We think that the best tech ecosystems in the world have regular events which bring together people in tech to learn, meet new people and have lots of fun.
We don’t like suits and ties, there are no plenaries, committees and chairpeople. We focus on great content and value for all who attend, free wifi, coffee all day, fun at night, and an electric atmosphere you won’t find anywhere else.
Great content. The kind people talk about.
Inspiring. People, products and projects.
Networks. Where substance trumps style.
Death by PowerPoint. Clowned upon.
Progress. The other side of failure.
Programming. The new literacy.
Fun. Work is meant to be fun.
Suits & ties. Frowned upon.
Our simple goal is that you walk away both informed, entertained and inspired. Placing greatest emphasis on learning, interaction, engagement and discussion, we want Tech4Africa + XooXity to be a place for new ideas and to encourage people to make and change things.
... To bring you two days of tech goodness, live music, and art installations.
Pronounced Zoo City, the name was inspired by the Lauren Beukes book carrying the same name. ”In her book Zoo City, Lauren Beukes’ characters explore a grimy, dystopian Johannesburg. Through magical-realism and ‘animalled’ people,we experience the primal electricity that statics beneath the inner-city streets* (Ang Lloyd, Mail &Guardian, 8 Jan 2014).
XOOXITY will consist, not just of multiple stages for music, but state of the art stage design, visuals, installation art, film and other creative elements.
In 2013 we opened up our speaker submission process to anyone. We received over 100 speaker submissions from people in 15 countries, which then received over 3500 votes from the tech community.
Since we've started, we've looked for speakers from both genders and all ethnic backgrounds. So we're going to say it a little louder this year ;-)
By telling your story, you grow your network and increase your domain authority, leveraging a platform focused on authentic content.
It doesn't matter whether you're at a large corporate, a small agency, a freelancer, or a student.
Tell your story, share your code, showcase your product or solution, or illustrate how you've solved a problem.
Alpesh Patel is the Founder and Group CEO of Mi-Group International Ltd. Mi-Group consists of Mi-Fone ( BVI ) Ltd and Mi-Card MCS Ltd. With the Brands vision of providing “Aspiration..within Reach “ to mass market African consumers Alpesh launched Mi-Fone, the first African Mobile Devices Brand in April 2008. With this he created Africa’s very own range of affordable yet quality Mobile Devices specifically aimed at the Emerging mass market African consumer.
Marc is the COO of 2go, a mobile social network with over 10 million monthly active users across Africa. Marc was previously a partner at Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa, a venture capital fund in Cape Town, and before that an executive at Softbank Capital in Boston, a $250 million technology venture capital fund.
Sam Kitonyi is a software developer and co-founder of Weza Tele, a technology startup in Kenya. He has implemented USSD applications to provide access to everything from clean water to short-term loans. When he's not cranking out Python code he enjoys reading poetry, writing personal bios, and playing the odd game of 5-dimensional XO.
Toby is an electronics engineer who specializes in software engineering. Over the last 20 years, he has programmed everything from assembly language for embedded micro-controllers, to enterprise content management systems in Java. He has been developing Android apps since 2010, and has experience with many platforms, such as Django, Ruby on Rails, BlackBerry 10 Cascades, and Arduino. He also dabbles in hardware hacking at the House4Hack hackerspace
Candice Goodman was the first Certified Mobile Marketer in SA and is the current Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association of South Africa.
Her mobile marketing consultancy, Mobitainment, was the first African company to win a Mobile Marketing Association Award back in 2009, and has become one of the longest and most consistently international mobile marketing award winner in Africa with wins for the last 6 years!
Daly is responsible for managing operations within Emerge Mobile, including the creation of business development, marketing, and digital strategies for the company and for its direct-to-market product, iKhokha.Emerge Mobile has recently achieved Payments Council International Payment Terminal Security (PCI-PTS), and Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) Level 1 and 2 certifications for its MPOS payment card acceptance solution. This is the first time a fully South African designed, engineered and manufactured end-to-end MPOS solution has attained this level of international security certification
Matt Putman is the managing director and co-founder of Emerge Mobile, a South African based technology company specialising in the mobile point of sale (MPOS) payments space. Putman is responsible for positioning Emerge Mobile to play a significant role in extending effective MPOS solutions to SMEs across Africa and other emerging markets worldwide. This includes developing the growth strategy, international business development, company culture and commercial structures of the business.
Ben is a writer of much, a game designer of never enough, and one day wants figure out what the hell bitcoins are. He's the social media mouthpiece for Make Games South Africa, a journalist for NAG Online, and an obsessively frequent game jammer. He also sucks at writing in the third person, but don't tell him that to his face.
You work on the backend, you've built some neat code to do some cool shit. Period.
You're a computer scientist, using whatever tool suits the job. In fact, you're writing C++ to replace PHP stuff. You're looking for Hackers like you.
Every pixel matters. The user journey matters. Your boss doesn't think so, but you've got case studies to prove it.
You're so into the MEAN stack, you've abstracted the browser out. You've built apps that do neat things. Bazinga!
You understand that Android is about to become the most important OS in the world. You build apps for any phone in any market. You despise the iPhone!
You've been working on Python since before Django was in Chains. In fact, anyone who uses PHP is a luddite n00b.
Who says social media matters? You do! You can show why the big banks need to pay attention, why James Blunt did to social media what Android did to phones, and why Lady Gaga is probably more influential than the President. You take showers tho'.
You orchestrate servers like a Puppet master. You keep the infrastructure humming. You HATE dedicated servers because you know what "The Cloud" really means. And you can deploy 1 bazillion lines of code with the click of a button.
You've been working in wp since before it was wp. You can make it sing, dance and play clients tunes. Voila!
You think wp is for monkeys, so you love Drupal. You've got 10k pages all in a nice corporate information architecture. Long live Drupal!
You've got a problem that needs a technical solution. The market is big, the competition is slow, so you're moving fast. Always Be Closing.
You called gradients back in 2003 and flat design in 2012. Typography tells you all you need to know.
You're melding a raging 400 page Waterfall into a weekly sprint without anyone knowing it. Kanban brings tears of joyous rapture to your eyes. You're the modern Renaissance man.
The Boss wants the product to get to market NOW. You're balancing 6 teams, a wife and kid, and betting your career on 1 million downloads in a month. 800 Pound Gorilla?
Whilst everyone is talking SEO and Social Media while sipping their Latte's, you're in the trenches using every trick in the Black Hat book to get that growth curve up and to the right. And they don't even know it.
You're looking after XYZ systems, over PQR teams and 6 locations. There's a little silver bullet you're not telling your boss about. You'll do anything to go back to your hacking days...
Tech4Africa kicks off in Newtown, downtown Johannesburg. Speaker submissions are being voted on, so the schedule will start unfolding soon.
Tech4Africa continues on day 2, followed by the live music of XooXity. We are opening speaker submissions shortly, so the schedule will start unfolding soon.
Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown, Johannesburg
Feel free to get in touch with any questions you may have.
Enquiries: Zinnia on +27 (0) 83 457 6935
Prices and Media: Zinnia on +27 (0) 83 457 6935
Email: hello@tech4africa.com