Tech4Africa 2013 - The tech community has spoken

In a complete departure from the usual African conference scheduling, and in response to the many requests to speak at Tech4Africa since its inception, earlier this year Tech4Africa opened up speaker submissions to the tech community. The results were 90 speaker submissions, and 3,225 votes spread across almost 70 technology topics.

As with last year, the format focusses on short, bite-sized, juicy content which will keep the audience engaged, whilst allowing speeakers to interact with attendees throughout the day.

Submissions ranged from mobile development and mobile money, new databases like MongoDB, working in teams, DevOps, the Cloud, Agile development, working with Git, succeeding in African eCommerce, better product management, entrepreneurship and startup success, to really exotic technologies like Clojure and Scala. And in an incredible community response, submissions have come from as far afield as Canada, France, South America, the US and India, as well as from various African countries.

Speakers from the UK, Spain, India, Israel, Canada, Kenya, Germany, Egypt and the United States

As in previous years, Tech4Africa 2013 will have a stellar line-up of international keynote speakers, this year's speakers including Ahmed Fathalla from GyroLabs (Egypt); Alistair Hill from OnDevice Research (UK); Amolo Ng'weno of Digital Divide (Kenya), Norberto Leite from MongoDB (ES), Kjetil J. Olsen from Elance (DE), Binay Tiwari from Vserv.mobi (IND), Derek Kopke from DataWind (CAN), Malvina Goldfeld from PayPal (ISR) and Petra Cross of Google (US).

As of today, the result is 64 sessions spread over two days, covering developer keynotes, workshops and deep dive sessions, Cloud sessions and workshops, IBM SmartCamp for startups and entrepreneurs, and Business keynotes, workshops and in-depth sessions. The Tech4Africa team are working on an eCommerce specific track, which will be finalised soon.

The schedule for Wednesday 9 October will focus on deep dive technical sessions, hands-on workshops and hacking sessions held in five separate rooms; whilst on Thursday, 10 October, there will be higher-level presentations, demos and inspirational talks held in the same auditorium.

The main venue for Tech4Africa 2013, which is to be held from 9-10 October, is the Focus Rooms, The Core, 1st Floor South, Cnr Kikuyu and Leeuwkop Streets, Sunninghill, Sandton, Gauteng, South Africa.

For more information about Tech4Africa 2013 go to www.tech4africa.com, view the schedule at www.schedule.tech4africa.com, email Zinnia at moc.acirfa4hcet@ainniz or call Zinnia on +27 83 457 6935.