At 24, Computer Society must go past collecting fees

The Computer Society of Kenya (CSK) has been serving the individual IT professionals, corporate IT members, corporate IT users, and accredited training members since 1986.

On its website, CSK says it has been providing the changing ICT industry with an identity and acts as a forum for ideas, leading in public policy advocacy, offering technology and management training services, and running a recognition and awards programme.

It publishes the monthly journal that goes by the name “Computer Age” and regularly hosts events for ICT Professionals – typically in five-star hotels at the coast – that are run under its Continuous Professional Development programme.

This programme awards attendees using points which are accumulated throughout a calendar year.

“Each event has set CPD points,” the society says on its website, recommending that on average an ICT professional should attain at least 100 CPD points every year.

Those who manage this feat are recognised by CSK at the end of every calendar year.

It also collects memberships fees from corporates, individuals and organisations in the ICT sector.

If you want to enlist your company to the society, you would have to fork out something in the region of Sh75,000 annually for the privilege of being able to attend quarterly lunches and being feted at the body’s annual gala dinner.

For another fee, companies also get the opportunity to attend workshops in resorts dotted around the country to discuss such in-depth topics as “IT Management”.

The CSK has existed for 24 years, so you would expect that the institutional knowledge in the society regarding computers and all that appertains to them would be phenomenal.

It also — and this is the part that irks me — purports to act as point of reference for journalists in need of the research which, it says, it conducts.

I recall one day about four years ago when I called the CSK asking for more information concerning a report it allegedly had.

After requesting if I could get an e-mailed copy of the report, the society’s representative informed me in a bland tone that their e-mail was not operational, suggesting I should go physically to their offices to see the “manager” who then would assess my query and get back to me if the felt I was a worthy recipient of the report.

Oh, and he was out of town so I would have to come the following week.

A few weeks ago, the society once again came to mind, when I off-handedly asked the CEO of a multi-national telephone company if he was aware of its presence in the country.

His puzzled look was all the answer needed. Last week, CSK popped up again.

Subscribers to an industry e-mail list (on which the chairman of the CSK is also a member) will testify to the fact that whenever the esteemed gentleman comments on any issue brought up in the forum, he inevitably signs off saying: “I shall be in Mombasa from tomorrow” or “When I get back from Bermuda next week…”

Which brings me to the real question: Does CSK do anything of note apart from giving its chairman frequent flier mileage and collecting fees?