Justice William
Justice William likes to view
himself as an advert for Botswana’s educational policies and the public
education system. A man with a humble background, he did all his pre-tertiary schooling
in his home village Bobonong, starting out at Madikwe
Primary School, through to Mosetlha Junior Secondary School, and winding up at Matshekge Hill
School, where he graduated with a first
class in 1996.
After a two-year BSc
foundation programme at University of Botswana, he was selected to study Environmental and Civil Engineering in Canada. As part of the curriculum,
he had to take introductory Java programming. It was a rough awakening when in one
of the project modules he scored the lowest mark in a class of around 500 students.
Initially, he took the defensive route; afterall, he was in class with kids
that had grown up with computers and had taken computing lessons in secondary
school. Afterwards, he decided that he was going to study programming to avoid
a repeat of the 47% mark.
Having identified where his passion really lie, he changed his study
programme to software engineering.
By his account, William’s journey to one of the world’s biggest firms Microsoft
was unexpected. He had never submitted his CV to the company. His suspicion is
that someone who knew his work may have. Out of the blue, a call came through
inviting him for an interview, and the company flew him business class to
Seattle, Washington.
“I had never been in business class before,” he quips. “I kept thinking,
‘these guys know how to spoil a candidate’. I went through the most rigorous
interview from 7am to around 7pm and by end of the day I was confident an offer
was coming since I had met some high level executives in the group.”
An offer, which he accepted
promptly, arrived within a few days of the interview.
“It was all very humbling,” he looks back. “A young guy from Bobonong, not
a child of the connected elite, never been to private schools, but just out of
hard work was at Microsoft. I was rubbing shoulders daily with guys and ladies
that can be classified as the best in the world and I guess I was also good
enough to be called that too. My origins are, without question, very humble and
had it not been for the opportunity to study overseas I would not have done
software engineering and therefore all due thanks to Botswana’s educational
policies.”
William I joined Microsoft as part of the MSN Messenger team (now called the
Windows Live), which worked on the chat application that was used daily by
millions of people worldwide. In the days before Facebook, Messenger was a hot
item in its time, allowing users to chat, or make calls. William’s role included
working on Manageability systems that lea to collaboration with MSN Search (now
called Bing).
“I believe the application that was developed as part of this inspired
the now successful Microsoft System Center,” he suggests, “although System Center
was released way after I left Microsoft.”
After two years at Microsoft, he wanted a change. There were good offers
from some reputable names, including from Amazon. But he chose to join a smaller
company called Medio, which built search engines and he became the lead developer
for T-Mobile International, where he built a code running in five European
countries. He wrote codes such as the Yahoo Integration.
William looks back at Medio as the company where he greatly matured as a
developer because he was given more challenging tasks than at Microsoft, or
would have possibly gotten at Amazon.
“When I turned down the Amazon offer I refused a US$20,000 signing bonus
and a higher pay cheque, but I never regretted it as I grew more as a
professional by joining Medio,” he says.
When the urge to come back home set in, William briefly consulted in
South Africa. One of the major projects he undertook in South Africa was as
part of a team that built a new behind scenes trade integrating platform for
one of the country’s major financial institutions, Rand Merchant Bank.
For the past three years, he has focused on personal entrepreneurial
initiatives, and in the process developed some revolutionary applications. One
idea grew out of the anger and frustration he felt after being stuck for hours
in a queue at the Registrar of Companies and Intellectual Property. By the end
of that day, he had started penciling the idea of a queue management system
that he would call World Queues.
“I worked day and night,” he
recalls. “Three months later we had the first version of the queue management
system that we put on a trial in Botswana Savings Bank banking halls at
Broadhurst. The system that I developed from scratch with not even a small budget
worked like a charm,” he says.
The system manages customer flow by allowing customers to digitally
queue through the platform and then calling them as their queue spots reach the
customer service. It permits queuing online, or via sms, after which the
customer receives an acknowledgement that informs them of their reference number
and the time they can expect to be served. The system is ideal for service
providers that are prone to long queues such as hospitals and banking halls.
With two collaborators, Martin
Moatshe and Motlhalosi Ntwaetsile, he has developed Intelligent Quotations, a platform
that allows
someone to request quotations from many suppliers at once, as well as being
able to locate service providers in their locality. Although initially meant
for companies to post requests for quotations (RFQs) and tenders, he realised
that he could serve an even bigger market by widening the scope to include a
wide range of services and service providers.
The way it works is that someone who
needs a service – be it a painter, plumber, or mechanic – posts it at www.intelquotations.com,
and the posting immediately reaches all the registered service providers in
that particular service category. Similarly, procurement officers in different
companies and departments would simply post RFQs and tenders notices at www.intelquotations.com,
which will instantly reach all the registered companies that supply the
required goods and services.
“Intelligent Quotations that can
change the world and put transparency to the procuring processes of different
countries,” he explains.
The next step is to introduce virtual stores within Intelligent
Quotations for local producers of items like crafts, baskets and artworks,
thereby exposing them to international clientele.
“I remember how the people in the US like dibaga, manyena a
Setswana, and our traditional baskets, but for the local producers setting up
an e-commerce website to sell their products would be a tall order. That’s why
we will allow them to create a store, take pictures of their merchandise, put
pricing and when a customer buys we will handle all the credit card
application, facilitate shipping and hold the payment escrow until the customer
has received the merchandise and is satisfied with it. Then we release the
payment locally to the seller. We believe as we expose the sellers
internationally they can get better prices for their wares internationally,”
William says.
At the Botswana Innovation Hub, there is what is known as the Microsoft
Innovation Center (MIC). It is a result of partnership between Botswana
Innovation Hub and Microsoft Corporation, and part of its mandate is to support
and facilitate R&D as well as education and innovation activities in ICT. Through
the BizSpark programme that
supports ICT and technology innovation start-ups with potential to be scaled
up, Microsoft Innovation Center will offer Intelligent
Quotations assistance that includes technical support and global visibility, as well as training and
virtual incubation. The Microsoft Innovation Center manager Patel Barwabatsile
explains that Botswana Innovation Hub sees great potential for Intelligent
Quotations to be scaled up into a global business with enormous commercial
success.
When William explains the potential for job
creation and foreign revenue generation, he draws a parallel with the United
States company Google, which has users throughout the world yet most of the
jobs it created are in its home country. William has a vision of
Intelligent Quotations becoming global player with a Botswana-based support
structure that includes software developers, call centres, billing systems, and
administrative offices. He projects thousands of jobs within a few years.
He is already planning to give Intelligent Quotations more capabilities.
These include adding support of all international languages, and building
mobile phone support, which will make it downloadable globally through platforms
such as Google Play, and Apple Store.
Could Intelligent Quotations be the next major foreign revenue earner
for Botswana?
“There is no limit to how much this can earn for Botswana,” he responds.
“We just have to market it regionally and internationally to get global
penetration.”
Article adopted from The Sunday Standard
Author: Mesh Moeti
No comments:
Post a Comment