From the category archives:

Conferences

Kenya - AFRICON

by HASH on September 23, 2009


Who
AFRICON
When
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
9:00am - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
Nairobi, Kenya
Other Info
AFRICON, the top-event of IEEE in Africa, is a forum for professionals, academia and industry to exchange ideas, present their newest research findings and to network. Be there for experiencing top-notch science and a vibrant social program in beautiful Kenya!

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Ghana - International Development and Design Summit (IDDS)

by HASH on July 15, 2009


Who
International Development and Design Summit (IDDS)
When
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
8:00pm - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
Kumasi, Ghana
Other Info
We are excited to announce that during July/August 2009, IDDS will be hosted at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana. KNUST faculty John Quansah and Crossman Hormenoo attended the first IDDS in 2007, returned to help organize IDDS 2008, and are now prepared to lead the summit in Ghana. IDDS 2009 participants will work with villages and develop prototypes in the workshops at KNUST and Suame Magazine. Suame Magazine is an informal manufacturing cluster of 80,000 artisans, a haven of metalworking micro-enterprises. However, IDDS will continue to include projects for a variety of communities and countries, and the projects will not be solely focused on implementations in Ghana.

Applications for IDDS 2009 will be available on this website in November.

The International Development Design Summit is a month-long collaboration that brings together people from around the globe to build technologies for communities in the developing world. The program is the brainchild of MIT Senior Lecturer and D-Lab founder Amy Smith, a past winner of the MacArthur “genius” grant. The event is organized by KNUST, MIT, Olin, and Cooper Perkins.

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Austria - AfrikaCamp Vienna

by HASH on January 31, 2009


Who
AfrikaCamp Vienna
When
Saturday, January 31, 2009
10:00am - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
Walz (map)

w@lz Wiener LernZentrum
Heinrich-Collin-Straße 9

Vienna, Austria 1140
Other Info
BarCamp Vienna will be a truly bilingual (un)conference (Wikipedia: unconference) whenever necessary. Participants are asked to hold all demos, presentations and discussions in English unless a session's audience happens to be purely German speaking.

* 10am - Opening and coffee at Walz, Heinrich-Collin-Straße 9, 1040 Wien)
* 11am - Start (be on time!) - for details see Sessions AfrikaCamp
* 7:30pm - Self-organised dinner in various restaurants
* 9pm - AfrikaCamp-Party, probably at WerkzeugH,

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Congo - Barcamp Congo

by HASH on December 23, 2008


Who
Barcamp Congo
When
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
8:00am - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
French Cultural Center (map)
Brazzaville, Congo
Other Info
(Edition Brazzaville) will be the first BarCamp in Congo (and Central Africa). This event will last an evening, is free and open to all participants. There will be presentations, lectures, discussions and meetings on subjects of interest to the technology community Congolese.

This event is relevant to the entire community. Everyone should contribute, even minimal help will ensure it's success. BarCamp Congo (Brazzaville Edition) could be the techno event you always dreamed and it's up to you to achieve it!

The event will begin with 5 presentations:

* Presentation of the Coptic by Alain Ndala
* Explaining the concept behind Barcamp by Verona MANKOU
* Problem of content in the Congo by Alain Ndala
* Local Internet exchange points Patrice NOUMAZALAYE
* Microblogging: Introduction to Twitter by Verona MANKOU

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Ghana - Barcamp Ghana

by HASH on December 22, 2008


Who
Barcamp Ghana
When
Monday, December 22, 2008
8:00am - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
Accra, Ghana

(no information yet on location, except that it will be somewhere in Accra...)

Other Info
BarCampGhana 2008 will be held in Accra, Ghana on December 22nd 2008 with theme: ‘Fueling Ghana’s Technology and Business Renaissance’. This event will bring people interested in Ghana, on a variety of levels and topics, together in one place for a day of exploration, connection and enjoyment.

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Maker Faire Africa Logo: Win $250

by HASH on December 20, 2008

Maker Faire Africa is an event happening next summer in Ghana. It needs a logo though, and for the designers who read this, it’s your chance to win a quick $250. Jump on over to THE CONTEST to get started.

Update: some of the recent designs

Some of the Maker Faire Africa logo entries


Old bicycle turned into a furnace bellows Simon Mwangi A Welding Machine

(Not a designer? Pass this on to someone who is, and feel free to leave your comments on which designs you like/don’t like.)

What is Maker Faire Africa?

As Emeka puts it:

The aim of a Maker Faire-like event is to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations, inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified, propagated, etc. Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”

This logo will be used on the redesigned website, print materials and t-shirts.

How it Works

A couple months back I tested out 99designs.com for logo creation, and was incredibly impressed with how easy it was to get going and for designers to take part in quick project work. The contest is open for 7 days (Dec 25th - Christmas), and anyone can go register as a designer to submit an entry.

Maker Faire Africa on 99designs

Once you’ve registered and submitted a design, I’ll be leaving feedback on what direction to take it, and I’ll rate them using their 5-star system. You can submit as many entries as you like. Make sure you read the creative brief before you go too far. We realize that one of the main problems with any contest like this is Africa is payment to the winner. We’ll be creative in making sure that if the winner does come from anywhere in Africa, you’ll get paid.

Who is behind it?

I am part of the organizing team, along with Emeka (Timbuktu Chronicles), Mark (Ned.com), Amy Smith (MIT IDDS), Lars (MIT), Nii (Nubian Cheetah), and Juliana (Afromusing). It is in the very early stages of organization, and we’ve each contributed some money to get the logo created.

O’Reilly, along with the guys at Maker Faire have given us their blessing to use the name.

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Uganda - Facebook Developers Garage - Uganda

by HASH on December 13, 2008


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Barcamp Mauritius

by HASH on November 22, 2008


Who
Barcamp Mauritius
When
Saturday, November 22, 2008
8:00am - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
Metalic Building (map)
Ebene, Mauritius
Other Info
BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

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Côte d’Ivoire - Cybersecurity in Africa

by HASH on November 18, 2008


Who
Cybersecurity in Africa
When
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
8:00am - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
BP 1024
Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire

L'Hôtel Président, 5 étoiles, est situé au coeur de la Côte d'Ivoire, en Afrique de l'ouest.

il est bâti dans un parc fleuri de 25 hectares, à 1 Km du centre ville et à 14Km de l’aéroport.

Other Info
Africa is currently the continent of cybercriminality increase throughout the world.

That is explained by several reasons which are :

- Bad knowledge of Information Technologies by the populations;
- Absence of a suitable legal system ;
- Inexistence on the level of the States of cybersecurity structures;
- Absence of a framework for dialogue and coordination of strategies at the regional level.

In order to reflect on these problems which are a concern for all the countries of the world and mainly african countries, Ivory Coast decided to organise the first African regional Cybersecurity conference (Af Cybersec 2008) which will be held in Yamoussoukro (Ivory Coast) November 17th to 20th, 2008..

The conference will bring together all public and private sectors actors, the african civil society and also the experts of the international institutions.
It will be the occasion :

- to discuss on cybersecurity best practices ;
- to define the bases of the co-operation between countries, effectiveness of any national policy of cybersecurity guarantees.

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Kenya - Tandaa

by HASH on November 14, 2008


Who
Tandaa
When
Friday, November 14, 2008
8:00am - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
Nairobi, Kenya

No location given yet.

Other Info
The Kenya ICT Board will be holding the Kenya Content Conference dubbed “TANDAA 2008”. Tandaa is Kiswahili for spread or network (verb). At this conference, the board will launch the National Digital Content Strategy – the plan that will be used to stimulate Local Content Development in Kenya. The Kenya ICT Board has targeted to grow internet usage by 50% annually from the current 3 Million users to 12 Million users in 2012.

The Local Development Programme is seen as pivotal to the optimal usage of the infrastructure that is being developed by the Kenya government i.e. the Undersea Optic Fibre Cable project and the National Optic Fibre Cable project, both of which are expected to be in Kenya in the coming year.

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Malawi - Open Access 2008

by HASH on November 12, 2008


Who
Open Access 2008
When
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
8:00am - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
P.O. Box Box X1
Lilongwe, Malawi

Superbly situated at the Crossroads Complex in Lilongwe , by the Mchinji roundabout in Area 9 and just 25 minutes from the International Airport . Crossroads Hotel is centrally located about 10 minutes drive from either Old Town “the commercial hub” of the City or City Centre where all Central Government offices, Donor Agency offices, major Non-Governmental Organizations and Foreign Missions for Malawi's cooperating partners.

Other Info
Open Access in the context of Communication (Open Communication) means that anyone, on equal conditions with a transparent relation between cost and pricing, can get access to and share communication resources on one level to provide value added services on another level in a layered communication system architecture. There is currently a high momentum in the deployment of infrastructures such as optic fiber, wireless and the like. Also, the advancement in the use of ICT in general such as mobile phones, multipurpose telecentres. If used wisely, we believe these developments can facilitate provisioning of relatively inexpensive, easily accessible, diversified and expandable ICT services. The objective of this workshop is to identify and share experiences on affordable and cost effective ICT technologies around the globe. Based on Open Access principles, the workshop intends to address ICT as a tool that will bring developmental change to the society at large.

Besides sharing of communication resources, the 6th Open Access Conference in Malawi will also address the sharing of processing and memory capacity in terms of grid technologies. The EU-supported EELA-2 project (http://www.eu-eela.eu/) offers a tutorial and an opportunity for interested users as well as providers of computer resources to explore how they could benefit from connecting to a global computational grid.

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Ushahidi in the Congo (DRC)

by HASH on November 7, 2008

When we pushed the first version of Ushahidi live in Kenya, I was trying to juggle that as I spoke at a conference in New York. Today, we’re deploying the new Ushahidi Engine (v0.1) into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and I’m in Rhode Island speaking at another conference. I’m starting to see a pattern emerge…

Reporting Incidents from the Congo

The DRC deployment can be found at http://DRC.ushahidi.com, and the mobile number to send SMS reports to is +243992592111.

Ushahidi Deployed to the Congo (DRC)

Note: This is the alpha software for Ushahidi. If you find any problems, please submit them to bugs.ushahidi.com.

How you can help

Get the word out. Let people know the mobile number (+243992592111) and website (drc.ushahidi.com). Help get word to the Congolese on the ground in the DRC of this tool, that’s who needs to know about it.

Things are serious in the Congo… They are bad, very bad. As Sean Jacobs states:

“Since August this year at least 250,000 people have been left homeless in Eastern Congo in the latest outbreak of a civil war described here as between government troups and a rebel group claiming to protect ethnic Tutsis. At least 2 million people are refugees from that war which dates back to 1996.”

It’s a difficult situation, with a swirling mixture of militia and armed forces, compounded by particularly brutal and confusing activities. External military forces, years of displacement and a misinformation mar the landscape.

A new Ushahidi, a new test

To be quite honest, we’re a little nervous, just as we were the first time. The new engine still has a few bugs, and there are some process flow issues that we’re still trying to get figured out. This time we’re backed up by a group of competent developers who are working to get things straightened out. Want to help us make it better? It’s an open community, and we’re looking for your input.

We are VERY interested in hearing from you on how we can make the system better. If you have ideas, thoughts, comments - tell us. Leave them in the comments here, on the Ushahidi blog, or on the Ushahidi contact form.

This is a test of the system, albeit a very difficult one, but it will affect the way the software is changed, modified and upgraded in the next version. What we get right here, we can make work for you in your area when you need it.

How SMS messages route through Ushahidi

This simplified graphic was created to show how SMS messaging moves through the Ushahidi system - it’s a 2-way communication cycle.



SMS Reporting Through Ushahidi, originally uploaded by whiteafrican.
  1. An SMS gets sent to a local number
  2. It passes through FrontlineSMS
  3. This syncs with Ushahidi
  4. The message shows up on Ushahidi
  5. Admins can decide to send a message back to the original sender

We use FrontlineSMS so that we can provide local numbers in areas where the larger SMS gateways don’t operate. For instance, if you were to try to run this in Zambia, you’d probably get a UK phone number if you went through Clickatell. However, we do use Clickatell for the messages that we route back to the original sender due to cost savings. They also have a very nice, easy to use API.

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South Africa - IdeaCamp

by HASH on November 3, 2008


Who
IdeaCamp
When
Monday, November 3, 2008
2:00pm - All Ages Buy Tickets
Where
Pretoria, South Africa
Other Info
IdeaCamp addresses all the issues relevant to launching an online app with global potential. The sessions are going to address topics like:

* Innovation, revenue models, African potential
* Incubation, Angel funding, Venture funding, developing on a shoestring
* Choosing the best development platform for your application
* Creating the right strategy and putting together the best team.

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“Made in Africa” my talk from Pop!Tech

by HASH on October 29, 2008

Here is my 5-minute talk that I did at Pop!Tech this Saturday. It touches on Ushahidi, AfriGadget and why I’m optimistic about Africa.



The best part for me is that in a recording I can make sure I don’t forget any lines and I can add more images into the slideshow. I know I had to cut out a section of the talk in the live event as I was running out of time. Either way, I hope you enjoy it, as it’s a mixture of my history that explains a little of my present occupation.

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Highlights from my Morning at PopTech 2008

by HASH on October 23, 2008

If the rest of PopTech is anything like the morning of the first day, then I’m not sure my head can handle it. You can follow along live at Poptech.org/live, and track images on Flickr at PopTech08. Finally, follow the PopTech blog, as they liveblog the whole event. Here are my highlights and images from this event so far.

My catapult-driven tinker car

Before I get started on today though, I need to give a quick shout out to Gever Tulley, who helped re-awaken my love of tinkering and creating with my hands. I spent yesterday afternoon bending wire, strapping down chopsticks and creating power with rubber bands. My masterpiece was a catapult-driven car. Best of all, Gever runs the Tinkering School, and he’s a big AfriGadget fan.

Carl Safina and Saul Griffith at PopTech 2008

Saul Griffith started us off with some amazing visuals supporting his studies into energy use by himself over one year. You can join in at his crowdsourcing project of personal energy use at a site called Wattzon. It’s really quite interesting to see the breakdown of energy use by those of us who travel a lot.

Malcom Gladwell at PopTech 2008

Malcolm Gladwell spoke about capital usage by societies - I’ve read both Blink and The Tipping Point, so am also going to buy his new book Outliers when it comes out. Frankly, he’s an amazing speaker and it was just enjoyable listening to him talk. Funnily enough, I got to chat with his mother during the break, which was unexpected.

Language Hotspots

David Harrison is on a mission to save disappearing languages from all over the globe. He’s a professor of linguistics at Swarthmore University, and expressed well the need to save languages as we lose so much human knowledge that cannot simply be translated into a “global language”. Harrison has developed the idea of “language hotspots” - examining where the highest diversity of languages are, where the danger is most and where knowledge that is not widely known exists.

Imogen Heap at PopTech 2008

I actually didn’t know anything about Imogen Heap before I heard her here at PopTech. It was an absolutely fascinating moment for me, as she used technology to start echoing her voice and did a full song with only her voice weaving in and out in a symphony that can only be heard, not explained. Amazing. You can also follow her on Twitter @imogenheap.

It was wonderful to finally meet Rob Katz, who started NextBillion.net - the website that tracks and keeps discussions alive around products and services targeted at the “bottom billion” people in the world. We have big plans of having a good long talk over the next couple days, more after that.

Eric Dawson a PopTech 2008 Fellow

Lastly, a new friend of mine that is also a part of this year’s PopTech 2008 Fellows class, is Eric Dawson. One of the more grounded individuals that I’ve ever met, he exudes peace. This is good, as he runs an organization called Peace Games, focused on ending youth violence. His short talk was well done, asking us to not feed the evil, but the good in ourselves.

Best of all, the bags handed out by PopTech are by Timbuk2, and are excellent bags. However, anyone who wants to can donate their bag to Eric’s Peace Games organization for one of the 40,000 youth taking part in their program.

PopTech 2008 Bag

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