Now in its Third Year, Tech4Africa Hits Johannesburg Next Month

Now in its third year, Tech4Africa is a premier mobile, web and emerging technology event held in Johannesburg on October 31-November 1 at The Indaba Hotel, Gauteng.

The theme is “Unlocking the next billion consumers” and sessions will be focused around mobile and content, the enterprise opportunity, entrepreneurship and financing, social business and innovation.

The Developer Day and Hackathon on the kick off day includes three tracks: a day on Agile software development, a Hackathon with sessions on Ruby on Rails, Python, Raspberry Pi, PhP etc., as well as workshops for social media marketers on apps ecosystem and monetization.  

Keynote speakers include IBM's Tom Rosemalia and Ralph Simon of Mobilium, with other speakers being Amolo Ng'weno, MD of Digital Divide Data in Kenya; Neal Ford, Director, Software Architect and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks; Vérone Mankou, CEO of Way-C in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Emma Kaye, CEO of Bozza, Josh Adler, social entrepreneur and others.

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Now in its Third Year, Tech4Africa Hits Johannesburg Next Month

Support "Founders Less Than Three:" Funny, Sexy Novel About Startups

Founders Less Than Three is a funny, sexy novel about 10 start-ups with 5 CEO girls, 5 CEO guys and their race for funding and fun.

The author? Boston-based Halley Suitt Tucker who doesn't think that there are enough entrepreneurs starting companies and creating jobs.  Especially women entrepreneurs. 

The novel is a funny, sexy story about a Boston-based accelerator where female and male founders and their teams fight it out to make their start-up company the next big thing.

It's a book with solid entrepreneurial advice, adventures, laughs, love and all the twists and turns starting a business involves, as they race towards their demo day, when the teams show off their start-up ideas and see who gets the best deal.  

Halley says, "I especially want more women to become entrepreneurs because I think they are well suited to the unpredictable path a new business usually takes and I want people to learn the lessons of entrepreneuring via a novel, not a business book, and not a textbook."

Her book aims to inspire female and male entrepreneurs alike and make them all say, "I can do that!"

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Support "Founders Less Than Three:" Funny, Sexy Novel About Startups

PR Summit: Who Owns the Message? PR or Social Media

The PR Summit is an all day pow-wow now in its third year. The August 27 event held in San Francisco will take on a wide range of topics from discussing PR for Startups & Early Stage Companies to the dynamics between social media and more traditional PR.

The morning kick-off panel will discuss how to blend traditional media outreach with social media tools with Elliot Tomaeno from The Morris + King Company, Kym McNicholas from PandoDaily.com, Ricky Yean from Crowd Booster, Mike Barash with Knock Twice and Robert Scoble.

I'm on a panel entitled: Battlefield 2.0 - Social Media versus PR (Who Owns the Message?), with Y’Anad Burrell from Glass House Communications, Harry McCracken, Fred Bateman, PRSA's Gerard Francis Corbett and Teresa Rodriguez.

Bad Marketing or Bad Timing will discuss how companies can avoid failure in crisis? Cathy Brooks moderates the panel with Peter Delevett from SJ Mercury News, Venture Beat's Jolie Odell, Jason Johnson from Founders Den and Abraham Hyatt from ReadWriteWeb.

 ROI, Metrics, Measurement, & Engagement panel will be moderated by Alastair Goldfisher from Reuters. Panelists include Murray Newlands, Connie Zheng, Oliver Starr and Jiyan Wei.

Ben Parr and Kim Bardakian take on winning pitches: turning your idea into a national news story.

Keynote addresses include Michael Tchong with Ubercool: “Social Revolution: A good week for crowdsourcing” and Porter Gale on the "3 Degrees of Separation." There will be a few workshops as well scattered into the mix and a fireside chat with Brian Solis and Kara Swisher.

PR Summit: Who Owns the Message? PR or Social Media

Over the Canadian Border: A Bug Jacket You Ask?

As I watched the map on the miniature TV screen in front of me and saw the plane flying over Washington State, I thought to myself how little experience I had with the America's Pacific Northwest.

I drove across country when I moved to California and went the northern route, so took in Idaho, Oregon and Washington State on the way, yet it still feels like I barely know this part of the world.

When I lived in Boston, it seemed like my ex-husband and I took off nearly every weekend to explore some New England town we hadn't yet seen. Sometimes, we'd close our eyes while pointing to our car map and see where our fingers landed. "Cool," we'd say in unison, "we haven't been there, let's go," and he'd put the key in the ignition as I began to map out our route. (no iPad, no laptop, no cell phone - just a paper map in a 10 year old Chevy stationwagon I bought from my grandfather for $500).

On the screen in front of me, the digital plane moved further north and over the Washington state board. I had this curious moment as I realized I was heading to three places I had never seen in Canada within a two week period. Given how often I return to destinations I know well over and over again, visiting new cities and towns always bring me wow moments, something I never tire of.

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Over the Canadian Border: A Bug Jacket You Ask?

Reid Hoffman on Lessons Learned Over 20 Years

Reid Hoffman is one of my favorite entrepreneurs in the technology industry. 

I was introduced to him and 'his world' when I first moved to California six or so years ago. There was even a time I was talking to LinkedIn about working with them though it now seems like it was another lifetime. Things move so quickly in Silicon Valley.

Some people decide to move west for access to technology and money, and so they can work with the smartest and brightest people in the industry'. For me, since I'm more of an artist tha a geek, a big part of it was the opportunity to work with "the smart and bright" but it was also a lifestyle and attitude decision.

Silicon Valley represented a fresher, more aggressive, dive in or die approach to business and entrepreneurship that was intoxicating after working in Boston where most company execs took a conservative and apprehensive approach more often than not, operating from a place of fear rather than opportunity.

And, given that I was in the technology industry, doing my thing here only seemed natural. People who personified the best in entrepreneurial attitude in the early days for me were people like Jeff Hawkins, Dick Costolo (he was building Feedburner at the time), and Reid Hoffman.

It was 'this mindset' that was prevalent when I moved west that Reid emphasized this past week in a fireside chat in San Francisco with Panda Daily's Sarah Lacy.

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Reid Hoffman on Lessons Learned Over 20 Years

The Geek 'Fashion' Culture of Silicon Valley Hurts My Eyes

When I first moved to Silicon Valley, I found myself overdressed most of the time, and my New England meets Europe and New York style of dressing just didn't float well with the very youthful techies who showed up to parties in torn jeans, t-shirts and sneakers.

While I fought it at first, I have always taken a 'become your target audience' approach to marketing and PR and since that's my biz, I turned geek for awhile.

After a year or so, I found myself dressing down nearly all the time, even at industry events. I'd wear sleeveless shirts, jeans and sweater wraps which was probably a tad too young for me but then again I was surrounded by engineers who were barely out of puberty. It was about as 'down' as I could dress and still look at myself in the mirror.

Dressing 'down' may have made me assimilate a bit better into geek culture, which was a culture I needed to wrap my head around, but it never made me 'feel good.' I always felt that 'dressing down' was 'dumbing down' who I was even though we only have to look at how many of the geek powerhouses dress who are running fat multi-million companies to know that they don't go hand-in-hand.

That said, dressing 'up' makes me feel 'up', behave 'up' and think 'up,' most of the time. It doesn't mean that I don't get brilliant ideas at 3 in the morning when I'm at my computer in shorts and a t-shirt, because that happens often. Or in the shower, like it does for most of us, when our brain has a few moments to get away from the always-on overcharged place it has been operating for hours at a time.

Those who are close to me know that the fashion sense or lack thereof in Silicon Valley makes me crazy and is one of the things I hate about living here. I miss the fashion sense and energy of New York and most of Europe. And, even though Boston was far too conservative for my taste, at least women wore dresses, jackets and jewelry that you marveled at from time-to-time or wanted to touch. New England men may not win any top prizes for fashion, but they know how to throw on a well-cut jacket and the right shoes for an occasion when they need to.

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The Geek 'Fashion' Culture of Silicon Valley Hurts My Eyes

Cory Doctorow on the Century of War Against Your Computer

Cory Doctorow spoke this week at the LONG NOW Foundation. The topic? A provocative one entitled: The coming century of war against your computer. 

The war against computer freedom will just keep escalating, Doctorow contends. The copyright wars, net neutrality, and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) were early samples of what is to come. Victories in those battles were temporary.

Conflict in the decades ahead will feature ever higher stakes, more convoluted issues, and far more powerful technology. The debate is about how civilization decides to conduct itself and in whose interests.

Stewart Brand's fabulous summary of the event below where Doctorow kicked things off by framing the issue this way: “Computers are everywhere.  They are now something we put our whole bodies into---airplanes, cars---and something we put into our bodies---pacemakers, cochlear implants.  They HAVE to be trustworthy.“

Sometimes humans are not so trustworthy, and programs may override you: “I can’t let you do that, Dave.” (Reference to the self-protective insane computer Hal in Kubrick’s film “2001.”  That time the human was more trustworthy than the computer.)  Who decides who can override whom?

The core issues for Doctorow come down to Human Rights versus Property Rights, Lockdown versus Certainty, and Owners versus mere Users.

Apple computers such as the iPhone are locked down---it lets you run only what Apple trusts.  Android phones let you run only what you trust.  Doctorow has changed his mind in favor of a foundational computer device call the “Trusted Platform Module” (TPM) which provides secure crypto, remote attestation, and sealed storage.  He sees it as a crucial “nub of secure certainty” in your machine.

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Cory Doctorow on the Century of War Against Your Computer

Drew Carey Seems to be Getting Hotter & Younger

 

Is it me or does Drew Carey look A LOT better and A LOT younger than he does in this photo than his Wikipedia shot taken four years ago? Below shot taken at the Steve Wozniak Woz 6.2 Birthday Party this week. I couldn't resist doing the ole pose. He's kinda hot for a man born in the 1950s wouldn't ya say?

 

Drew Carey Seems to be Getting Hotter & Younger

Happy Birthday Steve Wozniak: Woz Celebrates His Big 62 in San Francisco

Steve Wozniak, known by most as "Woz," turned 62 years old this week.

While the world at large knows his name as co-founder of Apple, today he sits as Chief Scientist at a company called Fusion-io, whose chief focus is to deliver data faster.

Their pitch of their ioMemory platform is that it accelerates databases, virtualization, cloud computing, big data, and the applications that drive our economy and our daily lives.

The team decided to throw Woz a surprise birthday party this week at Yuerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.

The marketing folks were seen texting with his wife Janet to get ensure they had the timing right and that everyone was behind a closed door with not one party hat in sight prior to him entering the main building.

As invited guests showed up early to ensure Woz wouldn't find out, they were given noise makers, pink boas, party hats and bags of glitter to throw at him when he walked through the door.

Even after a shower, I'm still finding those damn glitter flecks on my body and my living room floor nearly 24 hours later.

Invitees included old friends, industry illuminaries, geeks, former Apple folks he worked with and a handful of press.

I ran into some people I hadn't seen in years and met new ones I didn't know existed in the "biz."

One of the first people I ran into was Fusion-io's CEO David Flynn (left) who gave kudos to Woz on stage for his dedication to the company and of course to wish him a Happy Big 62. 

Old time industry pals showed up like Tim Bajarin, DEMO's Neal Silverman, Harry McCracken, Therese Poletti, and Janet Rae Dupree and other media who have been covering this industry for years such as Don Clark, Dean Takahashi, Chris Taylor, Mike Isaac, Ina Fried and a host of others.

People seemed to keep the pink boas on for most of the night -- men and women -- and people queued up to have a photo taken with Woz and his wife Janet, pink feathers and all.

The guys decided it might be fun to give Woz "the what and who" he always wanted (?) to pop out of a cake: a geek with zero social skills and less than zero protocol.

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Happy Birthday Steve Wozniak: Woz Celebrates His Big 62 in San Francisco

Singularity University, Women@TheFrontier & 10 Incredible Women Design the Future

Singularity University held an event in conjunction with Women@TheFrontier at NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley last week.

The program: "Designing the Future 2012", brought together some of today's female game-changers who are designing the future and disrupting the status quo.  

Women@TheFrontier's Susan Fonseca and KristinaMaria T-Gutierrez introduced inspirational women who had one heart warming story after another to share.

NASA's Yvonne Cagle also paid a sentimental tribute to astronaut Sally Ride who passed away on July 23.  

Ray Kurzweil kicked things off and also closed the event in a unique appearance with his daughter Amy Kurzweil who interviewed him in fireside chat style.

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Singularity University, Women@TheFrontier & 10 Incredible Women Design the Future