A stellar line-up of international speakers will be joining leading African technologists to present at the inaugural Tech4Africa Conference in August this year. The conference gives South African businesses a rare opportunity to learn first hand from local and international speakers about the role that emerging and Web technologies have to play in African business and development.
The event, organised by Technovated, will bring international experience and perspective to the African continent and at the same time expose what Africans are doing with the Web, mobile and other emerging technologies. Tech4Africa is the premier conference and workshop for anyone who wants to understand where technology in Africa is moving.
One of the world’s top thinkers in the Internet space will be giving the keynote speech at the event. Further details will be released shortly. Other confirmed speakers for the event so far include the following
- Dustin Diaz, a user interface engineer at Twitter and author of JavaScript Design Patterns.
- Joe Stump, the former lead architect of digg in San Francisco and co-founder of SimpleGeo
- Matthew Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software that runs millions of Web sites around the world.
- John Resig, creator of the popular javascript library jQuery, a JavaScript tool developer for the Mozilla Corporation, and the author of the book Pro JavaScript Techniques
- Alex Hunter, former Head of Online Marketing for the Virgin Group, and now an independent digital ninja, brand consultant, company adviser, and micro-venture capital investor
- Jonathan Snook, a veteran Canadian web designer and developer, currently working for Yahoo!
- Andy Budd, an internationally renowned interaction and usability expert
- Steve Vosloo, the 21st Century Learning Fellow for the Shuttleworth Foundation
- Barbara Mallinson, founder of Obami, a web-based communication and collaboration platform for use within, and between schools
- Agosta Liko, founder of PesaPal, a mobile payments company in Nairobi, Kenya
- Erik Hersman, the co-founder of Ushahidi, a web application created to map the reported incidents of violence happening during the post-election crisis in Kenya
The conference runs from 12-13 August 2010 at The Forum in Bryanston and pre-event workshops will be held on 10-11 August 2010. The event is targeted at business professionals and technologists from across Africa, from entrepreneurs and start-up owners through to professionals working at large organisations.
Attendees will gain practical, first-hand knowledge about the funding landscape in Africa; what cloud computing, Web 2.0, the mobile Internet and other emerging technologies mean for their businesses and societies; how the most successful African technology and Web businesses are leveraging technology to succeed; which new Web and technology-related business opportunities are emerging in Africa and the rest of the world; and how the Web can help African societies to succeed.
Says Gareth Knight, MD of Technovated: “This is the first conference in South Africa to bring together so many international and local speakers of such high calibre. It is an excellent learning opportunity for any person or organisation with an interest in the African Web – whether as an end-user of the technology, as a technologist working with the technology, or as an entrepreneur or investor active in the African market. An event of this nature has previously only been available to those who could afford to travel to international conferences.”
Registration for the event is open and there are 300 early bird tickets available.
For further information or to register, visit http://tech4africa.com, email [email protected] or call +44 (0) 207 788 1023.