Yapping is Communication

Dear Democrats,                                                                  Letter from Kenya We feel you. We know what it’s like to wake up after polls have closed, stare at your phone, or switch on the news on TV and not believe what you’re seeing. We know what it’s like to entrust your hard-fought campaign battle’s voting decision to the most ignorant adults walking the face of the earth. We know. We know what it’s like to campaign until the night before election day, to create a movement hungry for change, to gather the biggest crowds at campaign rallies. We know what it’s like to see results coming in and watching hours turn into days. We know what it’s like to run against half-serious candidates who speak like they are half-baked on matters communication. Candidates with questio...

The other day I was explaining to someone the benefits of proceedings writing, meeting reports, note taking, meeting minutes, and our vision at Nairobi Rapporteur Services. He unknowingly poured cold water on the elevator pitch when he said, “I just use AI during my meetings nowadays. It produces instant transcripts of the discussion.” Fair. The world is navigating towards the “machine” making work easy for us. I’m not naïve. Meanwhile the rest of us are in the race to compete with the machines that are taking over from us. You know? But then I got thinking about the whole movement of shifting from traditional human work to AI-enabled work. At first was the obvious that AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. [Told you I’m smart]. And the fact that it’s “artificial.” According to Google, that means ‘made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally…a copy of something natural.’ Meaning the whole idea of AI is a copy of what is already naturally part of our being known a...

The 2024 US elections remind me two hard lessons that I learned coincidentally this first week of November in 2016 (Trump vs. Hillary) and in 2020 (Trump vs. Biden) both at the eve of election days back when I was a passionate, but disillusioned day trader. Flashback to 2016. I had just started some lessons on forex trading through a local trainer that September. And instead of being patient and learning the ropes before going into live trading, I wanted to start making profit immediately while still a student. The thing is, in early September 2016, I had lost a job that I mistakenly held too close to my heart and the whole experience of losing it broke my heart to pieces. I didn’t realize how no longer having a place called an office to go to every day and no longer having colleagues around whom I had consider as close friends could make me almost sink into depression. To compensate for that loss of purpose, loss of dignity, and loss of a stable income and financial security, I de...

  Campaign rallies have been the hallmark of any election season in democracies all over the world and the U.S. is not an exception. Organizing rallies in different cities, counties, and towns is traditionally the best opportunity for candidates to communicate their agenda to their potential voters. How candidates communicate to their constituents, individually and through their teams, determine their success on the ballot box and overall, the success of the nation when they win. Verbal and non-verbal communication techniques employed by the candidates have been used throughout the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign and a couple of observations have been made along the way on political communications 101. Thank you for your time Political rallies in the US elections are well-organized solely out of respect for people’s time. Time taken to plan, stand in queues, sometimes for hours, and attend the rallies. That’s why it is commendable that American political candidates’ campa...