10 years ago

DESPITE a quick response by the Kimberley Fire Department to a fire alarm on Wednesday afternoon at a hair salon in Permanent Way, extensive damage was caused to the business premises. The upper floor of Unique Fashion Salon caught fire while the employees were busy with their clients on the ground floor.

SOMEBODY predicted recently that it would not be long before there were no more “bricks and mortar” banks as more and more people switched to internet banking.

I was slightly surprised by this as I didn’t think there were enough people owning computers; but

I then felt a little foolish when I thought I didn’t know anybody who doesn’t own a smartphone.

From the street sweeper to the secretary of state, everybody seems linked to the network.

I guess insurance companies, florists, cinemas, libraries and travel agents will all soon give up their bricks-and-mortar premises and move into our pockets. Already post offices are becoming obsolete. Who posts letters any more? Parcels are handled by professional couriers.

On my occasional visits overseas I’ve seen more and more people doing their everyday shopping online. Tap out an SMS and half an hour later your groceries are delivered to your door from some warehouse outside the city.

Cyclists and runners wear devices that keep track of their heart rate, breathing and blood pressure continuously.

How long will it be before doctors’ surgeries will be obsolete too? Your monitor will advise your e-doctor electronically of any changes in your health and automatically send a prescription to the virtual pharmacy and it will be brought to your door by a drone before you even realised you needed it.

It’s interesting to speculate what cities will look like in 20 years’ time. Maybe the empty bank buildings and vast CBD office blocks will be handed over to accommodate homeless people. Will the streets become quiet as nobody needs to travel anywhere?

We are told all cars will be electrically powered and never require servicing, so garages will be reduced to unmanned rows of charging points for our vehicles. No need for cashiers. The charging points will automatically subtract the charge from your card account and your non-existent bank will deduct it from you.

About the only industry that seems to be requiring more bricksand-mortar premises is the tattoo business. Tattoo studios are springing up everywhere. As far as I know there’s no way of getting a tattoo by e-mail.

Maybe parents should be telling their children to forget about studying law, engineering, accounting or medicine and look into becoming tattoo artists instead.

At art schools the term “life classes” will take on a whole new meaning. Artists’ models will be discarded when they’ve run out of bare patches. We certainly do live in interesting times.

Last Laugh

A movie director was filming in the Kahalari desert when a Khoi man dressed in animal skins sidled up and said: “Tomorrow big rain.”

Sure enough it poured with rain the next day.

Soon afterwards the man appeared and said: “Storm tomorrow.”

A violent storm forced the crew to halt filming.

The director was so impressed he put the man on his payroll as weather forecaster. For three days he did not appear and, when he did, the director asked: “What weather tomorrow?”

“No idea,” said the man.

“Why don’t you know?” he was asked.

“Radio battery dead.” THE FOURTH Northern Cape Developer Hackathon, a coding and innovation festival, will be held in De Aar this weekend.

The idea for a provincial hackathon was first mooted in 2015 when the Northern Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT), together with Geekulcha, created the NCDev Ecosystem to drive the ICT and SME scene in the Province.

The platform has since hosted nine hackathons in the Province with 11 start-ups having been created through the hackathons.

The Northern Cape Developer Hackathon (NCDevHack) is an annual provincial hackathon aimed at stimulating and developing more ICT/entrepreneurship in the Province. Previous provincial events have been hosted in Kimberley and Upington.

This year’s event is being presented by DEDAT in partnership with Solar Capital, Angels Resource Centre, E-Zone, Geekulcha, Red Bull, Open Data SA, FibreCo, DPSA, CPSI and supported by the Geekulcha Student Society (GKSS) and Engineers Without Borders (EWB) at Sol Plaatje University.

“At Angels Resource Centres we are always excited to be part of technology interventions in under-resourced communities. We believe it creates hope, access to information and opportunities. The social engagement and excitement around such an event is always very positive and truly inspires our communities to work together while having fun and building long-lasting relationships,” Lizelle Coombs, the CEO of Angels Training and Resource Centre, said.

This year’s event, which starts tomorrow and continues until Sunday, will take place at the Solar Capital Community Training Centre in De Aar and is expected to be attended by 60 students, techies, designers, activists, entrepreneurs, etc.

The theme is Digital Innovation for Connected Governance and Sustainability.

According to the organisers of the event, there is a need to explore the role that hackathons play in academic access, excitation and acceleration in bringing about excellence.

“Participants will be challenged to contextualise their solutions for the betterment of life and channel economic growth,” the organisers state.

Key components of this year’s event will include the business-sense of the hackathon facilitated by Angels and E-Zone; an IoT (internet of things) challenge with the support of SqwidNet and Moringa IoT; a spatial data challenge curated by Open Data South Africa; Facebook tools sponsored by Developer Circles Kimberley and solutions types, namely mobile apps, websites, IoT, and data visualisations to drive smart citizenship, better service delivery and environmental sustainability.

Although the ultimate prize is a trip to the national hackathon at the end of September, a number of other prizes are up for grabs, such as vouchers sponsored by FibreCo for the top three teams and various spot prizes such as the Best Use of Data prize.

Ahead of the NCDevHack, the student societies (GKSS and EWB) at Sol Plaatje University also hosted the second annual edition of the NCDev Women Summit on Saturday last week in Kimberley to help females be involved in shaping the future of the Province through innovation, entrepreneurship, science and technology.

– Patsy Beangstrom