Author: Tech4Africa

Howzit! Nairobi, win R35k, awesome speakers and what the tech community is thinking about

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.

Tickets

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

Tickets

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)

Tickets

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!

Tickets

Howzit! Welcome to Tech4Africa 2013!

Get ready for DevDays 😉

Since we’ve started, we’ve made it a priority to listen to the tech community at large so that we could get better and better. 2012 Saw us get a lot of great feedback for the developer day we held, and the general change in format of the 2 day conference.Overwhelmingly, you folks asked for more developer days, deeper content, shorter high level talks, and more focus on African tech. Similarly, we’ve been getting requests for #T4A in countries all over Africa.

Well, after a lot of work and preparation for 2013, we’re proud to start kicking things off!

First up is two developer days aimed at giving techies a place to meet new people, try new ideas out, hack around on problems, and generally geek out. These are not your typical developer workshops with ties and a projector – we want to encourage speed, execution, MVP, new ideas, new tech, and disruption. There are no boundaries, no stack predilections, no rules and most definitely no ties allowed!

Use the links below to visit the site, and get your pass for the DevDay closest to you!

After that, we go to Nairobi to kick off Tech4Africa East Africa. We’re super excited about this, and will be bringing a lot of great content to tech people there.

In October, we gather for the main event, where we’re going to combine all the good stuff, DevDays, delegate feedback, great content and awesome speakers, to put on the de facto, must-attend, take no prisoners tech event of the year. We’ve got a bigger venue, more rooms, and more bandwidth, so we’re super excited to get 2013 started!

Perhaps most importantly, for the first time we’ve opened up speaker submissions to anyone, so please submit your speaking proposal so it can be considered for 2013!

The 2013 Schedule

Please put these dates into your calendar.
Get in touch if you have any questions.

We’ve also launched our new site so please bear with us as we iron out the kinks – any feedback and bug reporting is much appreciated! 😉

Johannesburg DevDay

A 24hr Hackathon for developers, engineers, geeks, hackers & problem solvers. R35k total prize money on offer.

Includes snacks, drinks, pizza dinner, breakfast, lunch.
Features hacking space, case study room, demo room, wp room, chill zone & RaspBerry Pi’s.

Where: Deloitte Digital, Woodmead
When: May 24, 12:00 pm to May 25, 3:00 pm

Cape Town DevDay

A Hackathon for developers, engineers, geeks, hackers & problem solvers. R35k total prize money on offer.

Includes snacks, drinks, pizza dinner.
Features hacking space, case study room, demo room, wp room, chill zone & RaspBerry Pi’s.

Where: Bandwidth Barn
When: June 7, 8:00am to 8:00pm

Tech4Africa Nairobi

1-day event, with morning and afternoon sessions, and networking drinks afterwards.

Where: iHub
When: July 3, 8:00am to 10:00pm

Tech4Africa

The premier African technology event for everyone interested in technology in Africa.

The first day is for deep dive technical sessions, hands-on workshops and subject matter sessions, and the second day is for higher level talks, demo’s and inspiration, followed by post-event party & drinks.
Includes coffee / tea, lunch.

Where: Focus Rooms, Johannesburg
When: October 9th & 10th 2013

Get your 2-for-1 tickets:

These Pre-Early-Bird tickets are selling fast, with 30 2-for-1 tickets left!

Tickets

Once sold out, ticket prices go up to the R1,500 Early Bird rate for a single ticket, with a final Ticket price of R2,000.

** DevDay attendees get a R250 discount on their #Tech4Africa conference price

Don’t miss out on the coolest tech event of the year, for the price of two rounds of golf, or a hairdo and pair of shoes! Grab your tickets now!

What else can I do?

Speak at Tech4Africa

Submissions are open to anyone. There are 33 submissions already.Grab the mobile conference app.

Help us serve the tech community. It’s our belief that the best way we can stay relevant is to serve the tech community.

Forward this email to your friends and colleagues. Show them some love!

Get involved.

Speaking deadlines

If you want to speak in 2013, these are the deadlines for submissions 😉

May
17th: Jhb DevDay
31st: CPT DevDay

June
27th: Nairobi
30th: Tech4Africa

September
Speakers announcement
Schedule 85% finalised (always changes!)

Why And How We Risked It All

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKqevnV_39I&w=560&h=315]

Part 2        Part 3

Many of us have worked for companies we didn’t like and did jobs we didn’t enjoy. But have we done anything to turn this around? Gareth Knight and Vinny Lingham shares their journey of starting their own business so they can work on things they were truly passionate about. But this has not been an easy journey for either of them and this talk covers the challenges they faced and sacrifices they had to make to turn their ideas into valuable products. But what is most important is that the speech covers how to go about coping with those challenges learn from their mistakes they made so that younger entrepreneurs can avoid them.

iMaverick: The technology & architecture of freedom – Tech4Africa 2011

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxmaWVmFSo&w=560&h=315]

 

Access to information shouldn’t just be restricted to insiders, experts and politicians. And the challenge is not how to conceal information but how to make information readily available for everyone. For African technology to prosper we need a political and economical environment that is conducive to business. But none of this is possible without a free and independent media. Core issue being Transparency within the internet age; transparency is critical to promoting democracy and citizen’s right empowering them in particular.  iMaverick, the founders of Africa’s first daily tablet talks about how the current political and economical situation relates to the prosperity and freedom of media & technology within Africa. Is securing the functionality of the net and protecting the integrity of its user alone enough to achieve this?

 

 

Mobile applications for everyone, giving power to the powerless – Tech4Africa 2011

Constrain breeds innovation – Gustav Praekelt and Sebastien Lacour talks about how mobile tools can give business opportunities and give Africans the access to every day services. With over 600 million active mobile connections in Africa, there is no doubt that there is enough reach. Gustav talks about how to measure mobile phone usage and behaviour within Africa so businesses can create models which will help them manufacture specific services that are actually relevant to the customer. Gustav then talks about Ummeli, the mobile portal which helps Africans find social networks and job finders to help them meet new people, learn new things and better themselves so they can find jobs as, the no.1 problem the African youth is facing now is not illness and poverty, but lack of employment.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_avN_nnhW4I&w=560&h=315]

How we built Motribe for Africa and beyond – Vincent Maher Tech4Africa 2011

Vincent Maher talks about Motribe, a passionate idea converted into one of the most fastest growing mobile plays in Africa. This is special considering it’s built for some of the most basic mobile platforms. Vincent talks about how his idea got converted in to a scalable business and how the business structure was set up and it is also interesting to listen to some of the problems he faced. The talk is equally great for entrepreneurs who want a good insight in to a start-up and notice common challenges start-ups face such as “do you take whatever money that’s comes your way or do you stick to you plan?”.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIW_bLTID3E&w=560&h=315]