ICTworks

The Bayview Webspot is an Internet Cafe in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco, USA.  The goals of the Bayview Webspot are to strengthen low-moderate income communities by continually providing access to, and ownership of, high-end technology.  As well as provide an environment of education and accessibility for our clients in a safe, friendly manner.

This location proved to be an ideal setting for Inveneo to test some new Internet Cafe software, CyberCafe Pro made by OneRoof.  Inveneo was tasked by Cisco with installing a low-cost, effective Internet Cafe software in the Community Knowledge Centers (CKC) it is installing throughout rural Kenya.  It was ideal for a couple of reasons.  The Webspot clients are similar in skill and computer knowledge as the CKC target market.  Also they have similar computer needs and usage as well as income levels, which makes Webspot a good place to test.  Finally one of the owners also works at Inveneo so access and approval was made easy.

CyberCafe Pro by OneRoof is the perfect price point, FREE, however the free version has advertisements at the bottom of the page.  It is possible to purchase a non-banner version for $99 per year but this requires an international credit card which is difficult to come by in rural Kenya.

The ease of use and flexibility of the software is amazing!  CyberCafe Pro comes bundled with terminal time management, employee tracking and point-of-sale software.  These are the three most used tasks in any internet cafe and that they are in one program makes training and deployment so much easier.  It also allows for easy tracking and control.  

Finally, OneRoof understands that CyberCafe Pro is not always intuitive and has dealt with this issue by providing YouTube video tutorials.  They are simple to follow and easy to access.  Kudos to the OneRoof team.

Inveneo continues its experimentation of the CyberCafe Pro software at the Bayview Webspot but so far Inveneo has deployed this solution in three CKCs throughout rural Kenya and all is well.

The project was started by Inveneo contributer FJ Cava: FJ is the Business Support Manager for Inveneo FJ has over 15 years in the non-profit field – he’s done everything from International Population Assistance in Ann Arbor, MI to Peace Corps in Gabon to Domestic Small Business Development in the Bay Area. He has a BA in Biology from Ithaca College with a minor in Photography and an MBA in Entrepreneurship from San Francisco State University. He also spends some nights teaching business planning classes for a local non-profit called Women’s Initiative.