I’ll start by saying that coming to the SXSW conference has given me far more of a return on my time and investment than any conference besides TED. The people you get to talk to here are, by and large, interesting and usually doing cool stuff.
The Africa 2.0 Panel
[image by Martin Kliehm]
I had the honor of sharing the stage with Kofi, Uduok and Nii today. Kofi moderated the panel, and did an excellent job of keeping it going. He was the one who put in all the hard work to make this panel happen, and then to organize us enough in advance so that we had a coherent conversation on stage.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect, since it seemed to be a rather eclectic group. Nii is from the finance and business world, Kofi from design and marketing, myself from tech and Uduok from fashion and design. I don’t know much about the fashion industry, but Uduok did and was incredibly well spoken and poised as she discussed it. I learned a lot from just listening to her discuss Nigeria, Nollywood and the fashion industry.
The best part of the panel was the after-panel discussions though. A dozen of us got together and went to grab a bite to eat, where we continued to discuss the uses of technology in Africa. Discussions ranged from activism to sports (Nike was present) and everything in between. Another highlight for me was when fellow African blogger Gareth Knight showed up, and we talked about his new and highly successful “family tree” app: Kindo.
The Keynote Trainwreck…
The trainwreck that was the Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) keynote by Sarah Lacy was just so awkward. In fact, it was rather ugly. Read about it here, here, here or here. Watch the non-empathetic after-video of her here, or the full video here. Just amazing to watch someone lose it this bad.
March 10, 2008 at 8:24 am
Thanks for representing us so well Erik! I’m so jealous I can’t be there with you. Along with FOWA it’ll be high up on my list of conferences to attend next year.
We need to make this Africa 2.0 panel thing a more regular occurrence 🙂
March 10, 2008 at 10:50 am
What can we expect to hear from a way too dazzled young entrepreneur and a “journalist” with “and it was like….so..like…like….like…like, u know?”filler words?
Great job representing us on the panel!
March 10, 2008 at 10:53 am
+ I think I’ll never get it why the audience always has to interact and contribute comments. That’s so Monty Python from a European PoV! Why cant they just shut up and listen? Feels like too much MTV culture applied.
March 10, 2008 at 11:21 am
Man, I’m really bummed I could not make it to the panel. Sounds like it ended up being pretty good.
March 10, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Thanks for the plug Erik 😉 Super cool to see you too, after emailing for so long!!
And yea, the interview was something I think we’ll put into the anals of bad interviews…