The following letter was posted to the I-Network mailing list by Joyce Kyeyune Tonda following the Open Source Journalism event we held on 2010/11/02:
Disclaimer: This is not an ad or a marketing message - its just something that needed to be said.
It's not often that you go to tech events that think outside the box- are superbly organized and best of all offer practical usable tools.
The invite said: "We promise that the event, will be nothing like you have experienced before. We go beyond the traditional facilitated workshop approach that is prevalent in Uganda. We are unique.The event will be interactive, active and intense."
That alone- was intriguing.
Those that attended this Tuesday event ("Where Technology Meets Journalism") will agree that:
1. Choice of speakers (Johnny Long-'I hack Charities', Reinier Battenberg, Kyle Spencer, Simon Vass, Matthew Griffths and Lydia Namubiru) was definitely on the money. Very conversant with their topics and technically sound. Thank God there was no presentation with 100 slides as is so common in workshops.
2. The facilitator (Kshitij Gheewala) of Bringing Being into Business was what you'd call an Innovative Event Manager in the true sense of the phrase- the interactive nature of the event, the activities, got every participant engaged, involved and learning.
3. Practical, practical , practical. For the Enterprise Technology media team this was key for us because we were introduced to a whole array of great Open source journalistic tools that were easy to access and use from Ushahidi/SwiftRiver-CrowdMap, TrueCrypt, Social Engineering-(Google hacking, electronic deduction, dumpster diving), journalisttoolbox.org, DropBox-....
Overall, it was a fun way of learning about Open source tools- I think Kyle did mention that the presentations will be posted on LUG website this week- please take a moment to view them if you did not attend this event.
My personal thoughts are that- Open source needs to be marketed more and more in this manner to mainstream audiences to break the geek myth and lead to increased adoption.
We captured some of the photos of this session and you can view them here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Enterprise-Technology-magazine-East-Africa/113126218735304?v=photos#!/album.php?aid=23056&id=113126218735304
Thanks to the LUG team and Gregory Branch (whose details are below) who was the brainchild of this great initiative.
String Reporter - CNN International, CBS News
Uganda Correspondent - www.globalpost.comCheers,
Joyce Kyeyune Tonda
Managing Director
Enterprise Technology Magazine: East Africa editionhttp://joycetonda.blogspot.com
https://twitter.com/technologyEA
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