This week I’m in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Summit. I just found out that Colin Daniels (Youngblood) of the Sunday Times is here as well. It makes me wonder how many other Africans are at it?
If you’re
Here are the sessions that I’ll likely be attending.
Today I’d like to announce a new technology news site for Africa, called African Signals (www.africansignals.com). It’s a place where I will be interviewing technologists around the world who are doing work in and for Africa. You’ll also see walkthroughs of new products and hear of upcoming events.
This first episode is where I stumble all over myself trying to do a simple African Signals intro (video) and also an interview with Mike Stopforth (audio) from Afrigator.com.
If you know someone to interview or would like to be interviewed, want to let people know of upcoming events, or any other news – let me know via the African Signals contact form.
I’ve learned a couple important facts about myself in the process of putting together African Signals. First, it needs to be about the people I’m interviewing and the products, not me – since I don’t have that compelling of an on-air presence. Second, doing video is a pain in the rear, but that it’s good to stretch myself into unfamiliar areas.
I need to give a big thanks to Jason Hawkins for putting together the intro sequence and doing the first video shoot. He’s an amazing video and tech guy, that I highly recommend to everyone. He’s also a CSS and XHTML wizard for anyone interested in having a website created. I can’t promise that all the video will be of this quality, especially while I’m on the road.
[Fair warning: this is my first time doing anything like this and it will probably be a little rough in the beginning…]
If you are a musician, artist, photographer, designer, etc… you’ll be very interested in this new website and database. If you’re an African artist, struggling to get the word out about your work, you should sign up and try this new service. There is no better medium to get noticed for less money than the internet, and this is an application that should do just that for you.
The internet has a way of democratizing information and connectivity. This is the case with a new site, called theInspirit, dedicated to showcasing artistic talent around the globe. The basic intent is to let the true talent bubble to the top, and not let the “industry” control the flow of artistic commerce.
Part of what makes theInspirit a viable place to go and sign up to be a part of the beta is that they are also behind the TalentDatabase. In their own words:
The database serves as a worldwide directory for talent and creativity. Currently the creative class is spread across millions of websites with no discernable structure, nor the ability to search in detail. The TalentDatabase consolidates and categorizes all talent content found on the web into a single location, making it easy for people to find what they are looking for. At this time we are offering you the chance to get the first look at TalentDatabase.com before it is launched publicly.
Now, the inside story here is that I actually know 5 of the people on the team building this new artist network. In fact, I worked with them for a number of years – they’re top notch designers and programmers. I’ve had a chance to sit down and talk with them about the application and will continue to do so – my goal, to make sure there’s a real reason for African artists to take part in their network and become a part of their database.
Memeza (the name is a mashup of the word “meme” + “ZA” for Zambia) is a site that allows people to link to interesting articles about Zambia and then the users vote up the most interesting ones. This is much like Muti does for all of Africa, but on a very country-specific level. It just came to my awareness through Muti (interestingly enough), but there are user’s accounts on it that date back to October 2006.
This is an interesting project for a number of reasons. Primarily, it’s a good proving point to see if content local to a specific African country can catch on and have a significant number of users – enough users to make the content fresh and sticky enough to keep coming back to. Basically, is it a big enough space to have it’s own “fresh web-content” site?
However, there’s a second reason why I’m going to be watching Memeza. I want to see if it moves beyond the tech community and catches on with others. Will it be used mostly by the Zambian diaspora, local wealthy individuals, or the masses?
If anyone knows who put Memeza together, I’d be interested in talking to them.
Last week I had a chance to sit down and have a conference call (Skype chat) with the technology brains behind the latest buzz in the African blogosphere: The Aggregators.
Justin Hartman (Afrigator), Vincent Maher (Amatomu), Neville Newey (Muti) and Matthew Buckland (Amatomu) got together for a half hour to discuss their creations. Having that much brain power pointed in my direction left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable, but they were all nice enough chaps and didn’t make me feel like a complete tech-peasant, for which I thank them. 🙂
Bullet-point takeaways:
Ethan Zuckerman is the 5th in the African Digerati series of interviews. Honestly, I’m amazed with what Ethan has done with technology and what he continues to do – so much of which directly benefits Africans. His line-up of web projects is simply amazing. What isn’t mentioned here is that he founded Geekcorps, a non-profit technology volunteer corps, that creates real tangible technology change on the African continent. He’s also on my “required reading” list of African bloggers.
Blog and/or website:
Theere’s a few of them. My personal blog is “My Heart’s in Accraâ€. I’m deeply involved with BlogAfrica and Global Voices, and I’m the chairman of the non-profit that runs Worldchanging.com.
What do you do:
Heh. I take great pride in the fact that I’ve never had a job… which is to say, I try to work on projects that are so much fun to work on that they don’t feel like work. These days, I work on a wide range of projects that focus on technology in developing nations, and my compensation is sometimes monetary, sometimes less tangible. Over a dozen years ago, I would have told you I was a “software architect†– I helped build Tripod.com, one of the first webhosting sites. Nowadays, my job title at Global Voices is “co-founder and big geekâ€, and my responsibilities include management, fundraising and oversight of our technical architecture.
Tobias Eigen has been on my short-list of “people to talk to” for a couple months now. He has been working to change Africa for the better through the use of technology. That is why I was really happy to get an email from him today sharing some of the newest developments that are going on with his organization, Kabissa.
Kabissa has applied for $500k worth of funding for their new Kabissa 2.0 project with NetSquared. They are talking big ideas. They want to use their knowledge of web-based technology tools to train and help grassroots African organizations grow community, build awareness and facilitate massive change through local tech ambassadors.
I’ve always been a huge believer that technology will be one of the cornerstones for massive change in Africa. It provides the ability to circumnavigate inefficient and out-of-date government and monopolistic institutions. Technology has a way of lowering barriers to change and creating new opportunities for those who really want to see something happen.
Kabissa 2.0 is probably worth funding well beyond the $500k they’re asking for. If they can truly provide basic tools that promote African interaction and encourage growth through technology, then they have my support. I’d like nothing better than to see Africans leading this change in their own local areas.
Show your support for this project, and other projects related to Africa at NetSquared. Africa-related projects:
[Note: This is just a bloggers first take on it, and I freely admit to not having a deep understanding of the reasons why traditional journalistic accreditation is important. Everyone has a right to free speech (or should), so why does this matter?]
Tresblue raises an excellent question in his blog post, “Is Blogging Journalism?”
I believe that blogging is performing a very important role in the new media today. Free of the hierarchy of traditional media and not bound by their rules and constraints, bloggers can be damned scary because they are not, nor can they be controlled.
We first need to define what makes someone a journalist, or what makes the media “the media“. Then we need to decide how a blogger differs from a journalist.
Does it even matter?
I recently attended an event as “press/media”. They wanted me to cover their event because they wanted to reach my readership. Honestly, I couldn’t tell any big difference between myself and the traditional journalists in the room – other than their cameras were bigger.
What is the great benefit of being considered part of an accredited media association?
How about this; why is there any delineation at all between people who write about newsworthy things for money and those who do it for free?
I tend to think we’ll see a lot more of what happened to me. Organizers of shows and large companies don’t care about the accreditation of the writer, they just want to reach a large audience. If you’re a quality blogger, expect to be invited to attend events, just as traditional journalists would be.
I’d like to know answers to these questions just as much as everyone else. I’m going to continue reading Tresblue to see what people over there are saying. A little homework on my part is in seems in order as well. Thoughts?
Afrigator launched today, an excellent new website dedicated to aggregating blog posts from Africa. It joins the ranks of 1-year old Muti, 1-month old Amatomu, and 1-week old Mashada.
Afrigator (clever word play on aggregator) is the product of two stars from the South African blogosphere and tech community, Mike Stopforth and Justin Hartman. I was fortunate enough to have spoken with them about their upcoming launch last week, but didn’t realize just how soon it was coming! So, first of all congrats on the super-fast launch. Another shout-out goes to Mark Forrester on the design, it looks brilliant.
How is it Different?
The first question everyone has to ask is what they are doing differently in order to get market share. Arguably, Muti has the most pan-African attention at this point and Amatomu has the most South African attention.
The first answer is “Channels“. This is the big thing that has been missing and needed to be addressed. Muti has struggled to be more than just a South African aggregator because that’s the part of Africa that has claimed it (plus the domain URL). Amatomu is great for South Africans, but doesn’t tend to reach the greater part of Africa. Amotomu is very new however, and their .com domain name means they might have bigger plans than just South Africa (Vincent?).
Every blogger chooses a country when they sign up. That country then becomes a new channel on Afrigator (brilliantly mechanism. However, they’re missing a big section of the African blogosphere – there needs to be a channel for African diaspora in the US, Europe, Asia, etc…). Readers can then sort the normal Afrigator results by the country they care about hearing from.
Second, the ability to give a 5-point rating to posts. This works much like Muti in that the best content rises to the top. I wonder if they have built into their system an algorithm that tracks the overall quality of specific bloggers? That might be too controversial though.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I’m extremely impressed with Afrigator. They’ve started a great thing here, and I can only see them doing better as time passes.
One thing that I don’t like about what both Amatomu and Afrigator are doing though is that you have to embed their code within your own website. I realize that the data mining from that is a HUGE opportunity for them, but personally I don’t like it. I’d like to see them do measurement on a more non-intrusive basis.
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