Calling for a Business Blogging Conference in South Africa
Early in September, I was a speaker at the 2nd Digital Citizens Indaba. Last year, this conference was immensely valuable to me because it presented an opportunity to meet many of my fellow bloggers from across the African continent. This year me I realised the greater need to teach people how to use blogging to generate income. In 2006, I spent many, many hours discussing this with Emeka Okafor, before he was selected by TED to host the first TEDAfrica conference, which may turn out to become an annual conference.
So this year I spoke with Mathew Buckland and Laurien Clemence on the Marketing & Moneytizing panel. The problem with DCI is that the bulk of the discussion is about online activism and citizen journalism. This is not a conference about serious business blogging. So I’m making this public call for a conference that would focus on business blogging. This conference would propel blogging to a new stratosphere in South Africa and Africa as a whole. TEDGlobal’s Fellow’s who included many, many bloggers, are a testament to the value we can add to business. Such a conference would appeal to large corporations to introduce them to social media and web 2.0 business strategies, which will be imperative by 2010.
My dream panel of speakers would include the following Technorati 100 heavyweights:
- Darren Rowse
- Steve Pavlina
- Guy Kawasaki
- Seth Godin
- Michael Arrington
- Robert Scoble
- Brian Clark
- Steve Rubel
- Jeniffer Jones
- Leonard Brody (I already know him personally)
I’m looking at doing this during September/October 2008. It would take 4/6 months to secure sponsorships for this event. And another 6 months to do all the planning and organising with sufficient marketing and public relations, building up to the event. These two activities can run in concurrently to some extent.
Who’s your international business blogger of choice for this conference? And how can you help me organise this conference? Post your feedback or contact me privately.
