Conducive Ecosystem can Create Local Apps HoneyPot -Bolade

Bolade Oyekanmi is the digital and content analyst, Samsung West Africa who believes Nigerian local (application) developers can perform better with the availability of friendly ecosystem.
He also talks about the initiative by Samsung Mobile in collaboration with Co-Creation Hub (CC-Hub) Nigeria tagged Idea Challenge- a platform to meet, brain-storm, share ideas and collaborate on ways to solve social problems via mobile apps.
He spoke to peter ugwu.

What Is Idea Challenge All About?
Idea Challenge is one of Samsung’s ‘Built for Africa’ Projects. It came about with our collaboration with CC-Hub Nigeria. What we are doing basically is to stimulate apps development ideas in the minds of young apps developers in the country. 
The ideas Challenge is not limited to apps developers, rather it is open to all who use mobile phones.
 We expected them to submit ideas, regarding things they have been experiencing on their mobile phones and solutions on features they expect to see when using these devices.

What Are The Expectations?
The ideas where not generated just this day.
The submissions were done between August and September. So it took sometimes for us to collate them, about 96 which we trimmed down to 37.
 And out of that 37 there was an in-house voting and rating to ensure transparency, particularly in choosing the best.
We looked at each idea and ones already existing were dropped because everybody knew they are already there.
The focus was to generate new ideas.
 For those accepted, we will have discussion with the initiators, to see how we can link them up with someone that develops applications.
Not only that, we will seat them together to determine which one of them will move to the next stage.
 However, in the spirit of Samsung, we expect every one of them to see the light of the day. 
What we have noticed generally is the fact that application development is wild and only the people that have the passion and the tenacity to continue working on those ideas that actually see it mature. And that is one of the reasons we staged the Idea Challenge.
A lot of people have ideas, but they don’t have the technical know-how to bring these applications into fruition. Is not just about having an idea, the major process is developing the idea or giving it blood to live.
I can have over 20 ideas in my head, but having a befitting system or environment to seat down and code these ideas is a major challenge.
That is where CC-Hub comes in. CC-Hub I can say has the technical support the initiators should have to develop their ideas.  And we need more of them.

Can They Leverage On Your In-House Developers?
Samsung as a company does not have in-house developers.
It is through this kind of collaboration; people available there due to the conducive environment, the attention you need and other logistics they need to develop, so we collaborate with them (CC-Hub) on content development and ideas.
 I believe that they are major players in the eco-system. That is why we said, ideas generated in the public, bring them to CC-Hub, we collate them, hibernate them to ensure the bits are put together to form a whole.  

Is This Platform Different From Samsung Academy?
Definitely; Samsung Academy is more of an engineering based Institute where you will learn to deal with the device; repair the hardware, but this platform is basically on the developing the operating system, which is the software aspect.
So, here (CC-Hub) you don’t need to be a graduate, no screwdriver, saw or anything, all I need is to have my laptop and code my idea into any language I want to.

What Does The Future Hold For Apps Developers In Nigeria?
From what I have seen and this being the first there is hope for the industry. We will also continue to have series of idea challenge competitions.
What I have seen is that we have people who really think about solving social needs applications.
 At this very competition, we saw developers channeling their minds on how to help people with health impairments-diabetes, confirmation of NAFDAC registration, identification of fake drugs.
We also saw application to empower citizens to communicate with their representatives; all those are social problems that we need to tackle.
Over time, people are really going think deep and come up with ideas on solving social problems.
This being the first, we didn’t expect something gigantic, rather a response that will suppose what we thought. At the end of the day we were able to receive 96 ideas.

Processes Of Short Listing And How do Winners Emerge?
Ok, September 14, 2012 was the last date for submission o f applications and we conducted an online voting or rating and some criteria were stated from the beginning of the competition, eight of them.
But the major instruction was that it must not be an idea already existing; reason being that we do not want to have copyright issues; it must solve a current social need not personal need; must be marketable in the sense that whoever has it on his phone can add something like advertisement; it must enrich the pocket of the originator; and it must be scalable.
 For instance, if it works for Chat 222 or java you must be able to scale it to higher Samsung devices; viability in terms of satisfactions to be derived by the users.  After the date there was a panel that sat to determine if the criteria set we met.
Some were rejected because our criteria are different from others. We are more concerned on how the application runs; what are the behind the scenes of the application.
We want something we are sure of the security, and delivering outputs according to expectations.

How Can You Rate The Apps In Terms Of International Standards?
Speaking on international standards, we work towards beating whatever standard being set by any company, however, there are basic things like when you are developing an Android App it must been able to run across all ranges of the operating system.
 It must be able to work across all the screen size and resolutions.
They are the major considerations to make if you are developing applications in Nigeria.


What Challenges Are You Having In Organizing This Kind Of Competition?
Challenges in developing local applications, I would say they are challenges; rather they are more or less an encouragement for people to develop these applications.
 People look at Nigerian applications as not meeting international standards.
But in recent months, I found out that you have to use one or two of those applications to show that we can make it. I recommend to a lot of application developers in Nigeria to go to Samsung App stores and try the Nigeria versions we have there.
They are amazing. I can’t name any of them to avoid being biased, the thing is get a Samsung Android Device, and get to Samsung Apps Store and see what Nigerians are actually doing.
 I would always say it, I am proud to be a Nigerian. 
Those applications developed here can compete internationally, only that we need the some of the developers to understand the mechanics and hard works they need to put into application development.

How Viable Are The Apps Submitted?
I have seen some applications that I would just tell the developer to revisit the work; I have equally seen some that are work.
 And when they come out, those people will definitely sell.
I see the upcoming local developers becoming the giants in the industry.
Today we have an application that sells at $2 million because it runs on the mobile device. That is where developers are channeling their interests now.
They are trying to tell us the benefits of our mobile devices. And out of those benefit come different applications that run across different procedures.
 In the next few years I look toward to see more applications done by Nigerians, because they are needed to solve our social needs. And they run on the right operating systems.