We are now on with WordCamp Kenya with about 115 people in attendance, first session with the Kenya ICT board, now on stage is Moses Kemibaro.
Official Twitter account: @WordCampKE
Official HashTag: #WCKE
Unofficial HashTag: #WordCampKE
Live Stream: http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/tv/wordcamp
Enjoy.
Finally, we are hours down to WordCamp. Here are a few things to note.
Finally, we would like to announce that Caroline Nderitu, one of Kenya’s best poet will be at the bonfire session alongside other poets like Wamathai and Njeri Wangari. This is bound to be fun, karibuni.
It is really exciting that the day is finally here. A super weekend in Kenya’s bird haven, Naivasha with WordPress & WordPress enthusiasts like myself. A weekend of learning new things, meeting new people and crowning it all with a bonfire barbeque poetry night on Saturday night. Then camping with the wild. Hippos a few meters away, wilder beasts strolling at the campsite, antelopes and other friendly animals just smiling next door. The peace of Lake Naivasha waters 50 meters from the campsite. Can I look forward to more fun?
The real subject of the trip is WordCamp – and we have just the perfect WordCamp this weekend. With sessions covering a wide scope of topics and discussions, everyone is bound to leave the venue a word brighter and having known something new they did not know about WordPress.
I feel like a preacher also for there will be new people trying to know what advantages they would have using WordPress as opposed to any other platform. I will evangelize and engage and by the time we leave, everyone will be “saved”.
Everything is in order, we have a full pack of attendees and we have a great list of speakers. Really looking forward to WordCamp Kenya 2011.
The day is almost here, we are all looking forward to a great weekend in Naivasha at WordCamp Kenya 2011.
Please see the schedule for the day here:
http://2011.kenya.wordcamp.
One thing you should be keen to note is the assembly time and place on Saturday morning at 8:30am. Please keep time so that we do not mess up the rest of the schedule. Also note that everything will go as per the schedule, especially departure from Nairobi.
Also, if you have not filled up your ticket details, check the email you received when you paid for your ticket and fill in the details. These are important because we want everyone to have a personalized name tag, tee-shirt and other material.
David Mugo,
Organizer, WordCamp Kenya.
It is with great pleasure that I announce that officially, the Kenya ICT board will be at WordCamp Kenya 2011 both as a supporter/sponsor and mentor. The Kenya ICT board and it’s local content initiatives recognizes the role played by bloggers and small developers in making sure that Kenya stays on the front line in the information realm.
The Kenya ICT Board recognizes that while WordCamp is mainly focused on WordPress as a publishing platform, it will be a great learning experience for the attendants whether they are already WordPress users or not. Kenya has seen a sharp growth in the online publishing industry with local websites enjoying massive traffic. Local bloggers are highly ranked in Africa, according to Afrigator.com. Local Digital Content project manager at the KICTB, Kaburo Kobia speaking to David Mugo expressed great joy and the will to support the conference.
The ICT board will be coming in as a Gold sponsor for the event and also offering other moral support. The ICT board will issue the keynote speech at the commencing of the conference.
You’ve all heard about Safaricom, Kenya’s leading telco. I’m sure you know it has over 17 million subscribers, and that it had a pretax profit of Sh18.36 billion ($216 million) this year. But what does Safaricom have to offer you? What do the company mean to you as a nerd, a techie, a coder, a blogger, a random digital native?
Firstly, Safaricom isn’t all about mobile. It is one of the leading integrated communications companies not just in Kenya, but in Africa as well, and it supports you in more ways than you realize.
Safaricom voice services allow you to keep in touch with clients and peers, both online and off.
Our data services allow you to carry out your business and social activities whether it’s tweeting a new contact, blogging about traffic, or developing your latest app. Thanks to the wide coverage, you can be online anywhere, anytime. Safaricom introduced the most affordable smart phone running on Android, the Huawei Ideos, with over 100,000 units in the hands of consumers. More recently Safaricom brought us the Webbox that turns your TV into a computer.
M-PESA services facilitate sending and receiving of money, both locally and internationally. You can use M-PESA pretty much anywhere thanks to the 28,000 available points of contact locally, and you can also use M-PESA via Western Union to send money from abroad.
Safaricom has made heavy investments in broadband capacity giving us a foothold in undersea cable, satellite, metro and trunk cable connectivity. It also has the widest 3G network and the most expansive WIMAX presence in Kenya. As a result, over 92% of Kenyans who use the Internet regularly, access the Internet through the Safaricom network/infrastructure. We are currently testing the Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G technology, which will serve your Internet needs even better.
Safaricom is listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange and trades on the telecommunications and technology segment, so it makes a good investment plan as well.
As a digital citizen, your need for fast and effective, personalized customer care can be met through Safaricom’s online presence. You can reach us on Facebook, Twitter, or even through our website.
Website: http://www.safaricom.co.ke
Twitter: @SafaricomLtd ; @Safaricom_Care
Facebook: www.facebook.com/safaricomltd
The early bird ticket offer is about to lapse. You only have up to 30th to buy your WordCamp Kenya ticket at only Kshs. 3,000 that includes the 2 day WordCamp – Conference, transport, food, camping, WordPress swag, T-shirt, Kshs. 500 Safaricom airtime and much more.
WordCamp Kenya 2011 will be held in Naivasha at Crayfish camp on 12th and 13th of November.
This is the first WordCamp ever in East Africa and there will be a whole lot to learn about WordPress, blogging, online content publishing, monetizing your blog and much more. There will be also a parallel technical session that will teach the techies, web developers and other interested parties how to work, develop and customize WordPress to suit their needs.
This one of a kind conference is an international conference franchise, only having come to Africa in South Africa only before. It is the same series that acts as the annual WordPress conference in San Francisco. This will be a great chance to interact with bloggers, developers and even guys from Automattic, the company behind WordPress, the largest open source blogging platform in the world. Come learn why 22% of the entire internet runs on WordPress.
First, I will first explain what WordCamp is all about. WordCamp is a conference about WordPress, the world’s largest blogging and content publishing software. WordCamp is coming to East Africa for the first time and its going to be in a real camp site in Naivasha, Kenya.
WordCamp being a conference about a blogging software brings together a very interesting group of people. As a sponsor, you will need to carefully look at this as a huge marketing point for any of your products as these are the real influence and opinion drivers in the market. Below is an overview of WHO to expect at the conference.
Bloggers:
This will be the biggest group and the biggest names in Kenya’s blogging will be at the event – in fact, one of the sessions will be a 30 minute blogging session to allow each person summarize the event and talk about the participants, sponsors and the event in general. I can almost guarantee that this will be the most blogged event of the year. If you have a reason to impress, then we shall give you the right audience to impress.
Tweeps:
Most of the bloggers and everyone else we expect to attend the event are people who are active on Twitter and other major social networks. Through each session, people will be tweeting with the #WordCampKE harsh tag. There will be a great deal of value in this in terms of PR.
Developers, Coders – Geeks
This is an interesting group of people. They are brand engine builders and well, they command quite a following in the Kenyan social media scene, their applications and websites determine a lot of what is happening, so yet another group to appease.
Everyone else – Newbies and Curious Minds
This event is about WordPress and aims at even creating new users and that means we shall have to allow everyone else who wants to attend and learn more about WordPress, Blogging, Website development using WordPress to come in and join the fun.
How we shall ensure we have the right numbers:
The event besides being a learning experience will also greatly be a fun event. To begin with, its a get away in Naivasha, its a 1 night camp with a fireside poetry session, it is entertainment in a unique way. We shall have all the 5 buses loaded with a WiFi connection and guys can tweet all the way between Nairobi and Naivasha. This means a lot to tweet and Facebook about.
The event will only cost Kshs. 3500 to the participants, catering for food, transport, camping and conference, quite a good deal if you ask me, that guarantees we shall probably be fully booked by early October.
See the available sponsorship packages here.
So, you need more convincing? Send me an email at kenya@wordcamp.org and lets move it from there.
This is an exciting moment for me as I write this post. I have always wanted to attend a WordCamp in Africa, well, here I am organizing one. This is a great chance to meet up with other WordPress fanatics and learn from the different levels of the conference. WordCamp is coming to East Africa for the first time and it is a great thing that it is happening in Kenya.
WordCamp 2011 is happening on 12th and 13th November 2011 at Crayfish Camp (YES, in a real campsite) in Naivasha, about 100km from Nairobi.
Below are top 7 reasons why you should attend WordCamp 2011
Whether you are a blogger, a designer, a web developer or a content manager at your firm, you will find WordCamp Kenya 2011 very useful as the speakers range from techie level to user levels. In fact, we shall have speakers talking about content and the basics of WordPress, useful even for beginners.
Before any other speakers are given priority, we are working to make sure that African and even more East African speakers are given priority to ensure that we engage the WordPress user community with local content and focus on solutions to the local needs. No one understands Africa than the African.
WordCamp is not your everyday too formal conference. For starters, it will be held in Naivasha, just next to the lake at a campsite. There will be two days of learning and fun. Attendees will have a great chance to network and learn great loads of useful tips on how to use WordPress effectively.
For the great 2 days of learning, food, tented accommodation, refreshments, transport from and back to Nairobi and meeting of great potentials, you will only need to pay Kshs. 3,000 for early birds and Kshs. 3,500 afterwards. No better deal.
You shall meet lead developers, designers, poets, bloggers and more, just bring an open mind, you will leave with loads of knowledge.
We shall have great guests from Automattic, the company behind WordPress. They will tell of how they have managed to build the World’s largest content publishing software within under 10 years.
This is the first conference of its kind in East Africa, it will be the most talked about, most blogged about event in East Africa at the time, would you rather read or hear about it or experience it?
You have a few months to prepare, save up and make sure tickets are not sold out before you get in. So, go ahead, get a place in it, start off here.
WordCamp is coming to the home of the Big 5
We are excited to announce that we shall be having a WordCamp in Nairobi in November 2011 on a date to be announced soon, we are quickly putting together the details and we shall be letting you know. This is a great deal for the Kenyan WordPress developers, users and generally anyone interested in learning more about WordPress.
Please feel free to contact us at kenya (at)wordcamp.org for further details. We shall be updating this site with more information as we move forward. If you are a WordPress developer and/or user, please talk to us as we put down the speakers list.
If you are interested in being part of the organizing team, participating or giving a suggestion, please fill out this form and also please feel free to contact David (kenya (at) wordcamp.org)
David Mugo (@raidarmax)
