Pivot25 Competition Was Choreographed and Winners Didn’t Surprise

So after blogging about the Pivot25 con men we were called names and declared all sorts of things. We even had few people looking for followers and some free folders, notebooks, tickets and mulika mwizi phones declared war on us just to go with the flow. Even fake Twitter accounts were opened. The accounts were immediately closed for going against the Twitter TOS. Fumbling here and there in the name of blog posts also were witnessed. But we were looking for something like from Kachwanya.

We try so hard to get our facts right and we might not be perfect but a post like from Kachwanya is better in starting a constructive engagement. But to all the deadbeat dads, mature up and every hole is not to be filled…………..If you know what we are saying. So the Pivot25 event went ahead. BTW we got 4 confessions from corporates who so much did appreciate our posts because they also though that the amount charged was basically exploitative for the market.

If you check on the Twitpics from the event, you will see that not more than 100 people attended the event. That is not the only thing. Another is the faked competition. There are contestants who should be disqualifyign themselves from events where 90% of the judges are their close friends. take the winners. Ati Mbugua Njihia won the overall prize in the Pivot25 competition. And he partners with Idd Salim in the whole thing? Jeez!!! Don’t you took the attendees as fools?

Who are you trying to fool. How many ways does Symbiotic (Mbugua Njihia) go to bed with Erik Hershman, Nokia (Dorothy, Gikunda and Oyolla), Kenya ICT Board (Kukubo and Kaburo) and the whole bunch of attention seekers who believe that every criticism of iHub should be challenged with a baark from their toothless mdomo? Nokia and Ushahidi were behind the whole thing in major ways.

Then you had the usual non-inspiring speakers and lazy layabouts who hype what is not existing. Nokia is fumbling. Don’t even talk about it when you stand looking at the future. And the most loudmouthed deadbeat dad says that he is a coder at Symbiotic. Then Symbiotic goes on to win the overall. Try fooling those who don’t know but not those who know.

So they changed the name of the entity from Symbiotic to Shimba / Gruppo and you want us to clap for that. We wont. You don’t like it, go hang. When did you start seeing the M-Farm, Whive and Kopo Kopo. Infact there were two finalists who looked like the whole crew were called by their very close friends to come and help in looting from “these stupid Africans”. Why is it that you have to see the same few friends and mata…………..lambas of Ushahidi founders have to dominate and win all the time?

Category winners ($5,000 each)

Mobile Payments/Commerce: mShop by MTL Systems (Kenya)

Government, Agriculture and Education: SchoolSMS by Tusqee Systems

Health: (Overall Winner) MedKenya by Gruppo Potente/Shimba

Mobile Gaming, Entertainment and Utilities: Whive by Space Kenya

Business and Enterprise: Uhasibu by PlusPeople

MedKenya also won the overall prize and so walked away with $35,000. That is good that at-least now the ones who barked the loudest when we did our blog post can pay for upkeep of the kids whom they fathered but irresponsibly left to very young women to struggle taking care of.

Techmtaa is not for pleasing nor destroying anyone. We stand by the truth and we give right of reply. We even allow guest posts to set the record straight. We just have very independent mindset because we are funded by no one unlike others who loose their independence for few useless freebies.

The few mis-focused energies by the sponsors don’t earn them any more advantage in the market. In fact they are getting a beating from the competitors who focus on the mass market and the students who don’t have to go to niche colleges to get attentions. We should mentor young National Polytechnics and National colleges and Universities who are interested in application development as much as we want the ones whose parents or guardians could afford the niche not less than Ksh 500,000 per year colleges.

Just as we said on our previous blog post, Pivot25 was a great idea but selfishness, intolerance to dissenting opinion, fraudsters and hangers-on up for quick money which they will just use to buy alcohol. We should declare interests and association with judges and organisers of such competition. We should properly eliminate those who have unfair advantage because of the amount of time judges are exposed to their entries through multiple participations.

You don’t want to hear contrary opinions, conduct the competition and don’t call for public involvement in any way.