It's only fitting that my first post for the year is around something that probably framed the year for me. I went through to Geekretreat 2009 and it was great, there were a bunch of us that got together talk about a bunch of stuff, and then partied. A lot of fun, and interesting, however it may have missed the origional purpose that the triad of Heather Ford, Justin Spratt and Eve Dmochowska were trying to convey.

Although excited about the retreat, I went with an initial feeling that maybe, due to workload or focus, my time could possibly have been spent better staying in JHB and closing down some projects that are deadlining for the end of January. It became clear quickly that the retreat was very different from last year. A large part I contribute to a mental space, an understanding of what to expect, better focused topics, and a theme running through of a focus on technology in education.

Various projects were showcased which peaked interest:

* P2PU - A peer-to-peer university project with a focus on informal education, run over the internet, with set syllabus.
* Cognician - A software based thinking guide that walks through the structure of a problem to enabled critical and systemic thought.
* Personera - An interesting project that piggyback's on Facebook in order to put together a profile of pictures etc, in order for you to create personalised calendars, wallpaper or gifts.

There were also a number of incredible conversations which were started.

* Andy Volk did a presentation on how his group runs a services based company, which also develops product. A model that several of us at the retreat had been looking at as a way to fund product without the involvement of venture capital.

* Stefan Magdalinski showed us how he liberated government data and handed it to the people who own the data, the people.

More important than the presentations and the projects were the connections made, made between people in the NGO space, and the education space with others that can help them. There have been a few projects that have rolled out of this. Resources have been allocated, and the geeks are helping each other wherever possible.

This retreat was one of binding a community around a purpose, the organisers should be proud. The people were amazing, and the outputs are good. What happens now is up to the participants, the connectors have done a fine job of putting the right people together, and I'm honoured to have been included.

External links:

From Cognician - http://cognician.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/geekretreat/ http://cognician.ning.com/profiles/blogs/geekretreat-an-inspirational
Elaine Rumboll's Blog
Eve D's Blog
Peter Flynn's Blog
Jarred Cinman's vies on the retreat

Neitzche's an interesting guy, fun to throw around in mental bukkake festivals and general misquote. When i first started reading his work several years back, there was a single thought that kept making me want to stop, to disbelieve and shun everything that he had written: It can't be that hard.

Yet here I am at the end of another year that was that hard, there were punches thrown, I went down to the mat in the 3rd, 4th and 9th rounds, and now the bell is about to ring, and I'm going to walk out of the ring a champion. The thing with being a champion, is that winning the fight is the easy bit, it's staying there. 2010 is looming it's head, and as I climb out of this ring, I climb back into training for another fight.

This year brings promise, and a number of games that I'm looking forward to, It seems everybody is aware that annuity business models are the way to go, and Telamenta is no different. As we move into the product space I'm going to have to gear up and get training and skills in areas I've never been exposed to before. So here's what the year holds for me from a business front:

- Getting onto the public speaking platform, I think this is going to be a lot of fun, if nothing else, and will help spread the open source, user experience and business anthropology view and messages I've been playing with.
- Telamenta: Telamenta is going into deep product development, we'll be continuing bespoke and we've grown to a point where the new game has evolved, and we'll start dipping our feet into the Saas (Software as a service) models. We're will also be officially launching our UX division, which has been growing organically in the back-end.
- Cycan: Cycan's executive coaching is doing amazing things, and 2009 pushed their skills deeper, with a number of larger clients including mines and banks, we've been pushing group coaching into an incredibly powerful way, so that teams are working in fascinating ways to achieve their outcomes. I want to use 2010 as a platform for Cycan to develop their IP in ways that are more than human interface dependent. There are a number of challenges in this, and while I know that Cycan has in the past used their human edge as a differentiator, I don't think that this will be lost, if we do things properly.

All in all, I look forward to an incredible year. For now though, a small break and lot of reading. learning and planning.

I was fortunate enough to be involved with the TedX Johannesburg event from close to its inception. A large part of this was in watching a rather remarkable woman in Alicia-Thomas Woolf.

Alicia has always been a women that acknowledges those that give back, and I think it's only appropriate to acknowledge the amount of effort that she went into, in a completely voluntary state in order to put together a production that made me feel not only proudly South African, also proudly human. In fact I don't recall being in a room packed full of individuals as eager to give back to their various communities, across divergent background, despite race, gender or education as I did yesterday.

My own company, Telamenta, in which Alicia is strongly involved, has always taken a large involvement in community give back. I had always written this off to the fact that we're a bunch of geeks, that were welcomed into the age of digital enlightenment through open source software (OSS), an intrinsically communal development. Yesterday these, I know realise cynical, blinkers were lifted To see individuals from incredibly colourful backgrounds, from nursing to technology, from biology to biomimicry (to alchemy) showing the fundamentally human trait of caring.

I strongly suggest those that want to give back read through Ivo Vegter's Live Blog of the event.

My small 2c is simply to say Alicia, well done, it was an idea that was worth spreading and you use just the butter knife for the job.

I think, like many people, I grew up thinking that my youth was different to many others, a little outcast from a lot of society, I grew up mostly around a business table with the content of a large amount of regular discussion reflective of business landscapes and coporate culture. This had a great impact on my interests, it was tech venture capital magazine Red Herring that graced my bedside table rather than Car Magazine, and I felt different, and that was OK. Except I wasn't.

The Silicon Cape launch brought together communities from academia, government, finance and the tech sector in order to pool a wealth of South African talent in a single geographic hub so that the dreams of uplifting ourselves, and our economy could be addressed, realistically and from the right stand point. Key speakers included high level names like Dr. Johann Rupert, Dr Mamphela Ramphele and Helen Zille.

Although there are still concerns of "typical" South African backscratching, the energy that was felt within the one circular wall of The Bay hotel's rotunda was not only immense and passionate, but also thoughtful and concerned. If there is one thing that we have it is talent and passion, in order for this initiative to be successful we also need drive, patience and to be relentlessly resourceful in our approach to how we get government on sides.

Already in the news items have come up, regarding a push for the western cape to be a tax neutral zone, one of Dr. Rupert's primary key points, which, when made, was cause for Helen Zille to break into applause. Dr. Ramphele (who is now heading up the Technology Innovation Agency - TIA) almost brought down the house with her softly spoken: "I can't believe that we can't sell to people who pay in dollars. How stupid is that? How can we grow our economy?" as she spoke about the importance of government creating an enabling environment and bringing down regulatory barriers.

There are very real challenges in trying to make this work, and I don't think that any of us expect it to be an easy road, however the pawns have position themselves to the bishops and queens, and they are the pieces that have to take this to the king. For now an important start has been made, an ethos created, and a vision shared. For now, we will talk, and share, and and commune together, maybe not physically in the Silicon Cape, but at least in that mind space.

All in all, I must congratulate Justin Stanford and Vinnie Lingham on a remarkable event, I've never felt as enthused as when I left that building. An an entrepreneur I'll be looking on with great interest and expectation, because it is my overbearing opinion that if we don't get this right, we are in a world of trouble as a country. At some point, we've got to grow up, and learn how to manage our resources, as the mantra of the event mentions "If we're not exporting our IP, we're exporting our talent."

The emotions that drive us are strange things, anger over the dehumanisation of Caster Semenya, fear of an unknown East taking over an unfit West, and hope for a better day, and a better land that we love. Yes I'm an ardent patriot, doing what I feel is necessary to change the landscape for a better South Africa, and it seems I'm not alone.

Rockstar entrepreneur (and poker player) Vinny Lingham and investment entrepreneur Justin Stanford shared a dream typical of many in this country, and instead of letting the typical culture settle into it, have pushed on it and pushed hard. Part of the problem that faces this country going forward is what I refer to as corporate succession planning, the gap between the larger corporates and the younger entrepreneurial type companies that can help us push for new blood in the business lifescape. There are many causes for this; whether it be the interesting way our talent moves, either snatched up by the larger entities for security, interesting company jumping for higher packages, or exporting itself because of a lack of trust and security, or the hold back from government, given difficult tax laws and poor incentive, and one cant forget the economic elephant in the room. The above are just a few variables impacting the lack of startups in South Africa, and yet the skills that we have, the passion that we have are at a global level (according to seven time startup owner Gareth Knight).

So the question is then "What can we do about it?" As Vinny and Jus noticed the number of emerging startups in the Cape, and were reminded of the symbolic landscape of Silicon Valley as the future of California in the late 90's, they decided to share their vision for the Cape moving into Africa and do something about it

The Silicon Cape vision is of an ecosystem in the Western Cape of South Africa, that serves to attract and bring together local and foreign investors, the brightest technical talent, and the most promising entrepreneurs, to foster the creation and growth of world-class IP start-up companies in an environment that competes with other similar hubs around the world against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful settings and pleasant places to live, work and play on the globe.

In the style of a digital Martin Luther King, http://www.siliconcape.com went viral quickly, and the team will be hosting their first event in early October. Western Cape Premier, Hellen Zille, cleared her diary to talk to the tidal wave movement of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and media that is breaking over this vision for the future.

I'll see you in the Silicon Cape.

If was ever any doubt in my mind (which there hasn't) about whether social media is able to build community back in the meat space world, it would have been dispelled today at the JHB Drupal Users Group first DrupalCamp. I've been around the block as far as communities go, and the comparison between the DrupalCamp of today, using social media platforms to get to the right people, vs. that of the Gauteng Linux Users Group (GLUG) 10 years back, has astounding return on investment.

Our very first camp drew a crowd of about 90 people coming in from mixed backgrounds, and skill levels, from expert brand consultants, who were just playing with Drupal for the first time, to die hard non-core-hacking PHP and Drupal pros, centered around a single cause: Enabling anybody to build better, stronger, more flexible dynamic website, whether behind the firewall, a simple brochureware site, or a massively complex data rich enterprise site.

Justin Spratt (@justinspratt) and IS Labs not only supplied the venue for the event, but also provided some crowd pleasing information in the form of what ISLabs does as far as entreprenerual support within the country, and the give back that IS puts together for us.

Charles Tanton (@foxtrotcharlie) presented an a great outline to the conceptual stuff behind Drupal, a fairly difficult mountain to climb, and did an exceptional job of it, being clear on how the Drupal framework works and what that looks like at the end of the day. Thanks to George Ziady from Springfisher for taking the beginners into a far more practical conversation of the framework, articulating and showing clearly a step by step guide on how to use the theoretical knowledge that Charles imparted, in a paint by numbers approach to setting up a Drupal based website.

After lolling around IS' braai area, munching on boerie rolls (with many to the vegetarians, there will be a salad option at the next one) and sipping beers (or in my case far too many Vitamin Waters), the jolly digital pranksters re-congregated inside to go a little deeper down the rabbit hole. One of Telamenta's developers Greg McKeen showcased the intranet project Open Atrium and the Drupal module Features,a module package management system that was met with, well, "OOh's and Aaah's" from some of even the more seasoned Drupalers, before Willem van Straaten, founder of eConsultant closed the day with his own personal rendition of the Lion King (I have reason to believe that a video of this may be available soon).

A special thank to the sponsors of this incredible first attempt to make the South African chapters of Drupal International as proud, if not prouder than our other contingents: Telamenta, ISLabs, Cerebra, Brandsh, eConsultant, and Springfisherand personal thanks to Charles Tanton for spearheading the Jozi Drupal Users Group and all other volunteers for making this event special to all that attended.

I do have pictures from the event, and I will be putting them up shortly. You guys did yourselves and our community proud.

Although still in it's infancy the buzzword Enterprise 2.0 brings with it a number of expectations; better communication channels, easier access to information and of course self organised managing of teams.

It has also brought with it many things that Enterprise 1.0 did not expect, and as such are still learning to deal with. The Enterprise 2.0 culture is that of finding the appropriate and trusted individuals within the system and is completely re-routing standard organizational hierarchies in order for the individuals within the larger system to achieve their personal outputs. Communication is quicker, more efficient and effective and as such managers are being taken to task, conversations about the good and the bad are happening both internally and externally to the organization and businesses, ill equipped to deal with these mirrors, are flustering to the often cold, always honest, feedback.

The massive upside of this infrastucture is that it opens a base from which companies can harness passionate, vocal and trusted individuals, in order to address their concerns, and shape the communities around those people and create champions for their message. There are some political theorists who are looking at management theory abstracting into political science, for many this is a natural, logical and rational approach. As an extension of that is looking where the trending topics that we are seeing take place within organizations evolving into the larger communities. So what might happen if governments learn from the behaviours of companies?

We could see services shaped around collaboration and community, where individuals are as accountable for their country as they are their companies and themselves.
Could it be possible to have a government as an emergence of collaboration, rather than a government that governs?