Before we start:Abidjan is the capital of Côte d'Ivoire, located on the west coast of the "United States of Africa". Babi is to Abidjan what Big Apple is to New York or Jozi to Johannesburg.
BarCamp Babi 2010 will be a three day event held on March 5th through the 7th of this year 2010. BarCamp Abidjan 2010, also known as Barcamp Babi, will be a FREE event for anyone who is interested in using their skills, talent, vision, rive and financial resources to improve the production, dissemination, and monetization of content from and about Africa's economic, financial, cultural and social life. The first Barcamp Abidjan in 2009 gave birth to a Côte d'Ivoire-based social entreprise, Akendewa which is producing this second BarCamp .
BarCamps all over the world have brought together individuals and organizations to share ideas, passion, drive, ambitions and, eventually, collaborate on various projects and businesses.
Expected panelists and speakers (yet to be confirmed) include Google, Paul Sika, Jean Patrick Ehouman, Ameyah Debrah, E-tranzact, VIPnet, Web4Africa, Gwen Marshall, Radio Jam, etc.
There will be sessions organized by various Google representatives, presentations by lead speakers as well as other breakout sessions on various topics and interests as put forth by the attendees.
Register/RSVP today at the BarCamp Babi website. Help spread the word about BarCamp Abidjan 2010 by grabbing badges, and show yoursupport by donating to help cover costs. You may also contact the BarCamp Abidjan team through its website for sponsorship opportunities.
If you are interested in organizing a breakout session, let us know, especially if you have special needs. BarCamp Babi 2010 is supported by Google Africa, Web4Africa, Chembe Ventures, Foundation, Ushahidi, Web4Africa, who all pledged their support . Our media partners are IvoireMuzik,Ivoire Blog,Avenue 225, Fratmat.info, Koaci.com, Bassam fm (some to be confirmed). Our technical partners include VIPnet and Assistweb.
See you there!
Interested in becoming a partner? Contact Frederic Tape at tapefr(at)gmail.com or Edith Brou at edithbrou(at)gmail.com
An Akendewa production.
I was able to sit down with Jean-Patrick Ehouman and talk about BarCamp Abidjan and what he is doing as part of the team behind the Africa Startup Challenge. I was unable to attend the barcamp, but Jean-Patrick told me that it went great. People were very excited once they understood the format. That happened to be one of the biggest initial challenges was that people were used to the traditional conference format. This is a common problem everywhere in the world as people have to grasp that they organize the conference themselves and that everyone is an equal. After about an hour or so, people really took to this in Abidjan and Jean-Patrick said that one of the best moments was a when a PhD student gave a talk on cyber criminality.
Of course, there were obstacles. The worst one came when two days before the event, the sponsors pulled out. This led to having to find a new venue immediately that ended up being at the poly technical school. In turn, this made for a great many students being part of the barcamp. But it wasn't just limited to them. A number of journalist showed up as well as some Germans and French who happened to be in the country. Overall, it was a young and mostly male crowd though.
As to media coverage, those journalist didn't seem to make any noise as there was virtually no coverage of the event in Côte D'Ivoire, following the event. It was until days later when the BBC wrote about the event (in English I might add) that the local Ivorian journalists picked up on what had happened and decided to cover it. This got the ear of the ICT Minister in Côte d'Ivoire who is apparently on Facebook and contacted Jean-Patrick on friendly and encouraging terms.
As to the future of barcamps in Côte d'Ivoire, they want more and they want them now. They would love to organize another in November, but there are some rather tricky elections happening then for the current president who has been in office four years too long. But, quite possibly in February, they'll have another either in Abidjan or in the capital of Yamoussoukro. I wish them well and hope that I'll be able to attend any of these in the future.
One small note I'd like to add is that if anyone translates this article, pay attention to the fact that the video is on dotSUB, so you can write a translation of the video in the target language there and embed that version along with the text version here so that everything gets translated. This is the first video on BarCamp Africa to have this treatment and we hope to use it more in the future to encourage even further cross-lingual communication.
John James, a BBC multimedia journalist based in Abidjan (known as @ourmaninafrica on Twitter) posted a nice audio clip that he made at BarCamp Abidjan on July 25th. In it he briefly interviews a few of the organizers and attendees, and touches upon some of the challenges faced by web developers and internet users in general in West Africa. It seems that one of the reasons for countries like Côte d'Ivoire to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of internet technology and web innovation is the bad reputation they have because of the infamous internet scams that come from that region.
Listen to the rest of the discussion below and delve in to a linguistic melting pot of British English, West African English, and West African French. Also, as a reminder, you can upload mp3 files to Maneno to display as embedded soundclips like the one below.
