Brent's Journey

Archive for the ‘RLABS’ Category

On Tuesday evening was the second class of our Reconstructed class that was hosted in the RLABS space. I was so encouraged to see two new young ladies from the community that attended the class. We then assisted them to create a gmail account which they will be using in the applications which we will be teaching then about in the classes to come.

We once again did Gmail and Clive Marcus showed the google docs and all the functionalities within it. This class particularly is learning very fast and growing rapidly. We have 11 more weeks to go before this class graduates from our Social Media for Good course.

Great stuff guys and keep up the good work

RLabs have come alongside theBraai4Heritage campaign and we join them in their aim to position National Heritage Day, 24 September, as South Africa’s annual national day of celebration. The gathering of friends, families and Geeks around fires, being the central theme.

National Heritage Day is a public holiday in South Africa. Our government set this day aside for all South Africans to celebrate our rich heritage. The RLabs team invites all Geeks to South Africa’s first “Braai Up” at Tokai Forest for Networking around a fire.

So bring along your chop and join in the Celebration of South Africa uniting around a fire. The RLabs team will be at Tokai Forest between 12 and 3pm.

Entrance to the braai area is R5 per person and R2 per car. Tokai Forest braai area can be found on the right-hand side of Tokai Road, just before the Tokai Manor House. The braai area is open Monday to Sunday from 09h00 to 17h00. For more information, contact the Tokai Forest Picnic area on (021) 712 7471

“The successful networkers I know, the ones receiving tons of referrals and feeling truly happy about themselves, continually put the other person’s needs ahead of their own.” ~

Bob Burg

In 1997, Tilley joined the department of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges where she taught the core courses on Latin American politics, the politics of development, and Middle East politics, as well as introductory courses on international relations and comparative politics and senior seminars on comparative racial and ethnic conflict. With Professor Kevin Dunne, she developed the International Relations Major and served as Co-coordinator, and for several years led the Development Studies minor.

She was appointed as Associate Professor in 2003[ but in 2005 took leave to conduct research in South Africa, initially at the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg. She resigned from HWS in 2006 after moving to a senior post at the Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa).

The last few weeks I’ve been to Europe and what an interesting journey it has been. I was representingRLabs in Portugal at the Annual International School of Digital Transformation in Porto, Portugal and the week was an opportunity to learn from experts and meet incredible people from all over the world. However, the highlight of the trip to Portugal was the meeting with an amazing group of people who have a heart to reconstruct their communities using innovation and technology.

During the week we had a number of discussions and meetings and it is with great excitement that I would like to introduce the world to our FIRST RLabs Social Franchise called RLabs Portugal. The RLabs Portugal initiative will be launched soon in Porto and at a later stage be expanded to Lisbon. Over the next few weeks we will share more about the team and the projects in Portugal. As we celebrate the announcement of RLabs Portugal today you can follow them onTwitter for more updates.

guest post: www.rlabs.org

Tuesday evening was the start of our new Reconstructed class. This year we basically opened the class to the public and invited people to come and join us on a Tuesday evening. In this class we take people that are not familiar with the World Wide Web (www) and set them up with emails and then eventually allow them to become bloggers and micro bloggers.

The aim of these classes is to empower our communities but also to get the stories out there. The world as we know is full of evil things and people need hope out there. I have personally come through these classes and the journey had been amazing. We now take what we have learned and equip others out there.

Stay tune to see how these peeps develop and who knows they might the next social media gurus to browse and brace the world wide web

Here is only one of the departments within Mxit

On Friday Dean, Craig and myself headed out Stellenbosch for a meeting with Glenn Alexander from the Mxit staff. Our meeting was held at the Mxit premises and what beautiful offices they have. I was always curious as to what goes on at Mxit and all I can say is that it looked very geeky when I walked in there, FTW. There were guys…And ladies sitting at their work stations, each with two screens (monitors) in front of them, coding and typing away. This was quite impressive to watch.

We met with Glenn as he has heard about our JamiiX application that we are using for our online counselling and wanted to know he could use it for an up and coming project for mxit that he will be heading up. We presented it to him and did a live demo for him. He was impressed with it and will be using JamiiX for his new project. That is all I can say for now.

After our meeting we got a tour of the offices and were shown each department and what they are responsible for. We were also then taken to the “loot” in Glenn’s office where he gave us some cool t- shirts and mxit badges. Not much I can reveal to you guys now and just to say that we had an awesome time at Mxit and thank you Glenn for the tour.

"The Loot"

This weekend the RLABS team is out once again doing a Social media Surgery. The venue for this weekend’s event was held at the College of Cape Town (City Campus) where their NCV Marketing team ran a social media network workshops on the 30 and 31 July at the College of Cape Town Open Day. As a leading provider of Education and Training, the College of Cape Town has much to offer students and prospective partners. Our courses lead to recognised qualifications that are demanded by commerce and industry.

The RLABS Team came on board and partnered with the college to create an online buss around this event. On the 1st day there weere students from different High schools coming through the door of the college to see what they could possibly come and study at the campus next year. Our aim was to sign these students up with various social media tools such as Gmail, Facebook, and Blogging etc. RLABS aim was also to drive traffic to their group on Facebook.

I love these Social Media Surgeries as it is a good way to interact with the public in an open space. Got to love innovation.

Those who didn’t book surely lost out! The organiser’s desk was inundated with bookings for 2011!

Weary but elated is the way most exhibitors are feeling after a bumper show in Cape Town this weekend! The Cape Town ICC hosted thousands of moms, dads, babas, kids and grandparents at the SABC Education Baba Indaba and Kids Indaba and boy did it rock! With a total of 39 783 visitors through the door, this show saw exhibitors’ products flying off the stands and to put the sparkly sprinkles on top of the cupcake, visitors were not afraid to make on-the-spot purchases – credit card transactions were coming thick and fast, resulting in a jam until batches were transmitted. Exhibitors such as Gelli Baff, Baby Throne and Educare completely sold out of their products!

Read more about this: Credit cards maxed out at SABC Education Baba Indaba and Kids Indaba 27 Jul 2010

More Baba Indaba articles

• Supermodel or supermom – Cape Town’s the place to be 6 Jul 2010
• Pretoria and Midrand alive with activity at Kids Indaba! 8 Jun 2010
• Pretoria and Midrand Baba Indaba dazzles and delights! 3 Jun 2010
• SABC Education Baba Indaba supports Child Protection Week 25 May 2010