Maximize!

Congratulations are due to Conrad Strydom and Dave Duarte for getting SA’s 1st BarCamp together!

I had altogether faaaar too much coffee to ward off the mid-winter’s chill (thank you so much Jo! Caffeine’s generous donation of coffee kept me on edge & to the lovely Sandy who served BarCampers with yummy snacks too)

I believe that we have the potential to be a potent force on the tech landscape as South Africans. But we need more of what BarCamp was offering if we are to leap ahead. We’re aware of it, and may who presented this weekend talked about it – the magic ingredient = COLLABORATION.

Group genius is the strongest strategic advantage we will have here.. and there is NO SHORTAGE of really smart innovative geeks here. We need to get together more often and lay down a long-term plan.

If we don’t we will continue to shed many a brilliant mind to the persausive dollars of Silicon Valley or Seattle (and get giggled at by the Kiwi’s who have in no uncertain terms taken advantage of the fact that the world has indeed become flat!)

The mix of pure programming with online marketers who naturally converged toward school this weekend means we have the first steps sorted. The marketers will be the ones who package the arcane artistry of code to make it attractive to the money. (Sorry if it sounds brutish, but business is what pays for play.. the Porsche/Audi/supersonic jet/or whatever your financially fuelled fantasy).

In this spirit Dave & I will be organising the first Stormhoek Wine geek dinner.. will give BarCampers the heads.up when it’s crystallising and governing co.ordinates. Graham Knox blogging marketingmaven shared his brilliance and bottles of the Wellington wonderwine, and we marvelled. Encouraged by Dave Duarte’s global microbrand talk on Friday which introduced us to the Stormhoek model and his blogging stategy for Caffeine (which ranked just 33rd on WordPress speediest movers! rock on DD).

From the clearspark genius of young hardware developers like Edd who need resources to keep building between school exams to the web app wonderland of Rafiq of Web AddiCTs (sorry I missed yr talk – heard it was refreshing), the outlook on the tech landscape is promising and uncompromisingly quirky as any good geek gathering should be!

4 the most concise roundup of the weekend’s brainsparkings>> thx Dewet!