Moses and I had a busy first day. Our priority was following Coby's mandate of "comms, lift, and power". So we rented a car, purchased SIM cards, and made sure we had the right cables and power adapters. I also activated an M-PESA (mobile money) account to get hands-on learning about this famous system (which already carries a higher transaction load than all global activities of Western Union).

And then we sat down and started planning for our anticipated presentation to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). Much was discussed, many ideas were presented, images and a little text were moved, thought about, and then repositioned.

Our primary work that afternoon was to take a proven concept (inexpensive hardware and software systems for aerial monitoring) and transition it into an ongoing service within a very specific environment with unique challenges and requirements.

Moses confirmed my suspicion that professional-grade, off-the-shelf, and proprietary systems are not desired by KWS. Instead, what is needed is technology applied within the human, social, institutional, and environmental context of the problem itself. We're talking bottom-up, multi-iteration, and integrative. And this is what Metanomy excels at.

Throughout the day I continued to experiment with the SPOT Connect. I was gratified that I was able to push messages out at least twice. More than just a gee-wiz gizmo, the Connect might actually play a role in our Flying Thing project (and other sUAS initiatives). Having the ability to recieve location and small telemetry data from a plane flying on autopilot helps us explore non-LOS (Line Of Sight) capabilities that will be essential for coverage across the large expanse of Kenya's Parks and Reserves.

Of course, I haven't talked about the food, the traffic, or the wildlife. While all interesting and worthy of comment, its the collaborative work on Flying Thing that is the real story.