Digital Citizens Indaba 2007 opens this Sunday

Tomorrow I will be flying to Port Elizabeth for the 2nd time in just under a month. This flight has been booked by the gracious hosts from the Journalism and Media studies department at Rhodes University, who are the organisers of this conference as well as the annual Highway Africa conference. Sadly I will not have time to visit family and friends in Uitenhage because we’re all going directly to Grahamstown for the opening drinks on Saturday evening.

This is the updated programme for DCI 07. Please note that it is subject to change.

The main conference will be held at the Barratt Complex in Prince Alfred Street on Rhodes University campus.Registration will take place in the foyer of the African Media Matrix building on Rhodes University campus. Click here for a map.

SATURDAY 8 SEPTEMBER

Registration opens in the African Media Matrix building, Rhodes Campus.
6pm: Please join us for welcoming drinks at Olde 65 in New Street, Grahamstown.

SUNDAY 9 SEPTEMBER

8-9am: Registration in the AMM building, Rhodes campus

9-10am: Opening and keynote address
- Opening by Prof Fackson Banda (Acting Head School of Journalism and Media Studies, RU)
- Keynote address: Emergence of the Digital Citizen – Ndesanjo Macha (Blogger and writer, Tanzania)

10-11.30am: Fractured Identities — the African Blogosphere
- Nixon Nyikadzino (Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Zimbabwe)
- Daudi Were (Kenyan Blogs Webring, Kenya)
- Ansbert Ngurumo (Kiswahili blogger, Tanzania)

11.30-11.45am Tea at Barratt Complex

12-1pm Why I Blog (and Things that Happen Because I Do)
- Bob Sankofa (Photoblogger, Tanzania)
- Remmy Nweke (Blogger, Nigeria)
- Khaya Dlanga (YouTube Vlogger, South Africa)

1-2pm Lunch at Nelson Mandela Dining Hall, Rhodes campus

2-3pm Challenges of Content: The South African Experience
- Riaan Wolmarans (Mail & Guardian Online, South Africa)
- Renee Moodie (Independent Online, South Africa)
- Carly Ritz (The Times, South Africa)
- DeWaal Steyn (Die Burger, South Africa)

2-3pm Challenges of Content: The African Perspective
- Ore Somolu (APC, Nigeria)
- Elles van Gelder (AfricaNews & Voices of Africa, The Netherlands)
- Anna Badimo (LinuxChix, South Africa)

3-3.15pm Tea at Barratt Complex

3.15-4.30pm Money and Marketing
- Laurian Clemence (Wibble, South Africa)
- Matthew Buckland (M&G Online, Online Publishers Association, South Africa)
- Ramon Thomas (NETucation, South Africa)

3.15-4.30pm Cyberactivism & Legal Lessons
- Guy Berger (School of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa)
- Habtamu Dugo (Ethiopia/ Blogger)
- Brenda Burrell (Kubatana, Zimbabwe)

4.30-5.30pm Web 2.0 and the Media
- Vincent Maher (Amatomu, M&G Online, South Africa)
- Mohamed Nanabhay (Al Jazeera, Qatar)

The Digital Citizens Indaba blog has been dead since the last conference and I’m hoping that they will follow in the footsteps of the TED blog which has been posting updates on the progress of the speakers and TED Fellows since TEDGlobal 2007.

Digital Citizens Indaba 2007 announced at Rhodes University

My friend Henry Addo notified me of this event via the African Bloggers Group. The Digital Citizens Indaba, which is a Blogging Conference, will take place again this year from 9-11 September 2007.

Last year I was a speaker at last year’s event. There was a lot of talk about blogging being used to for activism and the now stale debate on blogging vs journalism. There were several international speakers like Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices and Emeka Okafor, program director of the TEDGlobal 2007 conference. There was a very small focus on blogging for business and so I sincerely hope they will bring more of that into it this year. If we really want to make an impact with blogging we need to get more companies in Africa to use it as a tool.

On Tuesday this week I did another one of my blogging seminars for Douglas Green, a very big wine and spirits company in SA with distribution in Europe and America. They are reeling with possibilities based on the Stormhoek success. And I helped them see these possibilities more clearly.

Perhaps the most important thing we need to do is to help individual Bloggers , especially those from other African countries, make money or generate an income or get some consulting work for themselves from their blogs. It certainly works for me here in South Africa. And I can say once again that my experience at TEDGlobal in Tanzania has taught me how fortunate we really are here in South Africa. My friend and mentor, Tony Roocroft, makes more then R1 million per annum from over 100 websites even with the high prices of Internet and broadband costs.

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