Hello World: Building Vessels from scratch part 1

Hello (world), I’m Lewis.

I’m embarking on a journey to start Vessels, a Digital Innovation company specialising in IT for the Developing World. ICT for Development (or ITC4D) is a field that looks at applying modern technology to solve problems in low income countries.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to think that solving these types of problems requires a special skill set, and a certain passion for seeing people’s lives improved. Both of which I have.

What types of problems you ask? Well, I mean any problem where IT can be used to see lives improved. For example, I’m inspired by how Khushi Baby use IOT to make a wearable for improving the health of mothers and children, and I love seeing how the growth of mobile communications in Kenya has spurred on entire new industries like M-Pesa.

My aim is to look for companies, projects and researchers looking to incorporate IT into their work, and lend my hand and expertise.

My aim is to look for companies, projects and researchers looking to incorporate IT into their work, and lend my hand and expertise. I’m also looking to establish this company with research at its core — not just to implement IT solutions, but to understand the role that IT has in international development. I’m going to take the principles I’ve learned from software development and project management, and apply them to less traditional challenges (traditional in the sense of Silicon Valley that is).

I’ve come to realise that I don’t really want to work the Amazons or Googles of the world (disclaimer: if you are from Amazon and Google, feel free to send me a message in case I change my mind). I don’t think that writing software to “sell 0.1% more rolls of toilet paper”, or “to moonshot our KPI’s by 10x” is what I want to be doing with my talents. That’s not to dismiss the work and innovation by such companies— I am simply more motivated by the challenges faced by Low Income Countries.

So here we are. Day 1.

I’ll be working mostly on the blog to begin with, and writing as much as possible as I read and learn more about this field. As a software developer, I’m hoping to write code as soon as possible. (I already have a project that I’ll bringing in under the umbrella of this company.)

So broadly, my steps are:

1. Establish a blog and contribute my thoughts and ideas in the ICT4Dev space
2. Read and research the field, and produce some papers (I’m already working on one)
3. Gain some clients and write some code (I already have one)

If you have a project you would like to talk about, or are interested in talking and learning more, please shoot me a mail at lewisdaly@me.com

Cheers, and wish me luck!

Lewis