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Loading ...One of my favorite bloggers at the moment drew my attention to an event that is happening in Nairobi, Kenya called Barcamp Nairobi ‘08.
“BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.”
First off I am just so stoked to see so much interesting and dynamic social media in Africa. Like the cell phone I think it has the potential to revolutionize Africa in ways that we can’t even imagine.
Besides my general excitment about this I find what is listed as some of the potential topics to be very telling of where the attention is in Africa. The topics include:
- Local mapping (Open Streetmap, Green Map, etc.)
- Blogging tools and trends
- Mobile phone apps (Android in Africa, FrontlineSMS and RapidSMS)
- Using Google’s App Engine for building web and mobile services
- I’d love to hear from some of the EPROM guys that worked with Nathan Eagle
- OS curriculum for universities
- Studying users (mobile and web)
- Building into social networks
What interests me here are the focus on mapping and mobile devices. It is true that these are interseting elements even for those of us in Europe and America. But, think of this. There are huge amounts of mobile devices in Africa, far more then land line phones or computers and the presence of mobile devices in Africa is growing in leaps and bounds.
If the net goes truly mobile, at the very least the truly “informational” elements - like maps, wikipedias and other useful sources of information then we can expect a leap in knowledge. Suddenly making all of this information readily available to the average Joe in Africa could have consequences that will change things.
I wait with bated breathe.
Filed under: Abraham Harrison LLC
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