Annual ICT Awards 2011

I attended the Computer Society of Kenya (CSK) organized Annual ICT Awards Ceremony for the year 2011 and was disappointed in most areas.

Starting from getting information about the awards ceremony: information about the event even from the CSK website were scanty. Just check the CSK website at http://www.cskonline.org/ and you will be deeply disappointed at the usability level of the website! Honestly, I believe a college student who has done some website design and usability analysis requirements for websites can do so much better. The site is not navigable in the first place nor is it informative, it is cluttered with adverts on key areas right on the home page.

Secondly, publicity for the event was not adequate. In this age where technology is driving what is happening in the world, such an event not being advertised even on social media (for heaven's sake this is free) is rather disappointing. I've not checked but I wonder whether CSK is on any social media platform; be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. [I've checked on Facebook and I've seen that CSK has a page which was last updated on 29th July - no mention of the just ended event]. How can a society which is supposed to shape the future of technology space be so behind in using technology to disseminate what I consider so key? How can they champion what they don't use? ...........


The event, as per the invitation card that I had, was scheduled to start at 6.30 pm and end around 10.00pm. I arrived at Laico Regency Hotel at at 6.33pm and to my dismay, I was told that they were arranging some tables ( or whatever) and I just had to wait for some 30 minutes. By 7.00 pm the event had not started and people who were arriving were told to hang around as the preparations for the event was not complete. Just hang around and do nothing and yet people rushed through the jam to be there in time? There was no courtesy even to provide seats outside where we were standing! I was dismayed and disappointed to the core.

The event ultimately kicked off at around 8.00 pm - that is 1 hour and 30 minutes past the scheduled start time. I left around 9.35 pm after the induction to the ICT Hall of Fame of Dr. Katherin Getao of the eGovernment Directorate and Mr. Harish Parekh of Computer Technics.

You can find the complete list of the awardees at the link: http://www.cskonline.org/awards.html.

My verdict: poor event planning, poor publicity. Can do better.

I will seriously consider attending another CSK event in the future.

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