They say there is a time to reap, a time to sow. There’s a time to be happy and a time to be sad. Today as I’m preparing for exams on Tuesday, 8 June, I’m thinking back to my initial tertiary education at Vista University. In 1992 they visited my high school, Uitenhage High, and gave a presentation on the benefits on joining Vista. Thinking about it as logically as possible I concluded it was in the best interest of the family for me to go an do my BSc at Vista instead of University of Port Elizabeth, or even PE Technikon. These institutions are all being merged as from 1 Jan 2005. Vista itself will cease to exist from the end of June 2004. So it was with a heavy heart I can say goodbye to this institution that blessed me with so much. I wish there could have been closer co-operation with alumni, and that may yet happen. The changes in the South African tertiary landscape is for the better. I am convinced of this and it is in the best interest of the entire population we support these changes, embrace them and start to use the facilities and opportunities more. Viva Vista Viva!
Ramon Thomas
Psychology of Technology Blog
Speed Networking launched at next PETweetup
Port Elizabeth has a thriving social media community. Unlike Gauteng or Cape Town there is no SilconCape initiative. However, people like Alan Straton have pioneered city focussed blogging with his MyPE portal. He has over 1000 followers, and follows nobody else. With over 8000 Tweets, the WeFollow directory lists him as the most influential Twitter user in the Bay area.
So what is a Tweetup? It’s simply a real-life meeting organised on the social networking site Twitter. In the past year Port Elizabeth hosted two Tweetups, a Blanket Drive, and also another hosted by Dave Coates, Head Developer at Poken Africa. The purpose or function of the Tweetup is to bring together people for discussion in the real world. You can meet those you’ve been following and get to know them better. Building stronger relationships helps everyone move forward. And should encourage even more vociferous tweets.
So what’s different this time? This month we’re introducing speed networking. Speed networking was developed for use in South Africa to facilitate the creation of a culture for open communication within larger groups and high quality business relationships. A friend Jenny Ceresto, founder of SMARTdate pioneered this concept primarily in Gauteng and Cape Town. Now speed networking is
The venue for this event is the beautiful Blue Water Cafe situated on Shark Rock Pier, on the beach front area opposite the Boardwalk Casino. Previous 27Dinner events, also focussed around promoting social media, were held at the PE Yacht Club. We found this venue to be ideal for the presentation style meetings with speakers, but Tweetups are more informal. And hence the concept of speed networking seems a perfect synergy with the shorthand language used on Twitter.
Event Details:
- VENUE: Blue Water Cafe, The Boardwalk Shop 7 Shark Rock Pier, Marine Drive
- TIME: 19h00 on Friday, 26 August 2011
- FEE: ZERO
- DRINK: One FREE Sherry or Cappuccino on arrival sponsored by yours truly
- FOOD for your own account.
Questions? Call the host, Ramon Thomas on 081 4399 555. The Speed Networking starts at 19h30. Looking forward to meeting fellow Bay area Tweeple.
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MXit Drug Counselling at 27Dinner in Port Elizabeth
Marlon Parker will be visiting Port Elizabeth this week to present an inspirational talk at the regular 27Dinner event this Thursday in Port Elizabeth. The 27Dinner events are free events where geeks and non-geeks get together and discuss technology. The purpose of the 27Dinner events is to create awareness about how technology can be used to change in society and also for entrepreneurship and income generation. And the events happen on the 27th of the month in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. This will be the 3rd 27Dinner event in the Nelson Mandela Bay area.
A big part of the motivation for bringing Marlon Parker to Port Elizabeth is to kick start the DAS@MXit in Nelson Mandela Bay area. Over the last three years MXit has grown to over 10 million registered users. This platform, the most widely used instant messaging platform among people 12-25 years old is the most practical method of providing online counselling. In North America and other parts of the world Internet-based online counselling has been available for years now. However, due to the cost of bandwidth in South Africa, cellphone-based online counselling is more practical alternative.
The other guest speakers will be confirmed today and their information posted on www.27dinner.com where you have to register and add your name to the particular event you would like to attend, in the city of your own choice. Stormhoek wines have sponsored free bottles of wine in Cape Town and Johannesburg. I have yet to persuade them to send some wine to Port Elizabeth for our enjoyment.
This is also the final function for the year that the NETucation team will be organising because we are shifing our focus inwards until 1 March 2009. Planning my 2009 schedule is going to be one of the key success factors to grow the audience to this blog as well as to my other online efforts.
Algoa Sun interview with Ramon Thomas
The following interview was published on page 8 of the 31 July 2008 issue of the Algoa Sun, a community newspaper in Port Elizabeth. The title for the article was fascinating choice by the editor, The Ethics of IT Dating. I will add a scanned copy of the interview with their own intro to this post later today…
Question: You say that children below the age of 13 should not have cell-phones for health reasons do you not think that in todays world all kids should have access to an adult in case something does go wrong?
Yes, kids should have access to adults. However, the access that is required has always been there. Before cellphones parents had a relationship and understanding with the schools they go to as to when and how they are dropped off and collected after school, from sporting events or when traveling with the school. When visiting friends, arrangements were made with the parents of the friends to look after your children as if they were your own. This is a fear-based myth that cellphones is the only or safest way to make kids safe. The more you buy into a fear mindset, the more you create a dependency on technology or anything outside yourself. So in a very warped way technology has made people more insecure than ever before.
Question: Do you have kids? If so, are they allowed MXit and Facebook?
No I do not have any children because I am not married. I would only allow my own children access for for a limited time per day or on weekends. I recently bumped into a guy who was at school with me, and he has one son in high school and one in primary school. He treats them like this: they only get access for 1 hour on Saturdays between 5-6pm. This is radical, yes, but he succeeded as father by setting the ground rules from day 1.
Question: Do you believe parents should be more “internet and cell-phone aware”?
Parents need to understand that the technology is growing and improving at a vast rate. The best way they can maintain some sense of confidence about the technology is to cultivate an open discussion on a regular (weekly) basis with their children about technology. This is much easier than you may think, simply because technology is so high on the values of children. What I mean is you cannot stop them talking about it when you ask the right questions.
Question: Do you believe the internet is a good way to meet people and start dating?
I have used Internet dating successfully because I have been so persistent and made a tremendous effort to educate myself about the best ways to write my online dating profile. After hundreds articles, books and interviews, and comparisons with other forms of dating and the psychology of attraction, I do not believe its the best way to meet people. You will always have some uncertainly about that elusive obvious called “chemistry” with the opposite sex. So overall your chances are very slim to find a compatible match and sustain the relationship. I consider my last relationship, which lasted about 18 months; as well as best friend of mine, who married a woman he met on www.datingbuzz.com, the exceptions.
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27Dinner launches in Port Elizabeth
27Dinner for the uninitiated are meetings arranged by and for bloggers or people interested in social media. They take the form of an informal dinner with a few speakers and have been a hit across South Africa. In Johannesburg and Cape Town these dinners have drawn sometimes as many as 100 people at a time. At least half the audience tends to be geeks or technically oriented people, while the others are a mixture of marketing, public relations, journalists or spectators. Last year I had the opportunity to speak at the 2nd 27Dinner in Durban, hosted by Marc Forrest and was excited once more to be a speaker because it’s may way of giving back to the community from which I have learned so much.
Now I’d like to give this some context because Port Elizabeth is often ignored by people running events, whether they be entertainment (music) or business related events. And I have taken it upon myself to find ways of bringing more important events like 27Dinner or Women4Women to this beautiful part of South Africa. After all I will be spending more time here from June 2008 while I take a mini sabbatical. The biggest thanks has to go to Alan Straton from MyPE for organising the venue, and doubly so for persuading the restaurant to open on a public holiday (27 April – Freedom Day). Greig Timkoe, my friend, and client did the introduction and delivered very short talk on handling workplace conflict created by email. This is a topic of tremendous importance that I would like to see expanded on in future talks or articles on his Peacemakers blogs.
The first speaker for the evening was Mark Bloomfield, South Africa’s only Adobe Community Expert. He gave an overview of the Adobe AIR platform which I have used to run the StomperNet Scrutinizer. The AIR platform sounds like a good idea in principle, especially if you are technically minded and understand things like bandwidth, processing power, database calls, etc. Most people don’t, not even people working in the broader technology sector. And therefore this has a limited market potential. Java is similar because it’s platform independent, however it’s different because it’s become more of a middleware application. Adobe AIR created beautiful application which run on your Desktop and reduced the dependence on bandwidth to some extent. Mark closed off with an introduction of a new development platform from Adobe who already owns Dreamweaver and Photoshop. There’s not much I can say about this software because it has not been launched yet. Now to go by the quality of Adobe’s other project this will be a boon for developers professional and amateur alike.My own presentation was an updated version of my Blog your way to becoming and Expert presentation.
Overall this was a smaller event with maybe 20 people attending. There were several who listed their names on the 27Dinner wiki page but didn’t show and that could be because of the week ahead filled with 3 public holidays and I know for a fact many people have chosen to go on holiday somewhere else.
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