Barcamp

I had the good fortune to participate in three fascinating events this month, all with overlapping themes that matter to Kabissa but taking different approaches and targeting different communities. If you were at one of these events, I'd like to invite you to check out the other ones and look for collaboration opportunities. Please also join Kabissa, add your organizations working in Africa to the Kabissa directory and introduce yourself in the groups.

Despite the World Cup distractions (or perhaps fuelled in part by World Cup fever) 250 people have gathered this weekend at iHub for Barcamp Nairobi 2010. The event is being streamed live, as well as being live-tweeted via the #barcampnairobi hashtag. 

When we launched the NetSquared conference in 2005, our premise was simple.  We set out to produce an event that brought together people working in the public and private sector who were interested in the potential of web-based tools and strategies to transform the way entrepreneurial nonprofits and social innovators operate.  The conference, held at Cisco’s headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley, brought together around 300 people from foundations, corporate developer networks, and entrepreneurial social innovators working at the intersection of technology and social–change

This weekend, Germany is celebrating the 20 year anniversary of German reunification. A big 4-day event is kicking off today with 7.5 meter tall giant marionettes at the Berlin town hall. Meanwhile, a huge group of German social media enthusiasts and NGOs are marking the anniversity in Berlin with Social Camp 2009, a two-day "un-conference" where the agenda will be set only at the start of the first day. I will be participating, and am greatly looking forward to the experience. It will be great to connect with all the amazing participants and to learn how Germans do barcamps!

I am also looking forward to seeing how Kabissa fits into this German social media "scene", and to inviting people here interested in using social media to "Connect for Africa" to join and help shape the Connect Deutschland group on Kabissa. If you are in Germany and interested in Kabissa, please contact me! Also, you are most welcome to join Kabissa (membership is free) and consider following @kabissa on twitter and joining the Facebook Kabissa Page.

So far the event and website appears to be very German language oriented, so I will do my best to share the learnings here for the benefit of the broader Kabissa community. Some useful links are below to get started:

• Very compelling and well produced video of Social Camp Berlin 2008 on vimeo
• Follow along on Twitter @socialcamp09
• Participants list for Saturday and Sunday
• NGOs participants list for Saturday and Sunday

Bar Camp Ghana will be held in Accra on December 22nd

Startups Nigeria announces Bar Camp Ghana on the 22nd December 2008 and Bar Camp Nigeria will be held in January 2009.  Full details will follow but meanwhile here is some preliminary information.