Why am I seeing this page?

Here are some common issues that cause you to see this page:

Your domain is pointed to the server, but there is no site with that domain name on the server.
You are accessing the site via HTTPS, but the site does not have an SSL certificate installed.
Your domain has an AAAA record, but the site only works with IPv4 on the server.

Conference updates – The Tech4Africa Blog http://blog.tech4africa.com Musings, announcements, and collateral damage from Tech4Africa. Thoughts our own. We're looking for contributors from across Africa. Email hello At tech4africa DOT com. Mon, 26 Oct 2015 12:30:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.32 Introducing the Random Hack of Kindness (RHoK) http://blog.tech4africa.com/introducing-the-random-hack-of-kindness-rhok/ Sun, 13 Sep 2015 16:33:12 +0000 http://blog.tech4africa.com/?p=8685 Continue reading ]]> tl;dr:

We think that Hackathons in Africa are enjoying mixed results:
There are opportunities which are being missed by focusing on the wrong problems.
There are lack of skills around Shipping Product.
There are also skills gaps around determining the business case of projects / problems etc.

There are of course exceptions to this, thankfully (!), but by and large we’re thinking that by focusing on workplace relevant skills, and problems which can product viable businesses, a Hackathon could have more long term value to the people who participate.

We don’t think that it’s our place to take sides on specific Technologies, and we don’t really want to replicate what other people are already doing.

Which is why the Tech4Africa Hackathons moving forward will do 4 things only:

Focus on one utility problem which is local & relevant
Include collaboration technology and business case skills transfer for everyone
Focus on User Experience – this is the key driver for adoption and is largely ignored
Result in Shipping an MVP Proof of Concept

Background:

Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs — Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the opportunities are in Africa right now, and what’s clear is that it’s not going to play out the same way it has in the “developed” world until now. The reason is that when you look at the building blocks of the internet, there are clear un-met challenges which make those opportunities both different and harder.

When you dissect the landscape using Maslow as your reference point, and then you overlay that with the mobile market data, we think that the major differentiation will be:

most everything is going to happen on a mobile device rather than on a desktop PC;
whilst the rest of the “developed” world is focusing on top of the pyramid problems around self-actualisation, creativity, problem solving, authenticity and spontaneity (as memes for products), the African market still has pretty much all the layers of the pyramid left as opportunities, with the bottom of the pyramid still largely untapped.

When you dissect the opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid, you’ll find that they are primarily “utility” problems which exist in the lives of people everywhere, every day, in all markets.

For example: most diagrams will show “internet” or “wifi” as the base of the pyramid, and as such is probably the biggest opportunity (which is why the Telcos are so dominant in people’s lives).

So this is what has led to our mantra of:

Want to build big tech product for Africa?

Focus on product with daily value for user. This is the utility & viability part.
Mobile first. This is the market demographic & adoption part.
Make it easy to share. This is the common sense part.
Make sure cash-flow has you in it. This is the “Don’t waste your time” part.

So, when you unpack this, we see examples (these are simple ones) coming out of:

Education: I want to add to or complete my education
Transport: I want to be somewhere on time / I need to inform my employer / I need a lift
Utilities: I want water / gas / electricity / housing
Personal finance: I want to make a payment / I want to send money to my family who live far away
Employment: I want to work to earn an income / I have jobs to offer
Information: I want to know what is going on around me
Family: Where are my family? Are they safe?

When applied to communities and devices (Internet of Things), some examples could be around:

Medical devices which are designed for low-resource hospitals
Infant phototherapy / General health issues
Smoke alerts
Air quality
Using 3G to connect communities and make them aware (using something like BRCK – https://www.brck.com/)
Tablet devices pre-configured for education and learning
Community security via drones
Smart metering applications (eg: energy usage)
Community / family communication (single button modes, not Group chat)

So we’re not going to be encouraging an “Uber / Facebook / LinkedIn / Buzzfeed / Slack etc for Africa” – what’s the point?

Solutions:

Maslow's Heirarchy of Software Development — Maslow’s Heirarchy of Software Development

So, instead of following the usual Hackathon experience you can find anywhere, our approach moving forward will be different:

We’re going to give clear direction on a product that could become a business.
The RHOK will focus on problems which occur in everyday life (this is where the business value is).
It will solve something which will mean people will talk about it (because it has given them value).
There will be a reasonable vision of adding transactions for cash flow, although this won’t be the focus for the RHOK itself.
Everyone will work together as a team.
The development focus will be on executing for mobile devices.
We WILL ship an MVP product in 2 days.
All skills learnt over the two days will transfer to the workplace.

And instead of focussing on the usual set of development skills (or taking sides on what stack to focus on), we’re going to focus on skills which enable collaboration in teams and shipping code and realising something beyond the Hackathon:

GIT (source control)
Continuous Integration (CI – easy stress free deployments)
App architecture (essential for teamwork)
App business case (just, essential)

We’ve engaged with Microsoft who have the vision to believe in what we’re doing, and they are going to help with:

Cloud servers on Azure – The machines will be small but adequate, and limited to the Hackathons.
Cloud training help, eg: how to build machines running Linux/Win/MySQL,IoT, etc on Azure.
Free online training via Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Execution:

For anyone attending, this is roughly what to expect:

We will announce the problem / focus area of the Hackathon
This will more than likely be a single page, Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach
Explain what viable use & business cases mean
Group everyone into teams of logical skill sets
Go through application architecture & needs
Assign responsibilities
Push first code to Github
Setup servers to push & pull code
Review progress every 3 to 4 hours
Setup a booth to record teamwork & results for everyone to see

And the rewards will be:

At the RHoK:
1. Learn new skills
2. Learn how to ship a product in 2 days
3. Meet new people
Present at Tech4Africa Day 2
From Microsoft:
1. BizSpark / Azure offers
2. Demo of Azure Cloud setup for learning
3. Small Azure instances to attendees who participate in the RHOK.
4. Free training vouchers for their Virtual Training Academy

Summary:

We’re really excited by what this will produce, and we’re looking forward to rolling this out across all of the cities we go to. See you there!

]]> Tech4Africa comes to Cape Town http://blog.tech4africa.com/tech4africa-comes-to-cape-town/ Wed, 06 Aug 2014 09:47:58 +0000 http://blog.tech4africa.com/?p=8629 Continue reading ]]> Now in it’s 5th year, the annual Tech4Africa conference will be running the first Cape Town event on August 28th. Tech4Africa focuses on deep technical workshops and sessions for practitioners, and then engaging talks which impart knowledge, perspective, African context and inspiration.

The unapologetic vision for Tech4Africa is that the best tech ecosystems in the world have regular events that bring together everyone in tech to learn, meet new people and have lots of fun.

Tech4Africa bills itself an un-conference – they don’t like suits and ties, there are no plenaries, committees or chair people. Their focus is on great content and value for all who attend, coffee all day, and fun at night. Placing greatest emphasis on learning, interaction, engagement and discussion, they want Tech4Africa to be a place for new ideas and to encourage people to make and change things.

“We were skeptical of bringing Tech4Africa to Cape Town, but after watching the clear growth of the industry in the Cape, we felt that in keeping with our own Lean / MVP approach to Tech4Africa we would kick off a Cape Town event this year.” said Gareth Knight, Founder of Tech4Africa. “There are so many great new things coming out of the Cape, it’s going to be great to hear the stories that emerge…”

Tech4Africa Cape Town will take place at the Old Mutual Conference Centre, Pinelands in Cape Town, on the 28th August.

Tech4Africa was sold out in 2013 and it is strongly advised that interested parties book as early as possible.

Sessions:
This year Cape Town will be showcasing over 20 speakers [http://cpt2014.tech4africa.com/grid/], in 4 rooms, running sessions concurrently every hour.

IBM SmartCamp:
There will also be an IBM SmartCamp running on the same day, and startups are strongly encouraged to attend in order to benefit from the mentoring on offer.

The following topics will be covered:
Community and Activism, Content and Distribution, Design and Development, DIY Hacker and Maker, E-Commerce, Entrepreneurialism and Business, Growing into Emerging Markets, Health and Medicine, Impart wisdom, Mobile and Emerging Markets, Talk about success or failure in a positive way, WTF and Beyond.

Tech4Africa
Dates: 28th August 2014
Venue: Old Mutual Conference Centre, Pinelands in Cape Town
The Schedule

Tickets:
Tech4Africa: R500
Register

SUBMISSIONS
Applications for speakers for Tech4Africa Johannesburg 2014 are open. Candidates may submit their session at http://speak.tech4africa.com for consideration and voting.

]]> Hack is not a four letter word http://blog.tech4africa.com/hack-is-not-a-four-letter-word/ http://blog.tech4africa.com/hack-is-not-a-four-letter-word/#comments Thu, 11 Jul 2013 08:32:48 +0000 http://tech4africa.com/?p=7867 Continue reading ]]> When Tech4Africa started, our hypotheses was that the tech ecosystem in (South) Africa was missing a few vital parts. We set out to bring a broader perspective to folks living and working in what looked from the outside like a self congratulating bubble.

The overwhelming learning in the 4 years we’ve been working on this is that the landscape for techies / developers in Africa provides pretty poor opportunity for the talented person looking to really push themselves. In cities like London / Tel Aviv / New York / Boston / Berlin / Talinn / Austin and of course The Valley, the hiring market is so desperately in demand of technical skill and thus skewed to the developer, that the good ones are able to command great salaries AND work on the most interesting stuff in technology.

In Africa however the landscape looks different – although good developers are able to find jobs because the market is equally in demand for skills, the scope and range of work (call it interestingness) is for the most part very different. I won’t go into this in more detail because this is not the topic of this post, but what is important is that 80% of the developer conversations we have are around one central theme -> “I don’t get to do fun stuff at work” or “I don’t know what fun stuff to do“.

So we started the idea of a developer day at Tech4Africa (which I’m happy to say we only partly executed on last year, and will do better at this year) for developers to learn about more fun stuff, and then our Hackathons which happen during the year, for developers to do more fun stuff.

We subscribe to the notion that a Hackathon is “an appropriate application of ingenuity“, rather than anything subversive or nefarious. This is 2013 people, most of the most famous and recent success stories you could think of started out or resulted from a couple of engineers hacking a problem (think Mark Zuckerberg hacking together Facemash in Harvard, Daniel Ek working on the first iterations of Spotify), and “hack” is no longer a four letter word people need to be worried about.

And so, without going into too much philosophical detail, this is what we believe our Hackathons should and shouldn’t be about:

Hackathons should:

encourage fun, mirth and expression
push open source thinking, active collaboration, problem solving
be about new technologies, new approaches to solving difficult problems, and applying ingenuity
welcome and involve anyone in the community / ecosystem
be free to attend

Moving forward, we’re only going to work with partners and people on Hackathons that fulfull the four objectives above, and most importantly which build the ecosystem.

By building the ecosystem we teach younger developers to become better and more capable, we give non-technical people exposure to the way technical people think, we expose developers to new, exciting, different technologies which allow them to solve problems in different ways, and most importantly we build an ecosystem which is positive, fun and challenging.

For us the benefits of this are obvious and sorely needed in the African tech ecosystem, and we hope you’ll share that view with us.
If not, c’est la vie!

Your thoughts and comments welcome.

]]> http://blog.tech4africa.com/hack-is-not-a-four-letter-word/feed/ 2 Howzit! Nairobi, win R35k, awesome speakers and what the tech community is thinking about http://blog.tech4africa.com/howzit-nairobi-win-r35k-awesome-speakers-and-what-the-tech-community-is-thinking-about/ Wed, 26 Jun 2013 06:47:34 +0000 http://tech4africa.com/?p=7646 Continue reading ]]> 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!

]]> Howzit! Welcome to Tech4Africa 2013! http://blog.tech4africa.com/howzit-welcome-to-tech4africa-2013/ Thu, 09 May 2013 00:28:37 +0000 http://tech4africa.com/?p=6551 Continue reading ]]> 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!

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!)

]]> The anatomy & habits of mobile users, and why business should take note – Nic Haralambous Tech4Africa 2011 http://blog.tech4africa.com/the-anatomy-habits-of-mobile-users-and-why-business-should-take-note-nic-haralambous-t4a-2011/ Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:33:32 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com/?p=4634 Continue reading ]]> This topic covers how mobile usage has changed over the past decade or so and the changes that have taken place in the market as well as how marketing has been defined previously by brand advertising. Where previous brands sat in the middle and the consumer around it, this has changed now where this has been democratised and almost been switched around to the point where the brand is owned by the consumer rather than the company; the consumer is the centre. This is very similar to marketing from a mobile perspective. Therefore, it is important to understand that marketing from a mobile point of view is very different to the traditional method as a lot of the techniques used mobile marketing such as banner adverts can be irrelevant and sometimes can be intrusive to the consumer. In this speech Nic Haralambous talks about mobile usage from a platform perspective. However, mobile marketing can be a very powerful marketing tool if you look at it from a user’s point of view.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYDG3I8Uj3I&w=560&h=315]

]]> Importance of Big Data – Steve Watt Tech4Africa 2011 http://blog.tech4africa.com/importance-of-big-data-steve-watt-t4a-2011/ Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:33:55 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com/?p=4630 Continue reading ]]> Steve Watt from HP, talks about Big data, what it’s all about and how to access vast amount of data for the use in businesses. Big data is about mining information from unstructured data, where you ask your own questions and learn something from everything. The video covers the whole model of retrieving, storing, processing and analysing big data using open source software to benefit your business.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCBN0_GeT0Y&w=560&h=315]

]]> A great environment to learn and get inspired http://blog.tech4africa.com/a-great-environment-to-learn-and-get-inspired/ Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:45:49 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com?p=298 Continue reading ]]> Tech4Africa is less than a week away and we’re very excited! We’ve worked so hard to create an awesome environment at the conference, so we wanted to let our delegates what’s in store for them (the reasons for what we like to call Tech4Africa the “unconference”):

1. Speakers on panels will be talking from couches, not lecterns.

2. Questions are encouraged after each session.

3. Our speakers will be listening in at other talks, just like all the other delegates.

4. Andy Budd, Joe Stump, Dustin Diaz, Jonathan Snook and John Resig, will be doing an intimate technical Q & A session, where they’ll talk about issues they’ve faced and how they’ve approached them. This is a vital session for anyone technical.

5. There will be surprises prizes under seats, and a “goody bag”.

6. We’ve created ample opportunity for hallway conversations, networking, and meeting new people.

7. There is an interactive expo environment including a news studio, Internet cafe and an FNB coffee lounge.

8. There’ll be unique badges to help start conversations and introductions.

9. A deadly serious “no ties” and “no suits” policy!

10. Between all the serious stuff, there is a Cocktail party (with DJ) and an After party, where we hope you’ll join us for some fun!

Get ready for some inspiration Hope to see you there!

]]> Last but not least… http://blog.tech4africa.com/last-but-not-least/ Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:03:27 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com?p=268 Continue reading ]]> A few last things about the conference, before things become totally manic.

We’ve got around 65 speakers over 2 days. I’m really excited about the depth of knowledge and experience that folks like Andy Budd (Clearleft), Alex Hunter, Erin Caton (Apple), Joe Stump (SimpleGeo), Jonathan Snook (Yahoo!) and Dustin Diaz (Twitter), will bring to Tech4Africa. These guys are really amazing at what they do, and are also awesome people, so anyone at the conference is in for a treat. Take 5 minutes to checkout the full line-up if you haven’t done so.

I think you’ll agree it’s a great line-up, which represents a good mix of business and technical people, and offers great content to delegates. More than anything, this is a first in Africa, and it’s largely down to your willingness to be a part of it. For that, I thank you. I hope you can spend the two days of the conference learning, absorbing, and enjoying. There is a team of 19 full time people working on Tech4Africa, to make it the event we’d all want to go to.

We’re now working pretty much 24/7 to make this event something that we would aspire to attend.
I’m not saying that lightly. Like you, I’ve been to my fair share of conferences, and in general I find most of them bland and uninteresting, with too many exhibitors.
So, I’ve tried really hard to make this one the conference that I would want to go to. My litmus test is: would I spend my hard earned cash and go to Tech4Africa? Would my friends do the same? I’m happy to say that right now the answer is yes, and I hope that once you’re there and you’ve experienced it for yourselves, the hard work and attention to detail will be apparent, and you’ll feel the same way. Ultimately though, all we can do is provide the right environment for the speakers to shine.

The focus is on interaction, discussion, engagement, debate and learning. The focus is on you.
Unlike a lot of conferences where you go listen to someone stand behind a lectern and run through powerpoint slides, essentially giving a lecture, we’re creating an environment where everyone will either be standing, or sitting on a couch with a bunch of other people. Our focus is 100% around delegate value, and this comes through real discussion and if needs be real arguments. It also comes through the audience feeling like they’re there being engaged with, and not lectured in a one-way environment.

As a quick reminder, online registration and payment for conference tickets closes at 1pm on Tues 10th August. If you would like to register after that, then please do so on site. Registration will be open at the venue from 1pm on the 11th of August (badge collection and/or registration). Please note that we will not accept cash, and that when the venue is full, we’ll have to turn people away. For conference registrations go here.

There is a conference “after party”, which will be on Friday night (August 13th), so please book that in your calendars, get the babysitters in, bring your significant other, and join us for some fun! RSVP on the event’s Facebook page.

And lastly, expect the “unconference”: don’t wear ties, don’t wear suits, bring your sense of humour, and enjoy yourself!

It’s going to be an awesome event, and I can’t wait to see you there

Regards,
Gareth Knight

Tech4Africa organizer
MD, Technovated

]]> Design at Tech4Africa http://blog.tech4africa.com/design-at-t4a/ Tue, 03 Aug 2010 06:30:48 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com?p=263 Continue reading ]]> With only a week to go till Tech4Africa kicks off in Johannesburg on the 10th of August, we take a final look at some of the exciting sessions and speakers that have been lined up to make this THE conference to attend this year.

When launching a new site or product online, probably the most important factor is how it looks, and your users can use it without hassle. Design is key to making sure your users will keep coming back for more. At Tech4Africa, we will be hosting some of most prolific experts in user interface & design.

First up, be sure not to miss the session entitled “Ignore User Experience at your peril”, hosted by leading UI design expert Andy Budd. Andy comes from a long history of user design and interface, and currently heads up User Experience at Clear Left in the USA. Andy will lead you through a 1 hour session on why you should pay attention to user experience and what you can do about it.

Another “must-attend” session if you design is your thing, is an all South African panel hosted by the indomitable Allan Kent from Saatchi & Saatchi AtPlay. The panel of leading practitioners takes you through the thinking and output for a redesign of a well known, high profile, local website, PayFine.co.za. Joining Allan on the panel are Rian van der Merwe from South African start-up, now based in San Fransisco, Yola. Mike Lewis from Origin Interactive will also be joining the panel, in what should be an interesting session on this intuitive South African site, that allows you to pay your traffic fines online.

Be sure to book your place for Tech4Africa now. All our Early Bird offers have been scooped up, and it won’t be long before all the remaining seats are being snapped up at a crazy pace.

See you next week for the biggest & best tech conference South Africa has EVER seen !!

]]> Online registration notice http://blog.tech4africa.com/online-registration-notice/ Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:15:22 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com?p=252 Continue reading ]]> Important news for those planning to register for Tech4Africa.

Note that online registration for the conference and the workshops will close at a certain point this week and the next one (you will be able to register later on site). Take these dates and times into consideration:

* Workshops: online registration will be closing at 5pm on Friday 6th of August.

* Conference: online registration will be closing at 1pm on Tuesday 10th of August.

If you miss these deadlines, you can always register later on site for both conference and workshops.
Conference registration and badge collection will be open at the venue from 1pm on the 11th of August.

The countdown has begun, we’re almost a week to go to Tech4Africa, the most diverse and unique conference in South African tech history, featuring the most prolific speakers from both South Africa as well as internationally.

Join us now! Register online here.

]]> Let’s talk development at Tech4Africa http://blog.tech4africa.com/lets-talk-development-at-t4a/ Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:03:02 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com?p=211 Continue reading ]]> The countdown has begun, and with less than 2 weeks till the most diverse and unique conference in South African tech history kicks off, all the last minutes plans are being put into place. We can’t wait for the doors to open and introduce you to some of the most prolific speakers from both South Africa as well as internationally.

A big focus at Tech4Africa will be focused on development and how local startups can benefit from learning from some of the best Developers from the biggest platforms around the world. Guys like Dustin Diaz from Twitter & John Resig from Mozilla are just some of the big names to join us at Tech4Africa.

Jonathan Snook from Yahoo will be looking at how iPhone & Android development are growing rapidly, and how you can create the perfect and usable app. Jonathan comes from a long history of web development and developing apps, and will no doubt share his fantastic knowledge on these topics.

Another session not to miss is by Andy Budd, who is an interaction designer and web standards developer from Brighton, England. Andy leads the user experience team at Clearleft, and will be hosting a session called “Ignore User Experience at your peril”. User experience is essential when developing a new product, and Andy will take us through the steps to ensure it is done 100% correctly.

With Twitter growing daily in leaps in bounds, Lead User interface engineer, Dustin Diaz, will be sharing his tips & tricks when developing with Javascript. In his session called “Unobtrusive interfaces with js” will assist developers in ensuring user interfaces are are always rich & engaging.

Another Javascript ninja, John Resig, will be presenting a session called “6 secrets to becoming a jQuery ninja”, in which John will be showing you the tricks of the trade on how to become the ultimate jQuery ninja. John comes with a wealth of jQuery knowledge is the lead developer of the jQuery Javascript library.

If there is one session you do NOT want to miss at Tech4Africa, it will be the Q&A session with all these guys, joined by Joe Stump from SimpleGeo. Andy Budd, Dustin Diaz, John Resig, Jonathan Snook & Joe Stump will all join in a 1 hour Q&A session panel, where they will be answering your questions as well as answering an interesting question – “What was your hardest challenge, and how did you overcome it?” Be sure to join the guys on the Thursday at 11:00

It’s not only the international chaps who will be sharing their experiences with you, we have a fantastic South African panel called “Ideas are cheap, execution is everything. Live to bootstrap.”
The panel will be headed up by Brett Haggard who is joined by Barbara Mallinson from Obami, Eve Dmchowska from Crowdfund, our very own Gareth Knight from Technovated & Andy Higgins from BidorBuy. The panel will look at how South Africans need to bootstrap their product and without losing perspective or faith.

Last but not least we will also be hosting Erik Hersman who was the man behind the ever popular African open source project Ushahidi, which allows users to crowd source crisis information to be sent via mobile. Erik will share his story on how Ushahidi has grown into the international success it is today.

With a lineup like this, you cannot afford to miss Tech4Africa this year. If you have not registered your place yet, we suggest you do so ASAP. Places are running out fast, this is one conference you do NOT want to miss out on !

]]> Winners of the Old Mutual scholarships http://blog.tech4africa.com/winners-of-the-old-mutual-scholarships/ http://blog.tech4africa.com/winners-of-the-old-mutual-scholarships/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:11:43 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com?p=189 Continue reading ]]> Congratulations to the lucky students who won the Old Mutual Scholarships to attend Tech4Africa!

1.Robin Tshepo Putu
2. Henno Gous
3. Mike Changa Sinalo
4. Lennon Chimbumu
5. Joshua Yudaken
6. Peter Brookstein
7. Stéfan van der Walt
8. Travis Noakes
9. Lishen Mabundza
10. Khomotso Lucky Mmapheto
11. Talya Goldberg
12. Cebo Mthembu
13. Tebogo Masilo
14. JT Thom
15. Jono Lewis
16. Kate Ludwig
17. Justin Arenstein

See you at the conference!

]]> http://blog.tech4africa.com/winners-of-the-old-mutual-scholarships/feed/ 1 7 reasons why you should attend Tech4Africa http://blog.tech4africa.com/7-reasons-why-you-should-attend-t4a-2/ http://blog.tech4africa.com/7-reasons-why-you-should-attend-t4a-2/#comments Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:40:22 +0000 http://t4a.feedmybeta.com?p=182 Continue reading ]]> Whether you’re an African business person wanting to understand how the Web 2.0 is relevant to the enterprise, an entrepreneur interested in learning more about venture funding or a technologist wanting to learn from the best technical people around, here is how you can benefit from attending Tech4Africa on August 12 and 13, 2010:

#1 – Get global perspective for the African context

Tech4Africa is the first Web, mobile and emerging technology conference of it’s kind in Africa. It will bring together internationally respected speakers and practitioners who are building the Web and technology as we know it, with leading Africans who are themselves paving the way forward.
Speakers will delve into topics like emerging technologies; Web 2.0; mobile, wireless and cloud computing; entrepreneurship; search and marketing.

#2 – Listen to keynote speakers Clay Shirky and Leila Chirayath Janah

Clay Shirky is an experienced speaker on topics related to the Web, social media and the Internet. Shirky has spoken at events such as TED Global, SXSW, the Web 2.0 expo in New York and San Francisco, SES San Jose, the Adobe Learning Summit, New York Tech Meetup and the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Leila Chirayath Janah is the founder and CEO of Samasource, a social business that connects over 800 women, youth, and refugees living in poverty to digital work. Ms. Janah is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship, technology, and international development at institutions including MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. Her work has been profiled by CBC, CNN, The New York Times, and The New Scientist, and in 2010, she was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Women in Technology.

#3 – Listen to globally respected subject matter experts

Top international technologists at the conference will be, among others, Dustin Diaz, a user interface engineer at Twitter and author of JavaScript Design Patterns; Joe Stump, the former lead architect of social news Web site Digg and co-founder of SimpleGeo; John Resig, creator of the popular Javascript library jQuery, and a Javascript tool developer for Mozilla; and Jonathan Snook, a web designer and developer at Yahoo!.

#4 – Listen to African speakers that are leading the way

African technologists such as Steve Vosloo, the 21st century learning fellow for the Shuttleworth Foundation; Barbara Mallinson, founder of educational collaboration platform Obami; Agosta Liko, founder of mobile payment service PesaPal; Erik Hersman, the co-founder of open source crisis information site Ushahidi; Andy Hadfield, an expert in the design of web strategies and online communities; and Nii Simmonds, speaker, consultant, and sustainable evangelist on African entrepreneurship, sustainable technology, and African innovation.

These are just a few of the outstanding African speakers who are going to be present at the conference. Check out our website to see all of them.

#5 – Go to workshops where you can dive into detail with industry leaders

Learn from the best at our workshops on August 10 and 11, 2010. Sessions include “A masterclass in Usability and Accessibility”; “A deep dive into Google Analytics and Adwords”; “A Masterclass in Architecting applications and Advanced Javascript” and “Successful digital projects”.

#6 – Technology networking on steroids

Learn, discuss and share experiences and thoughts with the African technology community during the conference and at the cocktail party. Tech4Africa will be a great place to broaden your knowledge and business network. Checkout the companies that have already bought tickets for the conference.

#7 – Be inspired

Our simple goal is that delegates walk away both informed and inspired. Placing greatest emphasis on learning, interaction, engagement and discussion, we want the conference to be a place for new ideas and to encourage people to make and change things.

]]> http://blog.tech4africa.com/7-reasons-why-you-should-attend-t4a-2/feed/ 4