Hi All,

Just a quick update to inform you of progress, invite you to participate, and to give you something to look forward to 😉

Tech4Africa kicks off in Nairobi

Next week we’re kicking off the year in Nairobi, with a day focussed on mobile product development, learning and networking. It’s the realisation of our dream to do more in Africa, and so we can’t wait to get things started!

Please forward to your Kenyan colleagues, or anyone in your networks who is interested in mobile.

Win R35k at our DevDays!

We’ve had an overwhelmingly positive reaction to our DevDays this year.

They are tech agnostic, and aimed at getting folks talking to each other, collaborating and exploring new technology, all in a fun environment. It is open to all, and you can join us after work!

The Developer Days ‘DevDays’ are in Johannesburg and Cape Town on July 19 and July 26 respectively and our objective is to solve a unique and complex business challenge within 24 hours. This will manifest in a challenge that will see the winning contender walking away with R35,000 in cash compliments of Nedbank.

IBM has kindly offered to provide free education on their Worklight platform (Worklight supports all mobile platforms from one code base – you can learn more here in advance, or of course attend workshops on the day).

Get your tickets: Johannesburg | Cape Town

It’s all about the content

From Day 1, we’ve made a conscious decision to create an event which is not a conference; where there are no suits and ties, where delegates are on the edge of their seats (remember Herman Chinery-Hesse’s talk?), and where the content is king. We still believe that now more than ever, down with Death By PowerPoint!

This year we’re getting more traction with our gender diversity agenda, we’re finding more African speakers, and we’re learning from last year and really focussing on short, sharp, interesting content which attendees will find stimulating and thought provoking.

We’ve been working on a fantastic lineup of speakers for this year, and we’re proud to start trickling the through as we confirm and finalise with the speakers.

Without further ado, welcome to…

	Amolo Ng’weno Digital Divide (Kenya)
Ahmed Fathalla GyroLabs (Egypt)
	Kaitlin Thaney Mozilla Science Lab (UK)
Alistair Hill OnDevice Research (UK)
	Petra Cross Google (San Francisco)

Submit your talk

This year we opened up speaking submissions to the general public, and again the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Below are some of the talks submitted so far, and we’re really looking forward to including as much content as we possibly can into our schedule this year 😉

• e-Commerce: Obstacle or Opportunity?
• Africa is growing: but how, why and so what?
• Bootstrap your startup with online freelancers
• Building a RESTful API using WordPress
• Building an Open Source TV Station
• Cloud Based Software – Is it really the future?
• Creating globally software companies in Africa
• Creating HTML games for Windows 8 using Construct
• Cross-platform apps in Html5: Our case study
• Defying gender stereotypes in the tech world.
• Doing something new in an old company
• Enable and Accelerate ecommerce in Africa
• From the field: Helping teams become lean & agile
• Geolocation with MongoDB in 3 easy steps
• Growth Hacking on App Stores
• How customers want to interact with businesses & tech
• How localisation can help you speak African
• How pet projects can enhance your career
• How to Contribute to Mozilla Localization
• Is PHP the slums of the programming world?
• Location Services – maps, routes, traffic, search
• Mobile handset detection, mobile analytics
• Open platform the key to mobile transacting & mark
• Open Source Startup
• Paywalls: good for readers, advertisers, editors.
• Rethinking Education
• Strategies for building successful products
• Survival through innovation:Powertime to PayGenius
• The long hard road to Product-Market Fit
• The Rise of e-commerce in East Africa
• The Rise of Real-time Global Hybrid Cloud Systems
• Threats and Opportunities in Future TV
• TOP12WINES, the first 360¬∞ Wine experience
• Unlocking the long tail of mHealth
• Using Data to Drive Meaingful Insight & Analysis
• WEBRTC – Open a hailing channel Mr Sulu
• What is a graph database and how can it help me?
• Why improving accessibility can drive revenue

Speak at Tech4Africa

Submissions are open to anyone. All you need to do is fill in the form!