Four days, 18 discussion sessions, six workshops and three big parties later, delegates and exhibitors at the African Computing and Telecommunications summit (ACT 2000) at Sun City are still furiously networking and soaking up as much information as their brains, laptops, notebooks and assorted scraps of paper can handle.
Just over 460 delegates attended the conference themed "Making IT work for Africa", which featured roughly 20 sponsors and almost 50 exhibitors. Sean Moroney, group chairman of organiser AITEC, says delegates have been mainly positive in their verbal feedback of the conference in general.
"One resounding complaint that we`ve had is that the strategy of running parallel sessions means a lot of delegates had to miss certain discussions, and that`s something we`re looking at addressing in next year`s conference."
Moroney says next year`s ACT, which will be held at Sun City in mid-September, will feature a much more technology-driven approach to making conference material available to delegates. A partnership under discussion with Rhodes University`s journalism department will lend stronger reporting support, and provide delegates with summarised information and expanded papers available on CD-ROM.
We`ve generated more leads through speaking with government departments and CEOs from top businesses across Africa than at any other exhibition this year.
Cliff van Tonder, country manager, Lawson Software SA
AITEC`s target attendance for next year is 2 000 delegates - a ramp up that will rely heavily on an extensive marketing drive which Moroney says will begin almost immediately.
Almost all the exhibitors have agreed to return next year. Cliff van Tonder, country manager for Lawson Software SA, says the company will definitely be back as a lead sponsor. "We`ve generated more leads through speaking with government departments and CEOs from top businesses across Africa than at any other exhibition this year."
"Van Tonder says Lawson Software has closed deals with business and government departments in Ghana, Mozambique, Malawi and Kenya in its time spent at ACT 2000.
On the whole, delegates are as positive about ACT as all other stakeholders. Makau Ngola, a Kenyan working for the Forum for African Women`s Educationalists, brims with barely contained excitement at the sheer volume of information made available during the past four days. His few complaints focus around having to miss a number of discussion sessions due to the parallel streams, and the Web development workshop in the afternoon, because it clashes with his AITEC-arranged transport back to Johannesburg International Airport.
The strategy of running parallel sessions means a lot of delegates had to miss certain discussions, and that`s something we`re looking at addressing in next year`s conference.
Sean Moroney, group chairman, AITEC
Other delegates agree that the session content was very useful, although some feel a lot of the presentations lacked content and examples of case studies in the African context. There were also complaints of lack of organisation during the registration process, a snafu that is believed to reflect negatively on the entire sub-Saharan Africa region.
Tebogo Fruwirth, legal advisor to the Swaziland Posts & Telecommunications Corporation, has found the networking and e-commerce policy streams to be the most helpful. One of many more female delegates than at last year`s conference, she shies away from the issue of women in information and communication technology, believing instead that everyone in the business has their own problems, and neither gender should be focused on to the exclusion of the other.
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