Bringing Africa Online At Ascoderu with Clemens Wolff

Episode • Jun 25, 2018 • 42m

Summary

The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. One of the places where this is especially true is in sub-Saharan Africa which is a vast region with little to no reliable internet connectivity. To help communities in this region leapfrog infrastructure challenges and gain access to opportunities for education and market information the Ascoderu non-profit has built Lokole. In this episode one of the lead engineers on the project, Clemens Wolff, explains what it is, how it is built, and how the venerable e-mail protocols can continue to provide access cheaply and reliably.

Preface

Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
When you’re ready to launch your next app you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so check out Linode. With private networking, shared block storage, node balancers, and a 200Gbit network, all controlled by a brand new API you’ve got everything you need to scale up. Go to podcastinit.com/linode to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute.
To get worry-free releases download GoCD, the open source continous delivery server built by Thoughworks. You can use their pipeline modeling and value stream map to build, control and monitor every step from commit to deployment in one place. And with their new Kubernetes integration it’s even easier to deploy and scale your build agents. Go to podcastinit.com/gocd to learn more about their professional support services and enterprise add-ons.
Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the newsletter, and read the show notes. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions I would love to hear them. You can reach me on Twitter at @Podcast__init__ or email hosts@podcastinit.com)
To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes, or Google Play Music, tell your friends and co-workers, and share it on social media.
Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Clemens Wolff about how Ascoderu is using Python to help communities in sub-Saharan Africa gain access to the digital age

Interview

Introductions
How did you get introduced to Python?
What is the mission of Ascoderu and how did the organization get started?
- How did you get involved?

The primary project that you build and maintain is Lokole. What is it and how does it help you in achieving the goals of the organization?
- What are the limitations of using e-mail as the only interface to the broader internet?
- What are some of the most interesting or unexpected uses of email in isolation have you seen?

From the user perspective, can you describe the overall experience of interacting with Lokole?
- What is happening in the background?
- Did you consider using a binary message format such as Avro, protocol buffers, or msgpack in place of JSON?

What kind of fault tolerance techniques are built into the overall information flow?

What are the most challenging or unexpected aspects of building Lokole and interacting with the user communities?

What projects do you have planned for the future?

Keep In Touch

Picks

Tobias
- Hubspot CRM

Clemens
- Ali Farka Toure

Switch to the Fountain App

Open in Fountain