Student scholarship tickets available for Tech4Africa

The event, run by Technovated, is targeted at business professionals and technologists from businesses of all sizes, from entrepreneurs and start-up owners through to professionals working at large organisations. Workshops will be held on 10-11 August.

Attendees will gain practical, first-hand knowledge what cloud computing, Web 2.0, the mobile Internet and other emerging technologies mean for their businesses and societies. In terms of African knowledge, they will understand the funding landscape in Africa; how the most successful African technology and web businesses are leveraging technology; which new web and technology-related business opportunities are emerging in Africa and the rest of the world; and how the web can help African societies to succeed.

Free student attendance

Old Mutual is offering 17 complimentary scholarship tickets to the conference to students studying in information technology, web, mobile, technology or digital fields. It will be a rare opportunity for students to learn first-hand from excellent business and technology thinkers from across the globe. Students who are interested in attending the event will be able to apply for the sponsored tickets by email to moc.acirfa4hcet@spihsralohcs by 16 July. Tickets will be allocated to those that provide the most convincing 200-word motivation as to why they should attend Tech4Africa.

Keynote speakers

• Clay Shirky - one of the world's leading thinkers and writers on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies
• Matthew Mullenweg - the founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software that runs millions of Web sites around the world

Speakers

• Agosta Liko is the Founder of PesaPal, a mobile payments company in Nairobi, Kenya
• Alex Hunter - independent digital ninja, brand consultant, company adviser and micro-venture capital investor (ex-Virgin)
• Alistair Fairweather joined Media24 Magazines in late 2009 for a brief stint as its social media manager. As of July 2010, he has taken on the role of digital platforms manager for the Mail & Guardian Online
• Andrea Böhmert co-founded Cape Venture Partners, a specialist advisory services company to technology companies. She has launched and heads up Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa, a venture capital fund founded by Professor Hasso Plattner, co-founder of global leader in ERP software, SAP.
• Andy Budd is an interaction designer and web standards developer and the user experience lead at Clearleft, who spends his time helping clients improve their customers' online experience
• Andy Hadfield is internationally recognised as a pioneer on the South African Internet. He joined FNB in 2008 to drive digital adoption in the Personal Banking segment. He has to date worked on projects such as the FNB Premier Banking FaceBook presence, SA's first corporate crowdsourcing initiative with IdeaBounty, the redesign of FNB.co.za and the Amazon-style online sales system that delivers banking products.
• Andy Higgins is the co-founder and MD of bidorbuy.co.za and on the board of directors at payfast.co.za, jobs.co.za and jump.co.za
• Angus Robinson started Brandsh Media, a mobile and social media agency, in late 2006. With clients such as Standard Bank, Liberty, JSE, MNet, LoveLife and Seacom, Brandsh is behind social media campaigns, which have seen a valuable ROI for clients.
• Arthur Goldstuck is an award-winning writer, analyst and commentator on Internet, mobile and business and consumer technologies. He heads the World Wide Worx research organisation, leading groundbreaking research into how change is affecting businesses large and small.
• Barbara Mallinson, a young South African, used her own savings, the backing of a UK Government Grant and support from those closest to her to create Obami, a social networking site that's been developed specifically for schools; facilitating e-learning, communication and collaboration between and amongst pupils, teachers and parents. Barbara has brought Obami back to South Africa to try to make a difference in the country.
• Basheera Khan is a user experience designer based in London who divides her time between client projects and bootstrapping a new tech startup, PlayNice.ly.
• Brett Haggard is the founder of Hypertext Media and publisher of Connect - a South African technology magazine that speaks the language of the average, man in the street technology user.
• Bright B. Simons is a technology innovator, development activist and social entrepreneur. As an executive at Accra-based think tank IMANI (www.imanighana.org), he contributes to activities that challenge received wisdom about Africa's development challenges. As president of the mPedigree Network, he pioneered a system that empowers consumers to instantly verify with a free text message whether their medicines are safe and not counterfeit, while providing pharmaceutical companies previously inaccessible market intelligence. Counterfeit medicines are reckoned by experts to kill at least 2000 people daily in the developing world and can constitute more than 40% of all medicines on sale in some countries.
• Chris Roper was the founding portal manager of Vodacom World Online, responsible for the launch of the South African portal for Dutch company World Online (later Tiscali). He is currently the editor of the Mail & Guardian Online.
• Dustin Diaz is a user interface engineer at Twitter, author of JavaScript Design patterns and a photographer
• Erin Caton is PMI (Project Management Institute) trained but prefers a more agile approach to engineering and project management. She is a Senior Engineering Project Manager at Apple
• Fritz Ekwoge is an entrepreneur from Cameroon whose current focus is creating an African tech company Run Right. He is the co-founder of a pan-African online classifieds called Kerawa.com, which is very popular in Cameroon, and gaining momentum in neighbouring countries. His next venture, iYam.mobi, is SMS based.
• Gareth Ochse is an Internet and mobile entrepreneur with related experience in venture capital and strategy consulting. He is founder of iSigned.com, a director of DNA Economics and Mira.
• Grant Macfarlane joined Google Inc in 2002 as Google UK's 5th employee and first Ad Words hire outside the US. After other positions in the IT industry, he returned to South Africa to set up The-Media-Image(TMI) in 2008. It is a leading integrated digital marketing consultancy specialising in Search Engine Marketing.
• Jason Norwood-Young is currently head of technology for the Mail & Guardian Online, which includes Africa's oldest news site mg.co.za, ThoughtLeader, TechLeader and SportsLeader.
• Jeff Fletcher is expert in the financial side of product development in the ISP environment, making sure the technical platform can support products that are financially viable. He co-founded three6five network solutions, where he makes sure technical solutions always meet a business requirement.
• Joe Stump, after spending a few years as Digg's Lead Architect he struck out on his own, with Matt Galligan, to found SimpleGeo. As CTO of SimpleGeo he's responsible for architecting and scaling a robust GIS infrastructure for developers around the world.
• Jonathan Snook, a web designer and developer of striking designs, impeccable markup and code, and forward-thinking ideas and applications. He has teamed up with a dynamic group of world-class partners to form Sidebar Creative, who take on major projects as well as inventing innovative applications, including Snitter, My Mile Marker, and Overheard.it.
• John Resig is a JavaScript Tool Developer for Mozilla Corp and the author of the book Pro JavaScript Techniques. He is also the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library
• Justin Spratt, an Australian, living in South Africa for the last 5 years, is a speaker and writer on issues where technology and economics intersect. He is GM of VoIP Mobile & Wi-Fi HotSpot businesses at Internet Solutions. He is co-founder of ISLabs, start-up incubator and GeekRetreat and sits on the steering committees of WAPA and Silicon Cape.
• Malcolm Hall was a founder member of a successful start-up (The World On Line) focused on Microsoft Great Plains-a mid-market ERP package-in the 1990's. Since founding Open Box Software, a bespoke .Net software development company, Malcolm has divided his time between US, UK and South Africa overseeing operations and project delivery.
• Matthew Buckland has worked in the online medium all his working life from its inception in South Africa. He is currently the GM of publishing and social media at 24.com.
• Mike Lewis is the founder of Origin Interactive South Africa, an Interactive media agency that closes the gap between clients and their customers through a user centred design approach. He is driven by his love for design, technology and innovation and his aim is to help bring South Africa up to speed where it can compete on an international level in the digital market place.
• Mike Stopforth is an entrepreneur, writer and speaker who helps companies extract value from Web 2.0 trends and technologies to create smarter, more profitable businesses. He heads up Cerebra, a leading social media company and sister company of Brandsh Media. He is a technology commentator for popular business and marketing websites, lectures at the Vega School of Branding and features as a guest lecturer on executive programs at the Graduate School of Business in Cape Town, and GIBS in Johannesburg. He was invited to contribute a chapter on social media to Dion Chang's 2010 Flux Trends Review publication.
• Nii Simmonds is a recognised speaker, consultant and sustainable evangelist on African entrepreneurship, sustainable technology and African innovation. He blogs on Nubian Cheetah and is the 2009 co-organiser of the Annual Maker Faire Africa. He is the co-founder of Afrobotics, a non-profit that teaches innovation and entrepreneurship using robotics as a tool to get youth and young adults to create innovative technologies to solve everyday problems in Africa. Currently, he serves on the board of advisors for Investors Without Borders, Wall Street Without Walls, Gateway Innovations Limited and BarCampGhana.
Patrick Kayton co-founded the instructional design agency, Bright Sparks, and has conceptualised, designed and developed scores of highly interactive educational materials, courses and comics principally in the areas of entrepreneurship and innovation. In partnership with his brother Barry, he has developed a unique instructional approach that weaves analytical and creative threads into a powerful tapestry for learning and thinking. Their efforts have addressed audiences and learners of all ages, from impoverished youth in rural Africa to sophisticated MBA students. Since 2006, the brothers have collaborated on the creation of Cognician, a powerful thought processing software application for the web.
• Pete Broote Sumner's extensive Google experience plus all the local African knowledge he gained by setting up the Google South African office gives TMI a great competitive advantage. He runs the TMI office in Cape Town which is the outsource hub for all TMI UK clients.
• Peter Van der Zee is a venture capitalist at the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) where he makes significant early stage equity investments into promising technology companies with global aspirations. Over the last three years his team has invested over R220 m in 18 early stage companies, across a broad spectrum of technology sub-sectors including software, consumer electronics, industrial technology and medical devices.
• Rian Van Der Merwe joined South African start-up Yola.com in San Francisco as a senior product manager. In March 2010, he and his family moved back to South Africa permanently where he now works at Yola's Cape Town office.
• Rob Stokes is the founder and group CEO of Quirk eMarketing, Africa's largest full service online marketing agency. He is also the co-author of the Quirk textbook - eMarketing: the essential guide to online marketing.
• Sarah Blake is the head of Optimisation at Quirk eMarketing. She compiled the Quirk textbook - eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Online Marketing and is an author of Kotler's Principles of Marketing: Global and Southern African Perspectives.
• Sheraan Amod is the co-founder and CEO of Personera, a personalised print platform integrated with Facebook that serves both consumer and business to business markets. He is also the curator of Cape Town Startup Digest, an edition of the weekly events list for entrepreneurs started in Silicon Valley that has since become a global phenomenon.
• Stefan Magdalinski is the CEO of Mocality.com, a new mobile business directory providing services to thousands of entrepreneurs across Africa. Its first city is Nairobi, Kenya.
• Stephan Ekbergh has worked and invested in a number of travel companies and digital media businesses. In 1997 he founded Mr Jet, Scandinavia's first transactional online travel company, before launching the TravelStart portfolio in 1999, a business he later successfully expanded internationally. In 2006, Travelstart South Africa was launched, as the country's first online travel agency and current market leaders. In early 2010, he sold the entire European arm of his business and in the near future will focus on emerging markets to contribute to establishing e-commerce in Africa and the Middle East.
• Steve Song, the telecommunications fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, looks for ways to drive down the cost of communications infrastructure in South Africa and raise awareness of the potential impact of affordable infrastructure on social and economic growth.
• Steve Vosloo is the fellow for 21st Century learning at the Shuttleworth Foundation. He firmly believes that mobile phones, games and digital media are the future of Africa's education and currently leads the m4lit (mobiles for literacy) project, which has demonstrated the enormous potential of mobile publishing to support teen reading and writing in South Africa.
• Tayo Oviosu is the founder and CEO of Pagatech and has a strong belief that the mobile phone can be leveraged to reduce Africa's dependency on cash and expand financial access to millions. It is launching its mobile payments service, Paga, in Nigeria in Q4 2010 and has plans to expand it beyond the Nigerian market.
• Tom Van den Berckt is Clicks2Customers' most senior search specialist with several years of experience running PPC campaigns for large clients on five different continents. His current responsibilities include devising performance-based digital marketing strategies for clients, auditing of PPC campaigns and training.
• Walter Pike, after a period as head of faculty: marketing and advertising, 2010 saw him launching two new businesses - PiKE, the new marketing agency and the Digital Academy. The former makes sense of brands in an always on, always connected world and the latter trains the people who would operate in this world. His background is in leading advertising agencies, marketing, academia and consulting.

Conference partners

Tech4Africa partners include:

• BizCommunity: Official Marketing Media Partner - www.bizcommunity.com
• Zoopy: Official Social Media Partner - www.zoopy.com/
• Digital Edge: Official Podcast Partner - www.thedigitaledge.co.za
• Old Mutual: Scholarships Partner - www.oldmutual.co.za
• Seedcamp: - www.seedcamp.com/
• Memeburn: Official Media Partner - www.memeburn.com/

For early bird registration and more information go to http://tech4africa.com/register/