(More Kenya notes)

On Friday morning at Droidcon, the keynote was given by John Kimani, developer ecosystem manager at Google. He talked about the state of the Android ecosystem, and also about what’s coming next in Android.

There were a lot of fascinating statistics in the talk. Two that stood out:

There were 1 Billion Android devices activated in 2022.

There are currently 3 Billion Android devices active in the world. This includes not just phones, but also watches and cars, among other things.

Another interesting thing that he talked about was memory requirements – specifically, that in Android 11 and earlier, there was a specific focus on keeping the OS small, so that it could run on older devices. This is particularly important in the African market, where there are lots of older devices in rural areas. The focus on low memory footprint meant that Android apps were typically also low footprint, and available to those customers.

But in the latest Android versions, that is no longer required, and as of 11, devices with less than 1Gb are no longer supported. This means that 60% of Kenyan customers can not run the latest version of Android.

American and European software companies do tend to ignore the rest of the world, in the rush for the latest and fanciest. Another talk I attended emphasized the importance of visiting your customer *before* you start developing, so that you can ensure that you’re designing for them, rather than for your own ego. (Link goes here, once I’ve written that one up.)

(More Kenya notes)

Day 5 was spent all day at Droidcon, so I don’t have much more to write other than to mention that I attended a couple of talks, including one on WearOS development.

Then, on the way back to the hotel, I shared a cab with Louis and Rosario. Louis, who had given another talk about WearOS earlier that day, was wearing four different WearOS watches, and showed me some of how the different ones work differently.

He also offered a bunch of sample code, as well as suggestions of what I might work on – he says he’s got lots of ideas and no time to implement them. I might take him up on that.

(More Kenya notes)

On Wednesday, I attended a session about WearOS development, delivered by Kenichi Kambara and Josh Murigi.

Much like the Android Auto presentation earlier in the day, this made me curious about doing some WearOS development. Major challenges – I don’t have a WearOS device, and I don’t have any actual ideas for something that I’d want to build for a watch. But, still, it looks very, very cool. And the frameworks for building apps look really easy to work with.

Or maybe it’s just that Kenichi and Josh were great presenters.

This is the kind of talk that I love attending – where I come away with a passion to try a new thing. Even though I realize that finding time for this is going to be very challenging.

Brief notes on a session I attended at Droidcon.ke.

Benard Ngoda presented on Android Auto development, which made me want to tinker with Android app dev. Maybe.

There are two main Android platforms for cars.

Android Auto is a platform for writing Android apps that are installed, and run, on a mobile phone, but can export some element of the UI to the car head unit.

Automotive OS, on the other hand, is for apps that are installed directly on the head unit itself. This is, as far as I can tell, harder, because every auto manufacturer, as well as every after-market car head unit manufacturer, have their own custom spin/distribution of it.

Benard’s github repo has a bunch of sample code for getting started. Apparently the best IDE for doing this is Android Studio. It’s unclear to me if you must use Android Studio, but it seems that everyone does.

(More Kenya notes)

I’ve alluded a few times to driving in Kenya, so here’s a little more on that topic.

It is terrifying. And the drivers seem completely at ease with the terror.

There are no stop lights. No stop signs. Barely any signs of any kind. And the drivers just know what to do. I was amazed by how few dents I saw on cars while I was there.

I did see some traffic lights while was there, 2 or 3 times, but they were purely decorative. Nobody was paying the least bit of attention them. And I did, in fact, see a stop sign once or twice. There was no evidence that anyone else was aware of what it meant.

When you come to a major intersection (did I mention, no lights or signs?) people just go. They find a gap, and they go for it, and the other drivers look like they’re not going to let them in, but somehow it works out. Clearance around cars is inches, at best, but it all somehow works out, with very few accidents.

And then sometimes, traffic just … stops. For 10, 15, 20 minutes. Just stops. And then something clears up, and it starts again. This happens a lot in the evenings.

There were numerous situations where we’d be flying along at 125kph (75 mph) and then suddenly we’d be at a standstill. As you inched along, you’d realize that a matatu (passenger bus) had just stopped in the road. Sometimes in the middle lane. Sometimes to pick up and drop off passengers, but sometimes it was because they had broken down, and were fixing it, right there, in the middle of the road. This was not an isolated event.

Meanwhile, among all of this, bicycles and motorcycles and pedestrians are all just weaving around among traffic, and I didn’t see one crash the entire time I was there.

Oh, also, any time the traffic slows down, there are vendors walking between the lanes selling everything, from food to live animals to toys to windshield wipers. I saw one guy selling neck ties, soccer balls, and an inflated Spiderman. Another had dog leashes and slingshots. And another had a book and two scrabble games. All just wandering in and out of traffic while we were driving along.

On the way to the airport on the last evening, the driver had a music video playing on the car stereo screen. Which seemed somehow not very safe. But he was navigating traffic just fine.

And then there are speed bumps. Just randomly, you’ll encounter a speed bump, And they are huge, such that most cars end up crabbing over them to avoid high-centering or, best case, scraping the bottom of the car on them. And folks don’t seem to be at all bothered by this.

When I left Nairobi, the population was just under 1 million. It’s now around 4.5 million, and a huge percentage of those people have cars, which was not the case in 1988.

There’s a fancy new expressway that goes from Westlands to the airport. You can get there in less than 20 minutes, even when traffic is terrible. It’s elevated, and is built in the median of other roads. Most people use the lower road, since the upper road is a toll road, so the expressway is largely empty.

It turns out that there’s more to this story, though.

This entire expressway was built in just 8 months. This happened because the outgoing president, Uhuru Kenyatta, wanted to leave a legacy, and realized that he was running out of time. So he made a huge deal with the Chinese government to come in and build this. Also, he happens to have a large interest in the construction that happened to get the contract. And this was largely done without the government approving it. He just … did it.

So there’s definitely a love/hate thing with the road. It greatly improves traffic – although only for a subset of the drivers who want to pay a toll. But it leaves the country with a huge debt to pay – both financial, and in leverage by the Chinese government.

Also, in the process, thousands of trees were cut down, which gave a lot of shade to pedestrians. And it’s made it very difficult for pedestrians to get certain places, because the construction destroyed a lot of sidewalks in places where there used to be a lot of pedestrian traffic. People were very upset by the trees, some of which were decades old and popular gathering places.

I briefly considered renting a car, when I was planning this trip. I’m awful glad I didn’t.

The best session I attended on Wednesday – day one of Droidcon.ke – was “Developer Communities and their Impact” – (Wayne Gakuo, Tabitha Kavyu, Naamini Yonazi, Eric Ampire ) – Moderators – Jacqui Gitau

Developer Communities and their Impact sessions by @TabithaKavyu @wayne_gakuo @naaminiyonazi @eric_ampire #dcke22 #FlutterForward #Android pic.twitter.com/r4YRbCJT0y

— droidconke (@droidconke) November 16, 2022

The panelists are community managers in various communities, in various countries, and had a lot of great insight for the audience. I just wanted to highlight a few of these.

Tabitha talked about how people new to communities will try to emulate prominent community leaders, and as a result the communities become a cult of personality, rather than a diverse community of individuals. She stressed that community participation is a process, and that you should embrace where you are in that process. Don’t try to be someone else. Be yourself. And this isn’t just for yourself, but for the health of the community as a whole. Communities draw strength from the diversity of individuals.

Eric talked about burnout and delegation. He said it’s so important not to make yourself indispensable, or you will never have a free moment ever again. Ensure that if you take a week off, things keep happening. If nothing can happen when you’re not there, then you have failed as a community leader. Delegate, and then let people fail, or do it in their own way – don’t yank it back, or you will, once again, ensure that you are the bottleneck of all community activity.

This is definitely a mistake that I have made in the past – setting up process such that nothing could happen without me. And this is indeed a recipe for burnout.

I wish I had taken more notes. Wayne and Naamini also had great insights, and this was the highlight of the event for me.

Not that I’d want to take these folks from their communities, but if you’re looking for community managers, these four really get it.