Conference Schedule

#t4a

Dr. Barry Devlin will position and discuss current exciting trends in big data, modern technology and emerging applications, including the evolution of information in business, business imperatives for information today, technological advances in information processing and storage and a new architecture for information in business.

Barry Devlin (Independent analyst and a founder of the Data Warehousing industry)

#T4Anewinfo

User experience design has come of age. From once humble beginnings, tales are now told of mighty designers, heroically claiming their seats at the strategy tables of businesses worldwide.

Or so we are led to believe.

We're not so sure. Who are these conquering heroes? Where are their breakthrough products? And as we all march headlong towards a more distributed web, is anyone really ready for the challenges of designing the multi-channel experience of mobile, tablet and TV?

In their talk ‘March of the UX Designers’, Cennydd and James will explore the past, present and future of user experience design and along the way expose the lessons they have learned in bringing the UX mindset into organisations both big and small.

Cennydd Bowles, James Box (Clearleft)

#T4AUX

Simone Brunozzi (Amazon)

Cloud computing has become synonymous with emerging technology, and is close to becoming a throwaway term for most. So is it relevant to Africa? Is it useful on a high latency, low bandwidth, geographically disperseed contintent? And most importantly, should I still keep my server room!?

#T4Aafricancloud

Rian will explore some of the main causes of ineffective software development, and discuss practical recommendations on how to improve team structures and development processes to build high quality software that users care about, want to use, and that therefore makes more money for the business. Rian will cover how to work with developers, how to ensure everyone gets input into the roadmap without it becoming chaos, and how to make sure that the business benefits are clearly articulated and communicated.

Rian van der Merwe (Kalahari.com)

#T4Abetterproducts

This talk will examine the state of Africa’s technology and what the continent can do to climb the technology pyramid where creativity rules. In this pyramid, the creators of fundamental technology seat higher up, the technology upstream, while those that consume are at the bottom, the downstream. But irrespective of the efforts of those at the bottom, they get only marginal benefits from technology. This talk will share a redesign and how to close the missing links as Africa overcomes the barriers in participating in industries like microelectronics and nanotechnology which remain drivers of global commerce and modern culture.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe (Johns Hopkins University)

#T4Amicro

Adam Duvander

We all know that mapping and geolocation is essential for mobile apps, but how do you go about doing it, what are the best tools, and what are the limitations for Africa?

t4a-mappingafrica

Luke McKend (CEO, Google South Africa)

The title says it all! Google is a massive, global company dominant in almost every market it enters. So what is Google doing in Africa? And what are the plans, products, opportunities and offerings we're likely to see in the not too distant future?

t4a-google

The amount of data is exploding, both on the web and in the enterprise. Consequently, the world is rapidly changing from a place where you can learn something about everything, to a place where you can learn everything about something. In this session we’ll learn (with demos) how to mine this data, derive new kinds of information and build new kinds of data products and economies using Open Source technologies like Apache Hadoop and NoSQL.

Steve Watt (HP)

#T4Abigdata

#t4a

Just how important is mobile to business, what are the trends, why should businesses be doing anything about it, and what can they actually do?

Nic Harambalous (Motribe), Jason Xenopoulos (Native), Brett St. Clair (Google)

#T4Amobi

Robert Nyman (Mozilla)

Internet is an enormously important factor for democracy and empowering people. This talk will go through a number of new opportunities we get with HTML5 and what we can do to make the web even richer.

#T4Aopenweb

Everyone knows that mobile in Africa will surpass desktop PC's, but what are the practical examples and success stories that give context to the changing landscape?

Gustav Praekelt (Praekelt Digital), Sébastien Lacour (Powertime)

#T4Amobi-apps

Vincent Maher (Motribe)

Description tbcMotroibe has grown from passion, an idea, and a small two man startup, into one of the fastest growing mobile plays in Africa. Yet the technology behind it is built for lowest common denominator devices, for use all across Africa - not your usual smartphone app. Vincent will go into how they built it, what the gotcha's were, and what they're doing to future proof it.

#T4Amotribe

Two great hopes offer massive opportunity to the growth of continent. The first is technology. The second is access to information in Africa. This panel, sponsored by iMaverick Africa’s first daily tablet newspaper, explores the juncture between technology and freedom and how the two can bolster the emergence of Africa’s rising economy.

Chair: Styli Charalambous, (iMaverick); Ambassador Peter Tejler (Sweden); Stephen Grootes (EWN, iMaverick and Daily Maverick); Ferial Haffajjee (City Press); Nic Dawes (Mail & Guardian)

#T4Aimaverick

Vinny & Gareth give a no holds barred, from the trenches insight into the thought, madness, method, ups and downs of risking it all to build something you can be proud of. This session will deal with the simple practicalities, and hopefully leave philosophy to the politicians.

Vinny Lingham (Yola), Gareth Knight (TECH4AFRICA)

#T4Arisk

We ask our international speakers to put their heads together and talk about what they are seeing, and why it's important. One of the best sessions in 2010, we've brought this back and added a few more folks, to get the thoughts, views, concerns and aspirations of the speakers that have travelled from far and wide to share with us. Not to be missed.

#T4Aclosing