What They Use - David Kobia

What do we use at work? This series of posts interviews the Ushahidi staff about their methods of working and the tools they use. The profile of a different employee will be posted twice a week until we make our way through most or all of the staff!

"In the early 90's my dad brought home an old IBM 5150 PC, circa 1981. The lights dimmed when you turned it on…" - David Kobia

What's your day to day at Ushahidi like? I'm a creature of habit with a checklist in this order: Email (check), Skype (check), Twitter (check), Techmeme (check), Coffee (check). After this I move on to either catching up with Ushahidi developers on various projects and immediately followed by trying to figure out the solution to a problem I've been working on - I have a penchant for creating new problems that need solving. In between the day I'll have sprinkles of conference calls and skype chats. How did you get involved in the software/tech space? In the early 90's my dad brought home an old IBM 5150 PC, circa 1981. The lights dimmed when you turned it on, and it had the one thing that was a foot in the door to the software/tech space -- BASIC, a programming language. My computer learning was further advanced at Strathmore University in Nairobi, then at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Since then I've worked as a software developer for various companies culminating in my current position at Ushahidi. What are some of your favorite apps for work and how do you use them? My favorite app for work is TextMate. It is the ultimate text/source editor we were promised. Its extensibility with bundles makes it a super light weight IDE. My primary bundles support PHP, Python, GIT, Javascript and a Diff tool. GitX is my next favorite app and provides a super useful GUI for the GIT version control system. Lately I've also become a big fan of Selenium, a cross-browser functional testing application, that allows us to make sure our code updates don't break anything. Finally, as Matt stated before, Firebug is an absolute and obvious must-have for any serious web developer in 2011. What are some cool projects you're working on right now at Ushahidi or; What excites you about your work right now? Solving real world issues is a good reason to get up in the morning. Each major Ushahidi deployment has had a unique set of problems that need to be solved, providing a vaccine for the mundanity that sets in at many tech companies. I'm plugged into all the current Ushahidi projects in one way or another and they're quite stimulating in their own way. What helps you make it through each day? Going to the gym or running early in the morning restores my sanity and coffee awakens dead brain cells. After this, the dynamic go-getter Ushahidi team takes over makes it look like I know what I'm doing. I love it! The one thing you can't live without? Two things, not one. Support from my fiancee. Support from the Ushahidi team.