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Newsletter format / Table of contents (TOC):

• This issue’s Tech word

• Musings on tech

  • www

• The indie hacker 'trade'

• From TK community

• Sign off

This issue’s Tech word: WEB

A web could mean the product of a spider’s spin. It’s fascinating that some think of entanglement and others structure when they hear the word web.

However, when we say the web, or even more elaborately, the World wide web, it’s clear we are talking about the information system enabling documents and other resources to be accessed over the internet (online).

Musings on tech

www

www is the short form of the world wide web and is now the most common subdomain of online sites.

Uses:

• Some sites use www to distinguish between desktop sites vs mobile-optimised ones, for example, www.twitter.com VS m.twitter.com or mobile.twitter.com.

• With the advent of many TLD (Top-level domain) names, www is used to distinguish that a particular link is a TLD. For example, microsoft.cloud, testimony.fm and md.engineer could be mistaken for random text or even filenames with file extensions. However, they become very apparent as domain names when www is prepended - www.microsoft.cloud, www.testimony.fm and www.md.engineer.

The indie hacker ‘trade’

This issue started with the question: The Indie hacker trade is the so-called 'independent' path to profitability. Is it accessible?

Short answer: YES! Now more than ever before.

Introduction

So what’s a indie-hacker?

I derive the definition from this webpage.

An indie-hacker is a software engineer, designer, marketer, digital creator or community manager who builds and launches their own products or businesses independently, without the support of a large organization or team.

In that article, Dane Cobain lists a number of steps one would take to be an indie hacker, a successful one at that. These include having a clear value proposition and creating a minimum viable product (MVP). Nothing extra ordinary to creating any typical business really. However, the crux of the matter is doing this: independently.

Interested? Let’s get you pumped 💪

A disclaimer first,

Being a Software Engineering and Digital Products Professional, myself, I know several individuals who are in different stages of being an indie hacker. Some start building their own products or businesses as a side-gig putting their non-working hours to use. Others do it full-time, first with minimal revenue or working capital. One thing is for sure; it’s not easy and success is not granted. Well, success is not always granted, is it?

It’s important to start by distinguish this from typical solo-preneurships.

Leverage

An indiehacker is a solo-preneur who has leveraged systems and processes to effectively run a business solo. Therefore instead of hiring people and creating processes around your workforce, you build the systems and processes solo and operate them solo.

The success stories I have studied show that software developers and engineers have an edge because they can write code and hence leverage that skill to build (Software as a Service) SaaS products. The current digital market space allows this model to work really well.

MRR

With a Saas product up and running, the next thing is to get paying customers. A freemium model (a free product with options to upgrade) has worked for most. Working out the pricing levers is important intricate work.

By this time, best case scenario is that you have product-market fit, that is, you’re not complaining of how difficult it is to get customers; they are already using your product and more are at the door.

Once the pricing is done right, then you start getting MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)

Moving forward, you improve the product, maybe have more pricing tiers, and work on support tickets

Exit

Even though this is all done independently, an exit is imminent. Some get bought without soliciting buyers. Some build to sell, thus serial entrepreneurs but only difference, they are working solo.

I recently learnt a motto in an event I attended (Youth+ Africa festival that had Wandia Gichuru (Co-founder & C.E.O., Vivo Fashion Group) and Vusi Thembekwayo (South African entrepreneur and author) among others as speakers;

Start, Sustain and Scale. That’s an apt way of remembering the steps:
1. Start by leveraging skills
2. Sustain by getting and keeping revenue
3. Scale (out of yourself) by selling or getting a workforce (indie-hacking can be a business growth stage)
4. Repeat!

The accessibility of the indie hacker ‘trade’

I’ll attempt to break down key pointers of how being an indie hacker is now more accessible.

1. Indiehackers are building in public and sharing their story. There’s actually a hashtag #BuildingInPublic
   My favourite story is about the foundation of Insomnia. Read it here.

2. Technology stacks for businesses are more public than ever before
   Here’s the tech stack of a popular tool; Wappalyzer (a technology profiler and leads data provider)

3. Coding is becoming a Digital literacy skill and the barrier of entry is lowering year on year. On top of that with no-code tools and generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), prototyping an MVP and deploying it, is potentially easier.
   FreeCodeCamp, CS50 are a few notable avenues to learn. Retool, and Bubble are no-code tools to build full-stack apps. Imagine you building a Tinder clone with no-code!

4. There’s a huge community ecosystem to plug into. Developer communities, startup communities, creator communities, name it. Leveraging communities is an important differentiator.

To the last point, I want to believe TK community is already helping some on their journey. We share resources and discuss pertinent matters. Feel free to join us on the Whatsapp group or follow our Whatsapp channel (you’re anonymous in the channel 🛡️)

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. Are you a indie-hacker? Which stage are you in? Are you planning on being one? Is all this over-hyped? Comment below or in the group.

From TK community

This year, 2023, has seen the community grow the most. We did not get to meet up in person as the admins hoped. It’s more likely for this to happen in 2024.

What’s more?

Stop

What have we stopped or will stop?

1. The Signal group will be closed in the new year

Continue

What are we continuing?

1. TK quizzes (Our avenue of continued Digital literacy and general knowledge education) continue every Thursday at 9PM (GMT+3).
   Follow the WhatsApp channel for updates.
   The quiz is always published at techkln.org/quiz, see you there. On occasion there are prizes to be won.

2. Themed days continue - Relevant to the Whatsapp group members.

Start

What have we started, or will start?

1. The WhatsApp channel was created
   To serve a dual purpose: as a public announcement-only avenue that keeps members’ contact info private "Signal folks we've got you". It'll also create an organic pull of more members.

2. A simplified Community Discourse guideline was shared:

   “Discourse can happen but should be handled civilly! Attack ideas NEVER attack people (not even as a joke). DM (Direct Message) admins, any questions, suggestions or comments you may have regarding the community.”

3. Themed days - start on the TK Slack

Community members highlights

The TK community is serving all of us in different ways. The proof is in the pudding - see the comments below. Let’s keep up the good work!

“This group is FAST! Brighter Monday is overrated 😅 Thank you all so much for the swift responses🙏🏾”

A comment following a job posting

“My friend and I discuss what we learnt from the group every end-of-week. ‘Did you see that post on X?’ I’m glad to be part of TK”

A verbal comment by a member

“… it's my first time getting a plug/gig from a community like this”

A recent comment during our Wins Wednesday

Sign off

The community is actively run by yours truly, Stanley (Founder and lead) and Susan (community manager), with support from so many. Thank you for a vibrant year.

See you in the community. Once again, Happy New Year 2024.

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Newsletter format / Table of contents (TOC):

• Today’s tech word

• Musings on tech

  • More on REST

  • Are folders dead?

• From TK community

Today’s tech word: REST

To rest means to cease action or motion: refrain from labour (US: labor) or exertion.

However, the REST I’m highlighting today is Representational State Transfer, a standard for communication between systems or components on the web. Web services and APIs (Application Program Interfaces) which follow the REST architectural style are known as RESTful web services and APIs, hence the popular term REST API.

Back to the non-IT meaning of rest, don’t be like my overzealous seniors in high school who would say, “Sleep is for the weak. I will sleep when I die”. While maximizing your awake time differentiates the effective and the non-effective - take time to rest and have enough sleep (says the person penning this down in the wee hours of the morning 😅)

Musings on tech

More on REST

NB: REST (today’s tech word 👆) succeeded SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture).

It’s incredible how one dissertation paper by Roy Fielding and his colleagues has come so far. He had one bold objective: to standardise the web by creating a standard such that any server can talk to any other server worldwide. Let’s be encouraged that we also can impact our generation as he did.

The critical point to consider; is that collaboration is your friend. He had help from over 500 developers to model it and was taken up by Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to see it to its contemporary significance.

Totally aside, I’m aware that I’m pushing the rest word here a bit too much…

While .rest was intended for restaurants, one indie-hacker decided to register insomnia.rest for a collaborative API Client and Design Tool he was building. I just like the wordplay here: insomnia + rest … get it? 😉

Btw, an indie hacker is an individual who builds and launches a business or product independently, without the support of a large organization or team. You can read more about the founding story here. PS: I’m a fan of insomnia, mainly because of the indie hacking roots. It’s also a REST and GraphQL client and is considered an underdog compared to Postman.

Are folders dead?

In last week’s issue, I discussed the idea of Apps being dead. I promise I’m not on a streak of #dead. I’m merely noticing the shifts in the tech landscape.

When I think of folders, I see organization… structure. So if no folders are involved does that mean disorder?

I think the argument for folders, both physically and digitally, is straightforward. During my school days, mostly in university, when I first owned a personal computer, thanks to my Dad and Mum, we structured assignments, notes etc., in document folders. That translated to the cloud, too; Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox etc.

However, with the onset of a generation that generates loads of data daily more indirectly than directly, you’ll see the concept of folders disappear. How?

1. Behold the power of the # hash-tag
   (OR number sign OR pound sign OR hash sign)

   Just like tweets are grouped in tags, for example, #TKQuiz, folders are obfuscated so much that the end users use tags for organization. For example, note-taking apps like Obsidian and Roam Research advocate using tags for organization.

   

   Tags are everywhere and can go by different names:

   1. Tags in macOS Finder

   2. Labels in Gmail
      

2. Behold the power of the search (with autocomplete)

   Students nowadays tend to use many Google docs or other online or offline documents in a heap and rely on searching to get to a particular one. Search and autocomplete makes it almost unnecessary for folders to existing. Title the document with a meaningful title, and you’re covered!

   

3. Behold the power of links, backlinks and deep links
   
   Links and backlinks connect to documents or pages, while deep links connect to specific locations in a document or page.
   A great use case is a graph view of linked documents which works so well for the networked mind.

   

From TK community

Opportunities:

• Internships - We are looking for stellar junior candidates at Briter (briterbridges.com)

Events:

• Africa's Talking Women in Tech - Open Hackathon
  Jan 25, 2023, at 8:30 AM (UTC + 3)

• AI Kenya Expert Talk: Breaking into MLOps with Kevin Karobia
  January 26, 2023, at 7:00 PM (UTC + 3)

#TKQuiz question from last week:

• Question: What is the name of the Nigerian entrepreneur who is the first African to be the co-founder of two startups worth over $1 billion dollars?

• Answer: Iyinoluwa Aboyeji.
  Interesting comments to this tweet by AfricaFactsZone

Listen in to this great interview of Iyinoluwa (E) by Peace Itimi

Et al. (Others)

This past week, some news has hit my feed that’s to be celebrated.
Theme: Startups making leaps

• Nadayar Enegesi (the first option in the choices above), the CEO and Co-Founder of Eden Life Inc, in a video, shared 2022 wins, including the completion of their food production facility and what 2023 has in store. Big up Nad, Prosper, Orafiri, et al.
  Listen in to this great interview of Nad by Peace Itimi

• Kwara raises more capital and acquires software company, IRNET Coop. Big up Cynthia, David, Austin et al.
  Listen to Kwara’s demo in Norrsken Impact Accelerator here.

That’s it for now. Comment below or DM to give feedback. I hope the series is of value. Share if you can.

Signing off,

StanMD - Editor: TechKln blog and TechKln newsletter
For the TechKln team.

Newsletter format / Table of contents (TOC):

• Today’s tech word

• CES and my top picks

• Musings on tech

• From TK community

Today’s tech word: Technocrat

Technocrats are individuals with technical training and occupations who perceive many significant societal problems as being solvable with the applied use of technology and related applications.

CES and my top picks

For fellow technocrats (today’s tech word 👆), I bet news about CES has made it to you in some way; online feeds, email subscriptions etc. Speaking of which, subscribe below 👇

Subscribe now

For the un-oriented, CES is an annual tech extravaganza where global innovators prove breakthrough technologies. In short, CES stands for Consumer Electronics Summit, dubbed the Global Stage for Innovation.

My top 12 CES picks ( I aimed for ten, but the electric vehicles had to be included 🤓)

Mobile

1. Satellite messaging to be included in Android phones thanks to Qualcomm.

   NB: Qualcomm makes most chips in Android phones.

2. A foldable screen that slides - Samsung’s Flex Hybrid (Frontend developers everywhere: “Challenge accepted”)

Health

1. Withings U-Scan - a new era for urinalysis - collects urine, analyzes it, and sends the results to your phone via Wi-Fi. My 2C: I’ve owned a digital scale by Withings and commend the quality of Withings.

Entertainment

1. The world's first truly wireless TV - 55” Wireless TV screen by Displace

   It uses four hot-swappable batteries for a day’s screen time and a box streaming 4K @ 120Hz - for connecting peripherals. It has strong suction to mount on different surfaces, including glass walls 🤯

2. Dolby Atmos + Mercedes - All surround sound, like in the movies, but in a car!

3. Compact VR Headset - HTC's Standalone VR Headset

AR - Augmented Reality

1. L'Oreal Magic Brow - Anyone can print eyebrows on their face with an accompanying iPhone app. Tech: Augmented reality

2. A concept car by BMW: BMW i Vision Dee. Dee stands for Digital Emotional Experience.

   Features: The car is itself a voice-driven virtual assistant. Its entire windshield is the HUD (Heads-up display) using AR. The car can change its colour entirely (using E-ink panels)

Accessibility

1. Xanderglass - Live caption glasses

2. L'Oreal HAPTA - a lipstick applicator for people with limited mobility

EV - Electric vehicles

1. An Electric boat that flies through the air

2. An electric flying car - An electric VTOL (vertical Take-off and landing) and car hybrid

Musings on tech

Apps are dead

Wait, what? Are apps dead? If apps are dead, what’s next? That was my reaction too. This article provoked this topic. Main points:

1. Toggling Tax: Most current apps are designed differently and have diverse layouts hence users tend to switch context, that is, pause for a second or more and rewire their minds when switching from one thing to another. Apparently, we switch from apps and websites 1,200 times daily, adding up to five weeks a year.

   Solution: super apps like Wechat and MPesa app

   WeChat, for example, is used for chatting, shopping, paying bills, and accessing government services. Closer home, in countries with Safaricom, is the MPesa app which includes small apps within it that span government services like the recently added Hustler fund to shopping and healthcare access.

2. Apps are rigid, yet users have different needs.

   Solution: Develop backends that support low-code tools that allow users to extend current apps to fit their needs. This goes beyond customizing dashboards. Users can specify the data they need and which integrations to add to have a customized user experience from another user using the same app. Imagine that!
   Apollo Graph Inc, the leading GraphQL company, are a proponent of this with their ‘supergraph’ architecture

Jobs: Layoffs and concerns over AI taking over

Globally the economic times are considered uncertain at the moment. Just three days ago, CNN reported that Amazon plans to lay off more than 18,000 employees as the global economic outlook worsens.

Since the end of Nov 2022, conversations on ChatGPT have been viral. TK community members on Whatsapp joined in as well. There has been excitement and concerns about AI taking away jobs, and ChatGPT threw gas to the already raging fire.

My take:

On layoffs: While big tech being affected might tell sector-wide symptoms, counterarguments say that this results from betting too strongly on the economic recovery post-COVID. Globally, better-paced, medium and small startups are scaling and hiring worldwide. Moreover, skills are increasingly being sourced from markets like the EMEA. Remember, skills speciality is still in demand. By the way, TK community members, mainly on Whatsapp, often share job opportunities.

On AI: Think, how can I augment/ better my job? Some Youtubers used this script. For example, how I used ChatGPT to do my work X times. Easier said than done; AI, in general, should be used to improve output, making one do their best work rather than shun it. With a positive outlook, I dare say the future is bright.

From TK community

• Opportunities: Apply to the AfAS Data Science Hackathon on 18-20 March 2023 here.

• Kenya 🇰🇪: Another player in the telco. Global telecommunication firm Iristel announced its entrance into the Kenyan market as Africa's first branch.

• #TKQuiz question from last week.

  Question: What does it mean to uncloud?

  Answer: Remove all files from the cloud.

  

  The quizmaster erroneously marked this! Most sites and online in-text references favour the definition as Choice B. Apologies to the 45% who were right! Remember that the TKquiz is primarily educational in a fun way 😇

  Reasons for unclouding include liability concerns, security issues, and integration difficulties between cloud-based applications and on-premises enterprise applications and data.

  NB: decloud means decentralized cloud, NOT delete a cloud service account.

Et al. (Others)

• Nairobi API Festival 2023 is on the horizon. Scheduled dates: 4 & 5th May 2023. The call for speakers closes on 23 Feb 2023. The organization team is looking for sponsors too. Reply to this newsletter or content@techkln.org, and we’ll hook you up.

I hope the series is of value. Share if you can.

Signing off,

StanMD - Editor: TechKln blog and TechKln newsletter
For the TechKln team.

A newsletter on:

• Technology (as a toolkit towards efficient living and livelihood),

• Empowerment (through education and community support ), and

• Innovation (by appreciating past feats, latest inventions, and breakthroughs for the future)

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So what do you expect when you subscribe?

Glad you asked. Here’s the growing list:

• Key shares from our community in WhatsApp, Slack and Signal.

• Briefs from #TKQuiz (if you subscribe to the TKQuiz, now you’ll have references for further study, reference and fact-checking)

• The latest from the global and local tech scene, including upcoming events and past highlights.

I hope the series is of value. Share if you can.

Signing off,

StanMD - Editor: TechKln blog and TechKln newsletter
For the TechKln team.