I was eight years old when I built my first car. It was a real piece of art. The wires rolled onto each other at each end, bottle tops for rims and tyres, and a thread for an engine, I was an Engineer. No Elon Musk but nilitesa. Our household had no TV back then, so we had all the time in the world to be creative. Being a six-time bano champion already, I had retired and taken up greater pursuits in the automotive industry. Like that young boy, we are today faced by the need to be creative. As a techie, writing code only gets you so far. You must know how to identify problems and find the next best way to address them.
Over the past month at KamiLimu, the design thinking and problem ideation classes have been game changing. The human being sits at the center of every innovation. Empathy is therefore a necessary part of this process. Problem ideation is as important in innovation as it is in our own personal lives. It is the only way we can discover underlying issues and find the best ways to deal with them. There are four models that help in doing this. The brainstorm model involves a rapid sharing of ideas in a free-flowing environment. The scamper model: substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to other uses, eliminate, and reverse, seeks to answer a series of questions that provide an alternate way of viewing the problem. The brainwriting model involves writing ideas on paper privately then passing them on to others to add their thoughts. The 5 Whys is a model where you dig deeper into the problem by asking why? until you get to the core.
During the Data Structures session, we went over the Linked List. A Linked List is a sequence of nodes, each containing data and a pointer to the next node. To try and understand this, think of yourself, a person with their own share of experiences (data). You represent a node. A connection between you and any other person is a link. Your first significant relationship represents the head of the List. A singly Linked List can be traversed from head node to tail node and is unidirectional. You can move from one node to another, and they have no predefined size. This makes Linked Lists efficient as they can grow and shrink, reducing memory wastage.
The Scholarship session was a banger with Linet and Victoria gracing it and sharing their experiences. It reminded me of myself with my younger sister, trying to offer morsels of wisdom but ending up with ‘Na usome wewe.’ Linet, 23, and already doing her PhD in Oxford is a Scientist at heart. Her decision to pursue further studies she says is informed by a synchronization of her academic and professional trajectories and her passion for environmental conservation. Victoria, 22, is pursuing an MSc. in Global governance and diplomacy which deals with how countries can better cooperate with each other and prevent conflict. Listening to them, you realize what they’re really saying is they are building their careers on audacity. They have dared to dream and have found the magic wand to actualize it. Armed with preparation, they have refused to settle for nothing less than their objective. Truly inspiring.
The month was signed off by the ICT track sessions where we continue to learn how to effectively play our small role in shaping the future of the web by writing good code.