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 attendees.
When: 27 June 2009
Where: Swaziland
Blog: www.barcampswaziland.org
BarCamp Swaziland is a one day event to provide a platform for technology practitioners in Swaziland to share and learn in an open environment.
§ Encourage local technology capacity building by sharing best practices and building partnerships within the technology field
§ Identify technology interests and trends in Swaziland
§ Expose youth to technology and technology providers by involving them in the conference
§ Provide a platform and opportunity to test the capacity of mobile phones for mobile registration and real-time, international mobile reporting
The logistics for the first BarCamp Swaziland will be focused on using mobile phones and access. One of our goals of this BarCamp is to explore how effective mobile phones are for outreach, registration, reporting, and data collection. Please edit the information below to add/comment on ideas - we are open and need your contributions to make this effort successful!
Mobile Outreach: The traditional way of inviting participants to a conference is through a local newspaper advertisement in the loca papers, the Swazi Times or The Swazi Observer. While we still may employ this method to ensure adequate outreach, BarCamp Swaziland will embrace mobile-based outreach techniques such as SMS and mobile access to Facebook.
Mobile Registration: BarCamp Swaziland proposes to register participants using mobile phone by: 1) one SMS message from a mobile number will indicate registration information 2) payment will be accepted with a mobile to mobile airtime transfer via SMS. In other words, users will pay for the BarCamp Swaziland registration with airtime! The airtime collected will be redistributed to our youth mobile reporters to alleviate SMS costs while covering the conference. We have selected mobile registration as our primary means so that registration is more convenient, rather than deposting funds into a bank account (which incurs additional charges) or paying in person (which requires travel).
Mobile Reporting: Real-time, international reporting will exclusively be done using mobile potentially using following, and other, platforms. Please help us flesh out ideas for mobile reporting below:
- MXit
- Mobile Facebook via data connection or SMS messaging
- Microblogging platforms: Twitter via data collection or Twe2.com using SMS
- Other multimedia platforms? Flickr, Twitpic, Qik, Zoopy?
- We used shozu at MobileActive08: lets you upload photos, video and text to a number of the above social media sites from a single on-phone client (www.shozu.com)
We would like to engage youth at this conference, particularly rural youth, at this BarCamp. Ideas for the participation include:
Please email jennifer@youthassets.org if you would like to assist in working with bloggers/youth.
If you know of anyone who would like to be a partner/sponsor the event, please contact Jennifer Sly at jennifer@youthassets.org
Please use the tag #barcampswaz for content related to this event
Blog: http://www.barcampswaziland.org
Facebook: Group "BarCamp Swaziland" http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=68541247809
Twitter: @barcampswaz or http://www.twitter.com/barcampswaz
Katrina Heppler www.envisiongood.tv
Shara Karasic www.expertgeneralist.com