Interactivity sessions were the order of the days when Microsoft Developer Platform Evangelists were introduced to Kenyan Windows 8 developers and students. The team that was introduced was Dele Akinsade, the Developer Evangelist Lead for West, East and Central Africa (@dakinsade), Shehab Fawzy, the Team’s Windows 8 Developer Evangelist (@shehabafawzy), Dina Helmy, a Windows 8 Developer Evangelist (@bougyz), Ahmed Sabbour, a Windows Azure Developer Evangelist (@Sabbour), Omar Islam, the Kinect Developer Evangelist (@Omar_islam), Stephen Ebichondo, Visual Studio Developer Evangelist (@sebichondo), John Kimani, Bing Developer Evangelist (@kimanigakingo) and Annie Njenga, the Audience Marketing Manager for the Africa Apps team for West East and Central Africa(@anniewnjenga).
These happy folk are experts in Microsoft Technologies like Visual Studio, Kinect, Windows Azure, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Bing Search and Open Source technology. The team toured and had open sessions at iHub, JKUAT University , Emobilis Academy and Strathmore University where they showcased different technologies and developer tools developers could use to make the process of development on Windows 8 apps easier.
Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013 coming later on in the year will have more representation as developers get more interest in having their apps on the Windows 8 store that allows them to build once and deploy to all devices on either PC or smartphones. Microsoft will have 4 regional finals in Africa and global finale in Russia, in July. Dele Akinsade, Developer Evangelist Lead for West, East and Central Africa said Microsoft and the team is committed to ensure that Microsoft stands out as a force to recon with in software innovation and production.
The Microsoft developer evangelists also showcased the various uses of Kinect beyond the standard gaming on Xbox. They went ahead to demo a simulation of a newsroom without the actual newsroom by Kinect virtualization. This was one of the ways Kinect could be used, also demo-ed was flipping through power point presentations using gestures showing that Kinect was not limited to the gaming environment but can be used to enhance other different work environments.
