtained in advance or at the airport. Travelers to Kenya should ensure that the validity of their passports is at least six
months beyond the end of their intended stay. Kenyan immigration authorities require a minimum of two blank
(unstamped) visa pages in the passport to enter the country; some travelers have experienced difficulties when they
arrive without the requisite blank pages.
Visit Kenya’s official immigration page for more information.
Vaccination
If you are flying in from outside Kenya, you’ll need to bring your yellow vaccination card for entry into Kenya. Please
discuss with your doctor which vaccinations and medications you should take.
The following are the most common/recommended:
• Hep A & B
• Typhoid
• Yellow Fever - Required
• Malaria (Pills)
Venue
Radisson Blu Hotel, Nairobi Upper Hill
Kilimanjaro Ave & Elgo Rd. Nairobi
Elgon Road 00100 Nairobi Kenya
+254 (0) 709 810 000
Hotels
Generally, we advise you stay close to the conference venue for easier transportation. You can find nearby hotels here.
NexTech Africa
2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi
Agenda
Day 1
Think Tank (Live Streamed) Code Zone Bytes Museum
7:30am – 9am Breakfast and Registration
9am – 10:30am
NexTech Africa Opening Keynote
Speakers: Kunle Awosika, Minister Joe Mucheru,
Toni Townes-Whitley, Andreas Fruhen, Bambo
Sofola
10:30am - 10:40am Break
10:40am – 11:25am
Developing Intelligent Applications
M-KOPA is upgrading lives through access to
affordable energy, productive assets and
transformational services. The talk is an overview of
how the company is harnessing machine to
machine technology and intelligent applications to
make a real difference for millions of people.
Speaker: John Muthiora
Cloud Infrastructure in Africa
Speaker: Ranjith Cherickel
11:30am – 12:15pm
Digital Transformation: The 4th Industrial
Revolution
We have a fundamental belief that mobility and the
cloud are going to drive the 4th Industrial
revolution - digitally transforming the way we
work. From small businesses to the public sector;
enterprise to education, technology is changing the
way we do things. Join a cross-section of top
Microsoft leaders for a discussion about how data
and technology are changing our world.
Migrating to a Service Oriented Architecture: An E-
commerce case study
Microservices or Services Oriented Architecture is a modular way
of building software applications. Pre-SOA, software was written as
a single, large entity. The problem with building software using
this model is that complexity—deployment, testing, debugging,
etc.—increases exponentially as the software features increases.
Microservices, by contrast, not only allows you develop and
manage modular entities, it promotes the concept of Single
Responsibility. This leads to ease in debugging, deployment,
Panelists: Toni Townes-Whitley, T.K Rengarajan,
Gerald Kasimu, Patrick Mweheire, Jeremiah Marble
testing, etc. This session will introduce you to Service Oriented
Architecture using e-commerce as a case study.
Speaker: Celestine Omin
12:15pm – 1:30pm Women in Tech Lunch Speakers: Judith Owigar, Toni Townes Whitley, Dona Sarkar
Lunch
1:30pm – 2:15pm
Walking on Clouds: Unlocking the Power
of the Cloud for Enterprise Mobility
Africa is the mobile-first continent and has paved
the way when it comes to mobility in the
enterprise. Per Gartner, "Giving workers, partners
and other stakeholders seamless mobile access to
applications and data can increase productivity and
sales, and improve customer satisfaction through
faster, better service." With the increasing
complexity of deploying and managing these
mobile solutions, business and technical decision
makers need novel approaches to address these
challenges. How do we use the power of the cloud
to increase mobility? How are enterprises leading
the way in this transformation and what does the
future hold?
Panelists: Nic Rudnick, Chris Lwanga
Moderator: Muchemi Wambugu
How can you be an Agile company and
what does that entail?
The world is changing every day. We all know this as a
fact. Organisations must transform to remain relevant.
To do this effectively in the Digital Age many
progressive organisations globally are embracing
Agile principles and Scrum values as a new way of
working (the winning way of working). To become
Agile requires a fundamental change in our mindset,
behaviour and in our understanding of leadership.
Agile is a way of life. You don’t do Agile…. You
become Agile. Agile is about inspiring people to
become their best and to find innovative digital
solutions and smarter ways to cope with the rapid
pace of change, manage risk, to remain relevant in a
faster moving world and to consistently create value
that delights employees and customers. Agile (Scrum)
is a strategic accelerator for governments, non-profit
organisations and businesses in the 21st century.
Speaker: Nana Abban
2:20pm – 3:05pm Journey to the Cloud – Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is one of the largest public cloud
platforms in the world. It’s a growing collection of
integrated cloud services—analytics, computing,
database, mobile, networking, storage, and web.
This keynote presents a broad view of Azure, from
its global footprint to the wealth of services offered
by the platform. The presentation also highlights
the open nature of Azure, which supports a wide
selection of operating systems, programming
languages, frameworks, tools, databases and
devices. Adoption of the cloud is growing
exponentially. The presentation shows examples of
real-life usage scenarios, highlighting broad
customer adoption, and a wide spectrum of
partners.
Speaker: Yousef Khalidi
3:05pm – 3:15pm Break
3:15pm – 4:00pm Engineering at Scale
Building solutions that scale reliably to deliver value
to millions, and increasingly billions, of people
presents an intricate web of engineering
challenges, many of which are unknown. Mobile,
networking, data, security and many more areas all
present their own unique set of engineering
challenges at scale and are pillars in the products
and services that are being built. In this panel, top
engineering leaders from across the continent will
have a conversation about the considerations,
challenges and opportunities for building and
leading a world-class African engineering
organization that operates at hyper-scale
Panelists: Brice Nkgensa, John Muthiora, Hoop
Somuah, Dona Sarkar
Moderator: James Wamathai
Getting the Most out of your Data
With the unprecedented amount of data being
generated and archived, data is the new oil and the
economy around data is the new industrial revolution.
The value of data being stored by various
organizations currently sits untapped, yet holds
tremendous value. Organizations that archive, refine,
store and transmit data will become amongst the
wealthiest and most resilient in the world. In the
future, the entire data life cycle from creation to
monetization will change foundationally, spurring a
new data economy that decides which organizations
will be successful in the next decade. What does this
mean for data infrastructure? How can companies
start to breed a data culture for success? What sorts
of insights can be sought and problems informed by
data and how can companies use data as a strategic
competitive corporate asset?
Panelists: Val Fontama, Zulekha Mwanzi, Bitange
Ndemo
Moderator: Mark Walker
Skills, Innovation and Access: Microsoft 4Afrika
The Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative focuses on three critical areas of
development for the continent: World-class skills, Access and
Innovation. Each of these focuses on different aspects that will help
empower African youth, entrepreneurs, developers and business
and civic leaders to turn great ideas into a reality that can help
their community, their country, the continent, and beyond.
Panelists will share their digital transformation story and highlight
some of the great work they are doing in partnership with
Microsoft 4Afrika.
Panelists: Kate Kiguru, Sam Wanjohi, Ezana Raswork, Mike
Mutungi
Moderator: Lutz Ziob
4:05 – 4:50pm JavaScript, the Cloud, and The Rise of
The New Virtual Machine
One day we woke up and things were different.
Maybe it happened overnight, maybe it took many
years. Suddenly we are scripting against thousands
of Virtual Machines from the command line while
creating things today with JavaScript in the browser
that were impossible yesterday. LiveScript becomes
JavaScript becomes ES6 and now we're compiling
C++ to JS. Join Scott Hanselman as he explores the
relationship between the Cloud and the Browser,
many Languages and one Language, how it might
all fit together and what might come next. NOTE:
Non-technical business people and technical IT
people alike will enjoy this lighthearted talk.
Speaker: Scott Hanselman
4:50pm – 6:30pm Break
6:30pm – End Networking Mixer/Cocktail
NexTech Africa
2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi
Day 2
Think Tank (Live Streamed) Code Zone Bytes Museum
8:30am – 9:30am Breakfast and Registration
9:30am – 10:30am
Data Dreams
We are living in an extraordinary time where
every person and every organization on the
planet can achieve more through the power of
cloud computing, AI and data. Learn about the
vision, and the new realities, from Microsoft CVP
of AI & Research Global, T.K. “Ranga” Rengarajan
who will share innovations and the capabilities of
the cloud. If you can dream it, you can build it.
Speaker: T.K. Rengarajan (Ranga)
10:30am - 10:40am Break
10:40am – 11:25am
Connecting the Unconnected – A
Mobile Only Future
Interconnectivity has increased with Mobile
penetration across various markets. Especially in
emerging markets digital boundaries have been
disrupted by mobile as the only digital device
with most users, where their identity is not an
email, but phone number. In this new world, an
individual is empowered to operate like an
enterprise – choosing when and how they work;
choosing to be part of an organization or be
organization themselves; empowering
individuals across a breadth of occupations to
engage with the world in more meaningful ways.
In this session, the Microsoft Office product
engineering team will share product information
and case studies done with such users.
Speaker: Rajiv Kumar
Inside Open Source Cross-Platform .NET
It’s finally happened. .NET Core and ASP.NET Core are open source and run
nearly everywhere. Microsoft developers work in the open on GitHub and iterate
quickly. How did this happen” Join Scott Hanselman as he delves into 15 years of
.NET history and what it took to reach this point. What do YOU need to know
about .NET Core and ASP.NET Core, and how does it work?
Speaker: Scott Hanselman
11:30am – 12:15pm
Digital Africa: Transforming the Way
We Do
From art to agriculture, fashion to finance,
technology is changing our world. This evolution
is not limited to the tech industry but is
spreading across all sectors of the economy.
Panelists will explore what the future holds for
some industries that are undergoing a digital
transformation
Panelists: Tabitha Nanzala, Erik Hersman, Ham
Namakajjo, Cassandra Sarfo
Moderator: Malaika Toyo
Creating Business Value with
Machine Learning
The convergence of several technology
trends, such as Big Data, Cloud Computing
and commoditization of powerful algorithms,
is now bringing Machine Learning into the
mainstream. Thus, mainstream businesses
can now take advantage of powerful ML
algorithms once limited only to the biggest
corporations and research institutions. This
session will show how organizations of any
size in the world can gain a competitive edge
through Machine Learning. We will show
how you can leapfrog by creating innovative
solutions to real business problems through
Machine Learning.
Speakers: Shawndra Hill, Val Fontama
Machine Learning & Azure Services
Machine Learning helps solve real-world data science problems, With Azure ML a
powerful cloud-based service you have the ability to build intelligence into your
applications and services, to enable natural and contextual interaction with tools
that augment users' experiences using the power of machine-based intelligence.
In the session, using practical scenarios you will learn how to build models and
derive insights using Azure Machine Learning and making your apps intelligent.
Speaker: Yassine Serhane
12:15pm – 1:30pm Lunch
1:30pm – 2:15pm
Redefining the Status Quo: Innovation,
Disruption, and the Creation of Value
Innovation is the engine of economic prosperity.
Across the ecosystem, individuals and
organizations are playing their part to disrupt
the status quo. It is a critical time for the industry
to redefine what it means to be an entrepreneur,
create opportunity and empower people. The
panelists will share their perspective on the
trends, challenges and future of value creation.
Panelists: KP Yelpaala, Sam Gichuru, Myriam
Said, John Waibochi
Moderator: Jessica Colaco
The Social Developer
We hear a lot of about the skills required to be a developer, and we endlessly
tweak our linked in profiles, but what about soft skills? What does it take to be a
Social Developer? Are you visible online, and an even better question - should
you be? We'll cover Github, Twitter, StackOverflow, Blogging, Twitter, Gitter, and
much more as we aim to understand what well-rounded developer looks like on
today's social web.
Speaker: Scott Hanselman
2:20pm – 3:05pm
Digital India + Microsoft Research
Speakers: Anil Bhansali, Siddharth Prakash
Accelerate Windows 10
Deployments
Staying up to date on Windows as a Service
should be painless. We have tools and
techniques that you can use to assess
compatibility and easily perform Windows 10
deployments in your enterprise. Many of our
customers have benefited from our tools and
tricks. Learn about them in this session.
Speakers: Raji Rajagopalan, Christa St Pierre
3:05pm – 3:15pm Break
3:15pm – 4:00pm
Technology & Education: New
foundations for the Next Generation
Education as we know it is evolving. Two
powerful tides we see are technology education
that empowers creators to build locally-aware,
but globally applicable solutions to their
challenges, and technology being used to
transform the way we educate future
generations. With this evolution, where can
technology adoption make the biggest impact?
What is the future of technology in education
and how do we see learning changing? What are
the skills that innovators will need in the next few
years and what part can technology play in
making education accessible and affordable for
all?
Panelists: Savannah Kunovsky, Nadayar Enegesi,
Regina Honu, Felicia Guity
Moderator: TBD
Enterprise Mobility & Security
Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) provides
flexible, comprehensive mobility and security
solutions that enable your transition to
mobility and the cloud. Organizations in the
mobile-first, cloud-first world need to
empower their employees to access all their
data and applications from every device and
every location. Users need to collaborate
with each other, their partners, and connect
with customers. This session gives an
overview of how EMS enables organizations
to achieve these goals.
Speaker: Chris Green, Nana Essilfie-Conduah
Cognitive Services & Bots
Bots or conversation agents are rapidly becoming an integral part of users’ digital
experience. They are as vital a way for users to interact with a service or
application as is a website or a mobile experience. This session will walkthrough
how to build bots that consume the LUIS API (Azure Cognitive Services) and host
them on Azure PaaS.
Speaker: Sherif El Mahdi
4:05 – 415pm Closing Remarks Speaker: Kunle Awosika
NexTech Africa
2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi
Speakers
NexTech Africa
2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi
NexTech Africa
2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi
Mike Mutungi, CEO, I choose Life
Muchemi Wambugu, Partner, PWC
Christa St Pierre, Principal Group Program Mgr., Fundamentals PM R&D, Microsoft
Siddharth Prakash, Senior Research PM, Microsoft
Amr Kamel, Country GM WECA, Microsoft
Visit the website to learn more about our speakers on the website. Check back as we will be adding more bios.
Appendix
Sources
Entry Requirements
http://www.countryreports.org/travel/Kenya/entry.htm
Passport & Visa
http://www.worldtravelguide.net/kenya/passport-visa