10 Days. 10 Stories. Part 9–2018
Feel the fear and do it anyway. It was a absolute question of survival. Like when you are driving across the wilderness on an empty tank of gas. I needed to find a way to pull fieldcloud back from the brink and not quit.
Nobody sets out to be a bad CEO, run a dysfunctional organization, or create a massive bureaucracy that grinds her company to a screeching halt. Yet no CEO ever has a smooth path to a great company. Along the way, many things go wrong and all of them could have and should have been avoided.
The game of business will teach you a harsh lesson.
We tried a promotional offer to sell our stock of ns-boxes. No one bought one. In fact, if you’re reading this we still have them for sale on our mini site, https://nsbox.co.
The best thing at the beginning of 2018 was there was new found sense of purpose, thanks to initiatives like Smart Africa. End of January 2018 was the first edition of Festival Transfo in Grenoble and we were invited to run IoT mini-workshops at Grenoble Ecole de Management and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The Hewlett Packard Enterprise event was very cool, there was also a speaking slot during a panel discussion on Smart Cities.
fieldcloud’s position — 2018 was the year that enterprise IoT becomes tangible & relevant.
The mini-workshops at Grenoble Ecole de Management were fun. We met a bunch of people and some new prospects. But, we did not convert any new clients. The value of basic IoT awareness building was becoming less relevant to enterprises. The real market demand was focused on solving integration challenges for companies.
It was time to head off to Rwanda for a three day IoT for African Smart Cities and Connected Communities workshop. Same format as in 2017 for Niger & Cote d’Ivoire except this time the content and delivery was in English.
It’s essential that youth in Africa (and worldwide) are included as early as possible in the global economy. The experience of delivering IoT workshops was profound.
A month later it was time to fly off to Dakar, Senegal to run the IoT for African Smart Cities & Connected Communities workshop for the Senegalese ICT Ministry.
The IoT workshop in Dakar was the largest we have ever delivered. 55 participants from all sectors, academic, public administration, startup entrepreneurs & large enterprises.
Immediately after the IoT Workshop we were invited to Diamniadio for the first edition of the Forum du Numérique, organized by the Presidency of Senegal.
Little did we know it but the reason for our attendance was to present a summary of our IoT Workshop to His Excellency, the President of Senegal, Macky Sall. That is an experience I will never forget.
We also met up with Jean-Philbert Nsengimana, former Rwanda ICT Minister and at the time special advisor to the Smart Africa secretariat.
Back in Grenoble, we hosted a delegation from the University of Rwanda to meet with our digital cluster, Minalogic and key stakeholders in the local French Tech ecosystem. fieldcloud has signed an MOU with UR-CST to collaborate on the ACE-IoT programme and we were in the process of working through a bid to provide equipment and services to build the center excellence.
Sadly, because fieldcloud was not in good shape at all as a company we were unable to fulfill all the financial criteria for successfully delivering a solution to UR-CST and we had to withdraw from the bid. I still feel really bad about this because it was a brilliant opportunity to extend fieldcloud’s footprint into Africa and deliver meaningful outcomes for youth entrepreneurship in IoT.
It was time to head back to Kigali in May 2018 for the Transform Africa Summit.
During the summit accreditation I was interviewed for the Rwanda National TV News!
Highlight of the Summit was running the icebreaker for a breakout session on Public-Private partnerships for African Smart Cities.
Towards the end of May we headed off to Germany for a new client engagement, to create a new SigFox IoT prototype for heating water treatment applications. This was the start of a turnaround for fieldcloud, with a real use case and a methodical approach to systems integration and network coverage testing.
During our drive back from Germany we made a detour and headed to Paris to visit the Vivatech trade show, having been invited by both the Rwandan government delegation and our friends from Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
It was incredible surprise to see fieldcloud’s AirBoard IoT prototyping solution on display at the booth of one of our clients. In fact we had started a discussion in Q2 2018 with the Digital team in our client’s HQ and were scoping a more ambitious project. It was great to meet their Chief Digital Officer face to face at Vivatech and continue the discussion.
Vivatech was a great place to meet old and new contacts from all over the world.
Back to Grenoble and then on to Germany again for our client engagement. As we scoped out the IoT enabler prototype specifications it was clear that our AirBoard hardware was far too limited for the kind of embedded edge data processing required for the client’s heating water application. It was at this time we decided to switch over to a new generation of microcontroller hardware from Pycom. Which turned out to be a wise move. We were now able to develop real embedded software applications much more rapidly and with better modularity using Micropython instead of C/C++.
Our client was able to use the IoT prototypes to test SigFox’s network coverage in Germany. The results were not so good, and we decided to switch to cellular connectivity.
September 2018 it was back to Niamey Niger again for a Smart Village workshop with the Nigerien Information Society Agency (ANSI).
We also conducted a brief consulting engagement to develop a strategic partnership with Niger Telecoms, the incumbent telecom operator in Niger.
Mid-November saw the second edition of the Hult Prize at Grenoble Ecole de Management. Great bunch of motivated students, it was pleasure to be part of the jury.
Off to Marseille next for Emerging Valley 2018, the leading event to bring together African tech and startups. It was great opportunity to meet up with old friends from Niger, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal and Rwanda and plenty new contacts too.
After Marseille it was off to the UK for a short consulting engagement on IoT infrastructure and platforms for mining applications. There was small detour on arrival, I drove across to Guildford Surrey to make a surprise visit to Pycom’s HQ. Sadly the co-founders were out of the office but it was very cool to see the epicenter of this impressive tech startup which has now become a key partner of fieldcloud for embedded IoT solutions.
Last highlight of 2018 was signing a major IoT integration project with a key client. We launched the project in December 2018. This was the deal with allowed fieldcloud to truly turn the page and become a viable business again.
2018 was a stressful year. fieldcloud almost went out of business. It is with much gratitude that we thank our partners, clients and contacts around the world for their support and the opportunity to share a vision of digital infrastructure that serves human society and creates lasting value. Stay tuned for the next chapter…
10 Days. 10 Stories. A special feature celebrating fieldcloud’s adventure over the last decade and how we became the company we are today.