The BarCamp movement continues to gain ever more momentum in a local context, and although there have been BarCamps with an Africa focus in the Silicon Valley and UK, there has yet to be a pan-African BarCamp taking place on the continent. This changes with the staging of the inaugural BarCamp Africa 2010 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, June 4-7.
Abidjan shares land borders (and thus easy and cheap transportation) with five countries, it has an excellent international airport and is a cosmopolitan world capital that can provide the necessary facilities. The event will be organized by the experienced local groups of Akendewa in Côte d'Ivoire and GhanaThink in neighboring Ghana, with additional collaboration from Maneno.
The year 2010 is an incredibly important year to have this event as it is marks the 50th anniversary of independence for many African nations in addition to Côte d'Ivoire, including: Cameroon, Togo, Mali, Senegal, DR Congo, Somalia, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, CAR, Congo, Gabon, Nigeria, and Mauritania. A celebration and meeting between the people of these nations at BarCamp Africa will allow them to share the progress of their nations as well as exchange ideas and work together on what lies ahead for the future, looking back at the last 50 years, preparing for the next 50. Additionally, this marks the first year that the World Cup will be held on the African continent and the BarCamp will take place the weekend before the official start of the Cup.
The official main site is www.barcampafrica.org with 2010.barcampafrica.org serving for this year's event. The website pages are available in: French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Place a Badge on your site. Follow along on Twitter. Fan the event on Facebook. Register at Eventbrite. But most of all, attend and be part of the first event to bring together Africa and bridge the ideological and language divides.
BarCamp Africa is currently look for forward-thinking sponsors who realize the talented people and vast potential in Africa. Contact us if you would like to be part of this historic event.
On December 22, 2008, over a hundred young Ghanaians met in Accra for BarCamp Ghana '08 to exchange ideas on entrepreneurship, innovation and development for a rising Ghana. This summer, the conversations moved to Washington, DC on July 25, 2009 where BarCamp Diaspora '09 brought together the African Diaspora to exchange ideas on doing business in Africa.
This December 21st in Accra, the BarCamp Ghana team, made up of passionate young Ghanaians, presents BarCamp Ghana '09, under the theme "Leadership for our times - cultivating change makers". The event will take place on December 21, 2009 from 8am - 6pm at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) campus at 20 Aluguntuguntu Street in East Legon, Accra.
A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering where attendees meet for discussions, demos and networking. Unlike a typical conference, at a BarCamp everyone is both a speaker and a participant. The content is provided by all attendees based on their interests, unified under the theme. This year, the focus is youth in leadership and how the youth can create and make change in various ways in various disciplines for the betterment of Ghana. The event would highlight different success stories involving change-making youth. Change makers and youth leaders are strongly encouraged to attend.
BarCamp Ghana ’09 is a FREE event for anyone who is interested in using their skills, talent, and resources to benefit Africa. BarCamp Diaspora gave birth to a Ghana-focused healthcare NGO, REACH-Ghana, which will be presenting its story since its inception in July. BarCamps all over the world have brought together individuals and organizations to collaborate on various projects and businesses.
Panelists and speakers will include Patrick Awuah of Ashesi University, Estelle Sowah of Google Ghana, George Minta of Empretec, Hajo Birthelmer of Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), amongst others. There will be sessions organized by Google representatives and as well as other breakout sessions on various topics and interests as put forth by the attendees. If you are creating or making change in your own small way in your community, consider sending the team a note about your project or business to info at barcampghana dot org. Some of these stories will be mentioned at the BarCamp and all the information will be on the BarCamp Ghana website.
Register/RSVP today at the BarCamp Ghana website. Help spread the word about BarCamp Ghana '09 by grabbing badges and support by donating to help cover costs. You may also contact the BarCamp Ghana 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 Ghana 2009 is sponsored by the GhanaThink Foundation, Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), Ushahidi, Web4Africa, etc. Our media partner is CITI 97.3 FM.
See you there!
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.
After the success of BarCamp Ghana '08, I dreamt of a similar event in the US. It took a while to bring the planning and organization together and last weekend, the dream came true in the form of BarCamp Diaspora '09. The event, themed 'Investing our talent where it counts', took place at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins' University in Washington, DC on July 25. BarCamp Diaspora was a free event that brought together people interested in using their skills, talent, and resources to benefit Africa. The event went on smoothly and judging from the feedback of the attendees, I can call it a success as well.
BarCamp Diaspora was a free event which had about 100 registered attendees and about 70 people showed up to the event. It was 'tweeted' through Twitter, you can search #bcdiaspora for related tweets. The event was also streamed live online through ustream which had viewers in Ghana, Burkina Faso, the UK and the US, amongst others. These were put in place to allow people outside the venue to participate in the event which worked. Questions and comments were submitted through these media which were communicated to the BarCampers present. One attendee volunteered to record video for the whole event and many attendees took digital photos. Since, we couldn't get the funds to support a longer event, BarCamp Diaspora took place between 12 and 6pm (as advertised) with a short snack break (plantain chips, donuts - bofrot, atsomo, water and soft drinks).
The keynote speaker for the BarCamp was Ashifi Gogo, CEO of Sproxil.com and co-founder of MPedigree.org and a 2009 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. He spoke about various ventures he had been a part of (including Odadee.org) and his present project which is fighting counterfeit drugs. Ashifi is a PhD Innovation Fellow at Dartmouth College and the service is taking off in Nigeria and Ghana. He also talked about the challenges and intricacies involved with doing business in Africa and mentioned mobile communication, microfinance and big agriculture as what's hot in Africa at the moment. Ashifi mentioned that there were many opportunities back home and advised those who wanted to return to Africa to pursue enterprises or businesses ('do something') to have 5 year work plans and save before returning. He also talked about having friends there and keeping in touch in classmates. He stated how his colleague from his alma mater Presec had now become the deputy minister of information. I loved Ashifi's presentation, it was educational, funny, and told his story really well.
In order to foster the BarCamp spirit, we had zero panels; only breakout sessions. A lot of sessions were suggested and we ended up with 9 sessions over 3 time-slots, hence 3 ongoing sessions at each time. They were Microfinance & Mobile technology (Derek Koranteng & Benjamin Lyon), Healthcare in Ghana (Maame Sampah), Innovative technologies for rural communities & Mobile apps (Molly Mattessich & Jackie Adhiambo), Creativity & the Arts (Seyram Avle), NGO's (Aida Manu), Gender, education and technology (Henry Barnor), Scientific research in Africa (Akua Akyaa Nkrumah), Using technology to connect communities (Raquel Wilson), & Blogging & Social media (Jemila Abdulai). Most of the sessions were round-table style and ensured participation from as many as attendees as possible. These sessions were tweeted as well and notes were taken, which will be provided for the public soon. The brainstorming and discussions in these sessions were great and gave birth to many ideas and promoted projects/businesses that were working on those ideas. Attendees learnt about blogging, and many organizations and projects which are fostering African development.
The organizing team took care of the opening and closing remarks, as well as the agenda building session which helped decide the breakout sessions. The opening session talked about the idea behind BarCamp Diaspora - bringing together intellectual and enterprising minds to dialogue and discuss African development in whatever sector or discipline they were interested in. The agenda building session allowed attendees to share what issues were most important to them and which discussions would dominate the business of the day. The closing remarks summed up the day's agenda, the ideas generated and the need to consolidate the thoughts, ideas and solutions for future use. The plan is to draft some policy papers around some of the discussions to be presented to various organizations who can push for their implementation. One attendee, Kofi Ntim, had a lot of helpful information about receiving funding for start-ups and enterprises and he gave a short presentation at the end of the BarCamp.
Most of the attendees were Ghanaians, especially those who lived in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. This was a result of the network that the organizing team had available. Unlike BarCamp Ghana, the ratio of women to men was much better and ladies represented in full force. There was a good mix of students (both in undergrad and grad programs) and professionals. It obviously showcased a youth movement, since more than 75% of the attendees were under 30. Barack Obama called on young Africans to take charge and some of them were at BarCamp Diaspora. I don't remember anyone mentioning Barack Obama at the event even though we were right in his backyard (DC) and he had just been to Ghana. Like one attendee said, the attendees were busy talking about what they could do for Ghana/Africa and not thinking of what Obama or the West needed to do.
Many thanks to the organizing team for the putting this together. The GhanaThink Foundation was the main sponsor and provided funds for event material and food and drinks. This allowed us to make the event free. JHU-SAIS' African Studies program sponsored by enabling us to use the Kenney Auditorium, four classrooms and other spaces for free. Judging by the amounts we were quoted while looking for a venue at the start of planning the BarCamp, JHU-SAIS did us a huge favour. In the future, we'll like to enlist more forward-thinking organizations like GhanaThink as organizers & sponsors so as to keep the BarCamp event free, increase the network from which the attendees come and provide more for the attendees. There is still a lot of room for improvement, with note-taking, better live-streaming, documenting and promoting ideas, etc.
When you are having trouble getting people into different sessions to stay with the schedule, it may not a bad thing. It may be because attendees are busy networking and discussing future plans, which takes a little longer than short breaks. We hope to see many ventures and initiatives started out of this event. One lady who needed help with a business plan sat Kofi Ntim down to get as much information as she could, that makes for fulfilling and valuable time spent. If your attendees are fulfilled, then your work is fulfilling. Thanks to all our organizers, sponsors, our volunteers, our attendees and our broadcasters. Tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend. It's time to move. Less talk, more action. Let's begin to invest our talents where they count.
Culled from MIghTy African's blog
[Originally posted at Project Diaspora]
BarCamp Diaspora is coming up fast. For those of you living in our near DC sign up and join the conversation! Admission is free... What a DEAL!
When: July 25
Where: Kenney Auditorium, School of Advanced International Studies - Johns Hopkins
University, 1740 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Why: Investing Our Talents Where it Counts!
Who: Organized by GhanaThink
I was fortunate enough to have a chance to talk to Ato not only about BarCamp Diaspora, the first Barcamp intended to bring together Ghanians living in the diaspora and people interested in Africa, but also what it took to put on GhanaThink's first effort: BarCamp Ghana. Barcamp Diaspora is not about a keynote speech and big name speakers but instead about Ghanians who are doing interesting and innovative things worth discussion. It is for anyone who is interested in using their skills, talent, and resources to benefit Africa. Which pretty much means anyone who is interested and has something to contribute to the conversation is welcome.
If you are interested in attending, Registation is FREE and you can sign up at the Barcamp Diaspora EventBright page.
Remember these events are only as good as the participants who engage with them. If you are planning to attend be ready to organize a breakout session, and be a part of what will make this Barcamp the best one yet! What to expect as Barcamp Breakout Organizer
These great folks all contributed to making BarCamp Ghana a great success and setting the bar for the next team. Plus check out your BarCamp Diaspora organizers! Be sure and let them know about your ideas and be ready to have an experience you won't forget!
Henry Barnor, Nii Simmonds, Ato Ulzen-Appiah, Shirley Somuah, Henry Addo, Kwesi Smith, Ashifi Gogo, Emmanuel Akrong, Worlali Senyo, Eugene Kofi Tandoh
Ato Ulzen-Appiah, Henry Barnor, Reginald Amoa, Seyram Avle, Christine Yieleh Chireh, Kobina Aidoo, Kwabena Amporful, Julia Mensah, Emmanuel Mensah, Abena Sackey, Nana Yaw Kwadade, Denise Twum, Emmanuel Akrong
On December 22, 2008, over a hundred young Ghanaians met in Accra for BarCamp Ghana '08 to exchanged ideas on entrepreneurship, innovation and development for a rising Ghana. This summer, the conversations move to Washington, DC to bring together the African Diaspora to exchange ideas on doing business in Africa.
Join us at BarCamp Diaspora '09, under the theme "Investing our talent where it counts".
When: July 25, 2009 from 12pm - 6pm
Where: Kenney Auditorium, School of Advanced International Studies - Johns Hopkins
University
1740 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
You may participate online at the conference website if you are not close to the Washington DC area.
A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering where attendees meet for discussions, demos and networking. Unlike a typical conference, at a BarCamp everyone is both a speaker and a participant. The content is provided by all attendees based on their interests, unified under the theme.
BarCamp Diaspora ’09 is a FREE event for anyone who is interested in using their skills, talent, and resources to benefit Africa. It will provide a great opportunity for the African Diaspora to network and collaborate on projects.
Register/RSVP today at the BarCamp Diaspora website
http://www.barcampghana.org/barcampdiaspora09/register
Help spread the word about BarCamp Diaspora '09 by grabbing badges and support us by donating to keep the participation costs low. You may also contact us for sponsorship opportunities.
See you there!
For more info on this exciting event, visit the BarCamp Diaspora website, BarCamp Ghana Twitter, or the Facebook event.
Please support this event by using one of the badges here as your facebook profile picture.
Check out our video interview with Nii Simmonds, who discusses the upcoming BarCamp Ghana in Accra on December 22nd, 2008. Simmonds, who is a well-known African blogger and a sustainable business consultant, is one of the main organizers of BarCamp Ghana. BarCamp Ghana will feature keynote speakers Estelle Sowah of BusyInternet and software entrepreneur ("Bill Gates of Ghana") Herman Chinery-Hesse as well as many grassroots sessions.
