Thursday, November 30, 2006

KodeArena 2006 : 8 days to go

Moral is just right today, we spent yesterday combing the hotels in Abeokuta and getting price lists for the rooms. We're thinking we should make this info available online so that those whom we cannot host will know beforehand.
Gbenga was thrilled at the number of hotel in this seemingly small town: mostly 2 and 3 stars. and Bode wondered how the make money We rated Gateway hotel a 3.5/4 star cause they have the most add-ons; a large parking lot, beautful poolside, a gym, large grounds, shopping malls all surprisingly well maintained by s state government. Dusnar Hotel is alrite too, a large ground and parking, reasonably cheap rooms ($40 - $200 a night) compared to gateway's $60 - $600. We could not help noticing that a meal at Gateway is what others charge for rooms :). Dusnar has fewer attractions but the environment is serene and equaly accessible. continental sutes has a small parking lot as well as the other hotels we've seen and rooms range from $40 - $60.
Rooms at Wemby Suites right down the road from Splashers HQ are second most expensive and all rooms are booked beyond the event dates of 8th and 9th December.
Akin is helping collate the hotel room costs and it will be hosted later.
Some more guys indicated interest in the event: Niji an ex-Unaabite is coming in from Jos Plateau state and so is his colleague Chykes from ado-Ekiti. Bayo invited some more friends from PH and I'm beginning to worry about providing refreshments for our guests :) but this is something we have to pull through.
Yesterday I mailed William Makassa in South africa and there is a chance he will come in. I know he has links with Canonical amd Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu Linux.
I presume Dapo has nt gotten a response from Microsoft but I'll wait till I talk to him today. I will be catching up with office job for the rest of today and continue publicity tomorrow, maybe a little fund raising.
I wil send reminders to promising sponsors; we've started feeling the heat, hehe.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

On KodeArena 2006: 9 days to go

We've resolved to keep the hype up till D-Day. Dapo sent a mail to Microsoft today and we're hoping to get banners and some giveaways items from them, the web team created a page to view registered users, those who do not mind of course. Today the web team continues work on Faqs page. Tunde continues work on fixing up speakers, Stan's team worry about the structure and questions of the code sprints. I sent a mail to NGDeveloper.Net yahoo group.
I did notice that Shina of Leapsoft and Wazobia linux opened the mail I sent yesterday, promising. We sure hope they sponsor a few drinks and that reminds me, we'll need a DJ but maybe Sese will be boss of the mic.
Today, I'll probably spend my break getting room prices from nearby Hotels, the web team will probably host the Faq page and add some news item. I got a digital camera and will still try to get as many as possible to capture the event. We'll be updating content on the site and NGDevelopers.Net throughout the event.
Stay tuned.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

KodeArena 2006

This is the biggest thing around. This is our combined Code jam and software developer summit and its happening live in Abeokuta! Really many things are debuting: The first code jam in Nigeria, and who would have thought it would take place in ancient Abeokuta.
Initially we thought it should be a code jam, just a code jam. But during publicity at University of Abeokuta, Nigeria (UNAAB), we realized we may have a larger turnout than the intended 50 and have since decided on 2 mostly parallel tracks.
Since then its been energy everywhere: KodeArena Website has been built, thanks to Stan, Bayo, Tunde, Bode. We also got our first 2 sponsors: Tunde donating 10 crates of drinks and Bode 4. We have since gotten our dream venue of South-West Resource Center, a digital projector, LAN and internet connection all from the same source, thanks to all the people at Gateway ICT and Resource center.
NGDevelopers have been alerted and we have some speakers, yes: Emeka Onwuka of Parkway Projects, Essien Ita Essien of LeapSoft and Wazobia Linux, Jide from UBA and Muyiwa Asagba of Interswitch.
I spent some times today sending out invitations and finding out hotel rates for the website. Bayo, Stan, Bode and Tunde pumped in Faqs for the live site. Bode agrees to visit Obafemi Awolowo University this weekend, Gbenga Ogun State University, Keni (me) University of Ibadan. Some of Tunde's friend are coming in from Port-Harcourt and Vicky is expected to lead a team from Ladoke Akintola University, Ogbomosho.
The energy is everywhere, I feel love in the air!

Friday, November 24, 2006

We had a talk about adopting an object persistence framework for development. As a part of standardization and

reducing project delivery time, we decided to review the OPFs we have and adopt one(?) for development.
We considered the following OPF and not so OPF frameworks:


  1. Artemis Object Persistence Framework

  2. Microsoft Data Access Application Block

  3. NHibernate

  4. Ado.Net (Traditional)

  5. Ado.Net 2.0 Database Factories


We decided to not rate 4 and 5 (ADO.Net and Ado.Net 2.0 Db Factories) since they are fundamental and the others

rely on them.

We did acknowledge the easy of use for small applications and the fact that 5 (Db Factories) can support other

data providers beside SqlServer.

The serial numbers are used as keys.

To rate, we came uo with a number of criteria that have immediate consequences on our everyday coding:


  1. Open sourced

  2. Best Practises: Not MS Best practices per se. We attached best practice to stuff like not having to hack ugly

    codes tp provide some functionalities, e.g. connecting to other databases, creating an object just to return a

    bool etc.

  3. Out of the box support for other databases beside SqlServer

  4. Support for persisting datasets/typed datasets

  5. Development speed/Ease of use.

  6. Performance

  7. Active support/development.



We rate on a yes/no basis only. Yes = 1 and no = 0





NHibernate and Microsoft data application block DAAB tied on point and after some more debate we agreed:



  • Since almost all splashers job use a SqlServer backend, all new projects consider it as a first option except:

  • The project uses a data source different from SqlServer and is significantly large, we consider NHibernate first. If small, we consider the traditional Ado.Net or ADO.Net Db factories.

  • We continue to support Artemis OPF because of legacy projects.