[AISPC] Re: Africa Internet Summit 2013

[George Nyabuga]

Dear all, 

The mailing list (AISpc at afrinic.net) has been created to ease our communication. You have all been subscribed to it.

Many thanks.

George


Dr George Nyabuga                                                 Tel:   +230 403 51 00
Head, Communications and PR, AFRINIC           Fax:  +230 466 67 58
george at afrinic.net - www.afrinic.net
 
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Please join us at the Africa Internet Summit, Lusaka, Zambia, 9 – 21 June 2013
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On Feb 5, 2013, at 6:53 PM, Adiel Akplogan <adiel at afrinic.net> wrote:

> Hello Geert and all,
> 
> First of, a mailing will be up by tomorrow for this discussion going 
> forward.
> 
> Second, I would like to say that we in this group will have an 
> important responsibility to come up with a program and content for 
> this event that will be balanced enough to bring everyone together.
> 
> On 2013-02-05, at 17:36 PM, Geert Jan de Groot <geertj at nsrc.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 Feb 2013 16:08:20 +0400 George Nyabuga wrote:
>>> Overall Theme
>>> Connection Matters: Making the Internet work for African development
>> 
>> AfNOG has been set up as a technical meeting, for engineers, to exchange
>> ideas on technical and operational challenges in Africa, to share
>> ideas and experiences on a technical level.
>> Even the AfriNIC meeting is at least partially aimed at the technical
>> side of running a network.
>> 
>> Your suggestion aims at a whole different audience, and people who
>> are not technically involved at all.
> 
> Can you please elaborate a bit on why you think that the theme aims 
> only at people who are not technically involved at all? 
> 
> Do we have to continue to dissociate development from technical issues? 
> I personally think that both are tightly linked and we should try 
> working hard to restore that link in our region. Quiet frankly that is 
> one of the objective of the Internet Summit: Bridging the damaging 
> gap between the technical community and the rest of the world so that 
> we effectively achieve our goal. We have been doing all kind technical 
> training and capacity building in Africa for the past decades … but 
> how much of it is really helping people improve their day to day life? 
> How much is it helping Operators to sustainably grow and become self 
> resilient?  What is the socio-economic impact of these trainings? 
> Because Being a super good Engineer alone does not take us far in the 
> current status of affair in the region.
> 
>> This is a very poor match for
>> the audience we have catered for, and this will work poorly with
>> our historic audience. 
> 
> I tend to disagree here Geert, but I'm happy to hear more from you 
> on this. Also if you have other suggestions as a them that can bring 
> everybody together I think it good to put it on the table for 
> discussion/agreement.
> 
>> Also, there is none synergy at all with the technical hands-on workshops,
>> tutorials or special-interest group meets like AfREN.
> 
> I guess this will be created as we move in the details of the program.
> 
> The whole Idea is to keep everyone currently involved in, but bring in 
> people with a wider dimension that can help us shape the outcome in a 
> more constructive and forward looking manner. 
> 
>> You send engineers to the former; your proposed programme is intended for
>> politicans, different groups. 
> 
> I see your point above and I believe that this is what we have to do 
> in this group, put together a program that is coherent and make sense 
> across the board. I believe that what George has sent was ideas that we 
> should work on and contribute to. We are six months from the event and 
> this can not be in any way the final program of the event and we have 
> not yet gone through the call for presentation and all.
> 
>> I want to hear what others think but personally I hate to see
>> the technical side go,
> 
> Be reinsured, It is not meant to go! in fact it need to be strengthen 
> but not only through Engineering stuff only. … Geeky stuff are 
> good and exciting but we need help our Geek and engineers to confront 
> their knowledge to the reality of the world we leave in, to use it
> to solve real life problem, to innovate and create value …
> 
>> and think there is no synergy between your 
>> proposed AIS programme and the existing AfNOG community. 
> 
> There should be.
> 
>> Also, do you think your programme caters the needs of, for instance,
>> the AfREN group? And, how is this going to work with the policy development
>> discussions AfRINIC needs to define their policies?
> 
> We all need to work together toward the inclusion of all of this.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> - a.

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