Brazzaville, Republic of Congo


I've blogged a lot about this place and why I am here, so I'll summarize (read www.facebook.com/mikelevin
http://jroller.com/Sandymountster ;
http://www.codetown.us/ and
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2010/08/botd-bike-of-the-day-bilenky/
(maybe a bit off topic ;-), but follow link to
http://www.elephantjournal.com/author/mikelevin to see other off topic
fun stuff... and look for a {BotD} Bike of the Day from Brazzaville
very soon! They are amazing and used for every imaginable purpose

I am here because I gave a keynote for the JCertif conference.
http://jcertif.drupalcafe.com/node/1 It was featured on national TV (I
hope to get a copy) and my talk and the others were also covered by
national and local news.


Talks ranged from Alexi Moussine-Pouchkine's (SUN/Oracle) Glassfish to presentations from Horacio Lassey-Assiakoley of Atlantique Telecom Togo, Stanyslas Bweta's description of an application he's written for the UNHCR to track money contribited to refugees over the works. I hear Stanyslas app has gotten lots of press, even on CNN.


I can tell you because I talked a lot about Craigslist in my
presentation that the Congolese would love to have a Craigslist slot
here. It is important to note that even though many people ask why
Craigslist is all text, that it's smart because in many places the
internet connection is very slow, so text loads much faster, especially
on mobile browsers.

We spent an evening at the national TV station being interviewed. I took lots of photos, but will post later.
The internet connection here ranges from .04 to about .5 MBPS, and
Skype works remarkably well. Much better than in many places I've
been.

We've met with ministers of technology and information at the very friendly Alliance Francais, eaten local fish, delicious
cassava called saka-saka
http://www.congocookbook.com/vegetable_and_side_dish_recipes/saka_s...
, and lots of cooked bananas, the rice is delicious, the spicy relish
is to die for, a steak I was treated in the House of Congress employee
cafeteria was amazing, drunk N'Gok (good beer) and another beer not
worth mentioning.

I'm told that a Congolese web portal is planned, so there's an opportunity for enterprising programmers to
contribute. Though, from what I have learned from talking to and
questions from local developers, there is no shortage here of high tech
talent, only a shortage of work.

Age structure:
0-14 years: 45.9% (male 927,599/female 915,540)


15-64 years: 51.2% (male 1,021,975/female 1,034,119)


65 years and over: 2.8% (male 46,687/female 66,889) (2010 est.)






It's a bit hard because my Congolese is only slightly better than my French which is more popular than Congolese, and what I've learned
makes people constantly ask me if I'm from Pointe Noir! Word of the Day
{WotD} ::: Keetoko (key-TOE-koh) means the ever popular "Niiiiiice!",
sure to bring a smile! There are two indigenous languages here: Ningali
and Kituba, which the guard I interviewed upon arrival was obviously
using and must have been from Pt. Noir, because everything I know is
Kituba. I am determined more than ever now to learn French. Especially
also because of my connections in W Africa. In fact, to say thank you
in Kituba is "matondo mingi" and my response has often been "matondo
merci'"!

There are people at the JCertif conference from Nairobi, Togo, and all over. I don't have a count, but it's very well attended.

I can in fact wander around but it's a large city and I've been taxi-ing
with friends because I am afraid of the remnants (and ongoing) war. So
far, my fears have proven totally unfounded, but I remain vigilant, "to
be sure to be sure". The conference ends tomorrow and I'll be here
until Wed, so my wonderful hosts Max and Abena promise I'll get to see
some sights after the conference, and go to their home, etc. See photos
at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelevin/ and especially this one
I've posted at the top of this article http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelevin/4932912129/ which shows the view
from a window of a local tech firm I visited on which you can clearly
see bullet holes and a oil lantern on the table because there are both
planned and unplanned electricity and water pressure outages. In fact,
the house of congress is where the keynote day of the conference was
given and some of the time there was no electricity. Our hosts
thoughtfully brought trash bags full of toilet paper and bottled water.
A very beautiful venue, nonetheless.

I checked in with the local US embassy using their online portal, which is very handy and allowed me to tell about why I am here, where I'm
staying, and emergency contact info. It gave confirmation of rec't too,
which was very comforting


My encounters with locals have been superb. It reminds me of how Prague was right after the
Velvet Revolution. People seem jubilant, even the military, who are all
over, are cordial, but if you think Shaq is imposing, think about
meeting many of these guys in less friendly circumstances. I am very
careful, though, because English isn't widely spoken. As I said, my
French is weak, so I am being patient and taking it in slowly. I've
learned in my travels that attitude accounts for much in an encounter
and I don't want to appear frantic, trying to get where I am going. I
just found reasonable exchange rates, and until yesterday had very
little local currency. Ever the budget traveler!

I am staying at a very over the top place called the Olympic Palace, which my hosts
most kindly acquired for me. It's a very far cry from my usual hostel
accoms. http://www.hotel-olympic-palace.com/ If you do any Google Earth
flying about, just fly to Brazzaville and you'll see the whole thing.

This WikiTravel guide http://wikitravel.org/en/Brazzaville is proving
quite accurate, so I am planning to visit as much, esp the river and
markets, cathedral and overlooks as possible.

I suffered some stomach upset day before yesterday and took some meds that made me
sleep luxuriously 18 straight hours. Now all is well and I am equipped
for any other distress of that nature, including insomnia. FYI - it's
Diphenoxylate/Atrophine (the atrophy part the name Atrophine reminds
one of is accurate)

So, that's it to date in a nutshell. Stay tuned - much more to come...and let me hear from you!

Views: 166

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

Presentation: Continuous Delivery Is Not Possible Without Pair Programming: Lessons From SpareBank 1 and SINTEF in Norway

Asgaut Mjølne Söderbom and Ola Hast unravel the powerful synergy between pair programming and continuous delivery. They explain how this shift allowed their team to abandon traditional hurdles like excessive WIP, lengthy pull requests, and multiple test environments, leading to ultra-fast deployments, superior code quality, and a highly cohesive, efficient engineering team.

By Asgaut Mjølne Söderbom, Ola Hast

AWS Lambda Gains Native Avro and Protobuf Support for Kafka Events with Schema Registry Integration

Lambda now natively supports Apache Avro and Protobuf events, streamlining Kafka event processing - an enhancement that eliminates the need for custom deserialization, automates schema validation and filtering, and optimizes costs through efficient event handling. Integration with AWS Glue and Confluent registries simplifies development, allowing cleaner data consumption and enhanced scalability.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

Article: Building Strategic Influence as a Staff Engineer or Engineering Manager

To increase your impact and grow your career, you need to be involved in conversations that happen at a greater scope than the scope you have in your current role. Being involved will give you influence over this, help you direct and maximise your impact, and also allow you to bring better context to your day job, and to those working around you.

By Mark Allen

Podcast: From Code to Strategy: Drive Organizational Impact Through Strategic Conversations and User Focus

In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Mark Allen about how engineers can expand their influence through strategic conversations, user-focused development practices, and excellence in incident management. Mark emphasizes the importance of building cross-organizational relationships and working on meaningful problems with positive impact.

By Mark Allen

MicroProfile 7.1 Delivers Updates to Their Telemetry and Open API Specifications

Ten months after the release of MicroProfile 7.0, the MicroProfile Working Group has released version 7.1 of MicroProfile to the Java community. This new release features continued alignment with Jakarta EE 10 and updates to two community-developed core APIs.

By Michael Redlich

© 2025   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service