NexTech Africa 2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi

Know Before You Go

Contents What to Expect ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Agenda .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Demo Zones ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Check in ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Meals .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Networking Cocktail ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Attire + Bag/Coat Check ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Internet Access ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Parking and Transportation ................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Speed Collaboration ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Social Media ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Travel + Hotel .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Airport ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 4

Visa + Passport ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Vaccination ................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Venue ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Hotels ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Agenda ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Day 1 ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Day 2 ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Speakers .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Appendix ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 15

Sources ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15

What to Expect

Agenda

Doors open at 7:30am on Thursday and 8:00am on Friday. Our programming starts at 9am each day. Click here to view

the most up to date agenda and plan your time efficiently at the conference.

Demo Zones

We will have showcases of both Microsoft’s and local innovations. The companies showcasing on the exposition floor

change out between the days, so you will get to meet a variety of startups and Microsoft product teams over the

course of the conference.

Check in

REMEMBER: Be sure to bring your photo ID every day of the event as we will be checking it against badges

throughout the event

Meals

Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided each day for all conference attendees.

Networking Cocktail

Don’t miss the NexTech Africa networking cocktail which takes place at 6:30pm on Thursday at the Radisson Blu. You’ll

need to bring your NexTech Africa badge to attend this event.

Attire + Bag/Coat Check

Suggested attire for the event is business casual. There is no bag or coat check at the conference.

Internet Access

There will be free Wi-Fi available at the venue.

Parking and Transportation

NexTech Africa’s location at the Radisson Blu, Nairobi has ample parking space and is accessible using public transit.

We do encourage attendees to arrive early to go through hotel security and event registration as quickly as possible

and get good seats for the opening keynotes.

Speed Collaboration

We will be hosting several speed collaboration sessions for attendees across both days which will create opportunities

for networking between experts and enthusiasts from Microsoft and the community on a variety of topics of interest

to attendees. Sign-ups will be at the event so come excited and ready to collaborate!

Social Media

Follow and share your experience before, during and after NexTech Africa 2017 on social media with the hashtag

#NXTA

Highs in the mid 80’s/Lows in the low 60’s

Humidity ranges between 30% and 90% on average with a few thunderstorms/showers

NexTech Africa

2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi

Travel + Hotel

Airport

For easy transportation once on the ground, we recommend flying into Jomo Kenyatta airport(NBO)

Visa + Passport

If you are travelling from outside Kenya, you’ll need to apply for an eVisa.

The fee is $50 for single-entry visas and $100 for multiple entry visas for each applicant, regardless of age and whether

obtained in advance or at the airport. Travelers to Kenya should ensure that the validity of their passports is at least six

months beyond the end of their intended stay. Kenyan immigration authorities require a minimum of two blank

(unstamped) visa pages in the passport to enter the country; some travelers have experienced difficulties when they

arrive without the requisite blank pages.

Visit Kenya’s official immigration page for more information.

Vaccination

If you are flying in from outside Kenya, you’ll need to bring your yellow vaccination card for entry into Kenya. Please

discuss with your doctor which vaccinations and medications you should take.

The following are the most common/recommended:

• Hep A & B

• Typhoid

• Yellow Fever - Required

• Malaria (Pills)

Venue

Radisson Blu Hotel, Nairobi Upper Hill

Kilimanjaro Ave & Elgo Rd. Nairobi

Elgon Road 00100 Nairobi Kenya

+254 (0) 709 810 000

Hotels

Generally, we advise you stay close to the conference venue for easier transportation. You can find nearby hotels here.

NexTech Africa

2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi

Agenda

Day 1

Think Tank (Live Streamed) Code Zone Bytes Museum

7:30am – 9am Breakfast and Registration

9am – 10:30am

NexTech Africa Opening Keynote

Speakers: Kunle Awosika, Minister Joe Mucheru,

Toni Townes-Whitley, Andreas Fruhen, Bambo

Sofola

10:30am - 10:40am Break

10:40am – 11:25am

Developing Intelligent Applications

M-KOPA is upgrading lives through access to

affordable energy, productive assets and

transformational services. The talk is an overview of

how the company is harnessing machine to

machine technology and intelligent applications to

make a real difference for millions of people.

Speaker: John Muthiora

Cloud Infrastructure in Africa

Speaker: Ranjith Cherickel

11:30am – 12:15pm

Digital Transformation: The 4th Industrial

Revolution

We have a fundamental belief that mobility and the

cloud are going to drive the 4th Industrial

revolution - digitally transforming the way we

work. From small businesses to the public sector;

enterprise to education, technology is changing the

way we do things. Join a cross-section of top

Microsoft leaders for a discussion about how data

and technology are changing our world.

Migrating to a Service Oriented Architecture: An E-

commerce case study

Microservices or Services Oriented Architecture is a modular way

of building software applications. Pre-SOA, software was written as

a single, large entity. The problem with building software using

this model is that complexity—deployment, testing, debugging,

etc.—increases exponentially as the software features increases.

Microservices, by contrast, not only allows you develop and

manage modular entities, it promotes the concept of Single

Responsibility. This leads to ease in debugging, deployment,

Panelists: Toni Townes-Whitley, T.K Rengarajan,

Gerald Kasimu, Patrick Mweheire, Jeremiah Marble

testing, etc. This session will introduce you to Service Oriented

Architecture using e-commerce as a case study.

Speaker: Celestine Omin

12:15pm – 1:30pm Women in Tech Lunch Speakers: Judith Owigar, Toni Townes Whitley, Dona Sarkar

Lunch

1:30pm – 2:15pm

Walking on Clouds: Unlocking the Power

of the Cloud for Enterprise Mobility

Africa is the mobile-first continent and has paved

the way when it comes to mobility in the

enterprise. Per Gartner, "Giving workers, partners

and other stakeholders seamless mobile access to

applications and data can increase productivity and

sales, and improve customer satisfaction through

faster, better service." With the increasing

complexity of deploying and managing these

mobile solutions, business and technical decision

makers need novel approaches to address these

challenges. How do we use the power of the cloud

to increase mobility? How are enterprises leading

the way in this transformation and what does the

future hold?

Panelists: Nic Rudnick, Chris Lwanga

Moderator: Muchemi Wambugu

How can you be an Agile company and

what does that entail?

The world is changing every day. We all know this as a

fact. Organisations must transform to remain relevant.

To do this effectively in the Digital Age many

progressive organisations globally are embracing

Agile principles and Scrum values as a new way of

working (the winning way of working). To become

Agile requires a fundamental change in our mindset,

behaviour and in our understanding of leadership.

Agile is a way of life. You don’t do Agile…. You

become Agile. Agile is about inspiring people to

become their best and to find innovative digital

solutions and smarter ways to cope with the rapid

pace of change, manage risk, to remain relevant in a

faster moving world and to consistently create value

that delights employees and customers. Agile (Scrum)

is a strategic accelerator for governments, non-profit

organisations and businesses in the 21st century.

Speaker: Nana Abban

2:20pm – 3:05pm Journey to the Cloud – Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is one of the largest public cloud

platforms in the world. It’s a growing collection of

integrated cloud services—analytics, computing,

database, mobile, networking, storage, and web.

This keynote presents a broad view of Azure, from

its global footprint to the wealth of services offered

by the platform. The presentation also highlights

the open nature of Azure, which supports a wide

selection of operating systems, programming

languages, frameworks, tools, databases and

devices. Adoption of the cloud is growing

exponentially. The presentation shows examples of

real-life usage scenarios, highlighting broad

customer adoption, and a wide spectrum of

partners.

Speaker: Yousef Khalidi

3:05pm – 3:15pm Break

3:15pm – 4:00pm Engineering at Scale

Building solutions that scale reliably to deliver value

to millions, and increasingly billions, of people

presents an intricate web of engineering

challenges, many of which are unknown. Mobile,

networking, data, security and many more areas all

present their own unique set of engineering

challenges at scale and are pillars in the products

and services that are being built. In this panel, top

engineering leaders from across the continent will

have a conversation about the considerations,

challenges and opportunities for building and

leading a world-class African engineering

organization that operates at hyper-scale

Panelists: Brice Nkgensa, John Muthiora, Hoop

Somuah, Dona Sarkar

Moderator: James Wamathai

Getting the Most out of your Data

With the unprecedented amount of data being

generated and archived, data is the new oil and the

economy around data is the new industrial revolution.

The value of data being stored by various

organizations currently sits untapped, yet holds

tremendous value. Organizations that archive, refine,

store and transmit data will become amongst the

wealthiest and most resilient in the world. In the

future, the entire data life cycle from creation to

monetization will change foundationally, spurring a

new data economy that decides which organizations

will be successful in the next decade. What does this

mean for data infrastructure? How can companies

start to breed a data culture for success? What sorts

of insights can be sought and problems informed by

data and how can companies use data as a strategic

competitive corporate asset?

Panelists: Val Fontama, Zulekha Mwanzi, Bitange

Ndemo

Moderator: Mark Walker

Skills, Innovation and Access: Microsoft 4Afrika

The Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative focuses on three critical areas of

development for the continent: World-class skills, Access and

Innovation. Each of these focuses on different aspects that will help

empower African youth, entrepreneurs, developers and business

and civic leaders to turn great ideas into a reality that can help

their community, their country, the continent, and beyond.

Panelists will share their digital transformation story and highlight

some of the great work they are doing in partnership with

Microsoft 4Afrika.

Panelists: Kate Kiguru, Sam Wanjohi, Ezana Raswork, Mike

Mutungi

Moderator: Lutz Ziob

4:05 – 4:50pm JavaScript, the Cloud, and The Rise of

The New Virtual Machine

One day we woke up and things were different.

Maybe it happened overnight, maybe it took many

years. Suddenly we are scripting against thousands

of Virtual Machines from the command line while

creating things today with JavaScript in the browser

that were impossible yesterday. LiveScript becomes

JavaScript becomes ES6 and now we're compiling

C++ to JS. Join Scott Hanselman as he explores the

relationship between the Cloud and the Browser,

many Languages and one Language, how it might

all fit together and what might come next. NOTE:

Non-technical business people and technical IT

people alike will enjoy this lighthearted talk.

Speaker: Scott Hanselman

4:50pm – 6:30pm Break

6:30pm – End Networking Mixer/Cocktail

NexTech Africa

2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi

Day 2

Think Tank (Live Streamed) Code Zone Bytes Museum

8:30am – 9:30am Breakfast and Registration

9:30am – 10:30am

Data Dreams

We are living in an extraordinary time where

every person and every organization on the

planet can achieve more through the power of

cloud computing, AI and data. Learn about the

vision, and the new realities, from Microsoft CVP

of AI & Research Global, T.K. “Ranga” Rengarajan

who will share innovations and the capabilities of

the cloud. If you can dream it, you can build it.

Speaker: T.K. Rengarajan (Ranga)

10:30am - 10:40am Break

10:40am – 11:25am

Connecting the Unconnected – A

Mobile Only Future

Interconnectivity has increased with Mobile

penetration across various markets. Especially in

emerging markets digital boundaries have been

disrupted by mobile as the only digital device

with most users, where their identity is not an

email, but phone number. In this new world, an

individual is empowered to operate like an

enterprise – choosing when and how they work;

choosing to be part of an organization or be

organization themselves; empowering

individuals across a breadth of occupations to

engage with the world in more meaningful ways.

In this session, the Microsoft Office product

engineering team will share product information

and case studies done with such users.

Speaker: Rajiv Kumar

Inside Open Source Cross-Platform .NET

It’s finally happened. .NET Core and ASP.NET Core are open source and run

nearly everywhere. Microsoft developers work in the open on GitHub and iterate

quickly. How did this happen” Join Scott Hanselman as he delves into 15 years of

.NET history and what it took to reach this point. What do YOU need to know

about .NET Core and ASP.NET Core, and how does it work?

Speaker: Scott Hanselman

11:30am – 12:15pm

Digital Africa: Transforming the Way

We Do

From art to agriculture, fashion to finance,

technology is changing our world. This evolution

is not limited to the tech industry but is

spreading across all sectors of the economy.

Panelists will explore what the future holds for

some industries that are undergoing a digital

transformation

Panelists: Tabitha Nanzala, Erik Hersman, Ham

Namakajjo, Cassandra Sarfo

Moderator: Malaika Toyo

Creating Business Value with

Machine Learning

The convergence of several technology

trends, such as Big Data, Cloud Computing

and commoditization of powerful algorithms,

is now bringing Machine Learning into the

mainstream. Thus, mainstream businesses

can now take advantage of powerful ML

algorithms once limited only to the biggest

corporations and research institutions. This

session will show how organizations of any

size in the world can gain a competitive edge

through Machine Learning. We will show

how you can leapfrog by creating innovative

solutions to real business problems through

Machine Learning.

Speakers: Shawndra Hill, Val Fontama

Machine Learning & Azure Services

Machine Learning helps solve real-world data science problems, With Azure ML a

powerful cloud-based service you have the ability to build intelligence into your

applications and services, to enable natural and contextual interaction with tools

that augment users' experiences using the power of machine-based intelligence.

In the session, using practical scenarios you will learn how to build models and

derive insights using Azure Machine Learning and making your apps intelligent.

Speaker: Yassine Serhane

12:15pm – 1:30pm Lunch

1:30pm – 2:15pm

Redefining the Status Quo: Innovation,

Disruption, and the Creation of Value

Innovation is the engine of economic prosperity.

Across the ecosystem, individuals and

organizations are playing their part to disrupt

the status quo. It is a critical time for the industry

to redefine what it means to be an entrepreneur,

create opportunity and empower people. The

panelists will share their perspective on the

trends, challenges and future of value creation.

Panelists: KP Yelpaala, Sam Gichuru, Myriam

Said, John Waibochi

Moderator: Jessica Colaco

The Social Developer

We hear a lot of about the skills required to be a developer, and we endlessly

tweak our linked in profiles, but what about soft skills? What does it take to be a

Social Developer? Are you visible online, and an even better question - should

you be? We'll cover Github, Twitter, StackOverflow, Blogging, Twitter, Gitter, and

much more as we aim to understand what well-rounded developer looks like on

today's social web.

Speaker: Scott Hanselman

2:20pm – 3:05pm

Digital India + Microsoft Research

Speakers: Anil Bhansali, Siddharth Prakash

Accelerate Windows 10

Deployments

Staying up to date on Windows as a Service

should be painless. We have tools and

techniques that you can use to assess

compatibility and easily perform Windows 10

deployments in your enterprise. Many of our

customers have benefited from our tools and

tricks. Learn about them in this session.

Speakers: Raji Rajagopalan, Christa St Pierre

3:05pm – 3:15pm Break

3:15pm – 4:00pm

Technology & Education: New

foundations for the Next Generation

Education as we know it is evolving. Two

powerful tides we see are technology education

that empowers creators to build locally-aware,

but globally applicable solutions to their

challenges, and technology being used to

transform the way we educate future

generations. With this evolution, where can

technology adoption make the biggest impact?

What is the future of technology in education

and how do we see learning changing? What are

the skills that innovators will need in the next few

years and what part can technology play in

making education accessible and affordable for

all?

Panelists: Savannah Kunovsky, Nadayar Enegesi,

Regina Honu, Felicia Guity

Moderator: TBD

Enterprise Mobility & Security

Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) provides

flexible, comprehensive mobility and security

solutions that enable your transition to

mobility and the cloud. Organizations in the

mobile-first, cloud-first world need to

empower their employees to access all their

data and applications from every device and

every location. Users need to collaborate

with each other, their partners, and connect

with customers. This session gives an

overview of how EMS enables organizations

to achieve these goals.

Speaker: Chris Green, Nana Essilfie-Conduah

Cognitive Services & Bots

Bots or conversation agents are rapidly becoming an integral part of users’ digital

experience. They are as vital a way for users to interact with a service or

application as is a website or a mobile experience. This session will walkthrough

how to build bots that consume the LUIS API (Azure Cognitive Services) and host

them on Azure PaaS.

Speaker: Sherif El Mahdi

4:05 – 415pm Closing Remarks Speaker: Kunle Awosika

NexTech Africa

2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi

Speakers

NexTech Africa

2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi

NexTech Africa

2-3 Feb 2017 | Nairobi

Mike Mutungi, CEO, I choose Life

Muchemi Wambugu, Partner, PWC

Christa St Pierre, Principal Group Program Mgr., Fundamentals PM R&D, Microsoft

Siddharth Prakash, Senior Research PM, Microsoft

Amr Kamel, Country GM WECA, Microsoft

Visit the website to learn more about our speakers on the website. Check back as we will be adding more bios.

Appendix

Sources

Entry Requirements

http://www.countryreports.org/travel/Kenya/entry.htm

Passport & Visa

http://www.worldtravelguide.net/kenya/passport-visa