During the month of August we were involved in 3 great events, a lot of organising and some fantastic media outcomes. Thank you to all the spokespeople and collaborators for making the events so successful.
First we had Steve Vosloo's Games and Learning Indaba in Cape Town on 14 August and then in Johannesburg on 21 August. The collaborators were an interesting mix of young and not-so-young researchers from the CSIR, game designers, educators, Web 2.0 enthusiasts, video gamers etc. A Google group was formed immediately and almost everyone started blogging and sharing pics.
From a more formal coverage point, we had a full page in Techno Times in the Cape Times newspaper. The article was placed verbatim as written by Simon Dingle and edited by Steve Vosloo. The article sparked much interest and Business Day education writer, Sue Blaine, will be doing a feature on Games and Learning by the end of September or beginning October. (We were waiting for the exuberant, witty Professor to return from the States on 18 September.) More interviews also expected...
The Open Everything conversation at Birds Cafe on the 22 August sparked much interest in the media. During the event, Aslam Raffee, CIO of the Department of Science and Technology, was interviewed by Matt Buckland and Steve Song regarding the Government of South Africa's open source policy. The podcast was recorded and can be found here Open Sourcing Government in South Africa.
A further outcome of this event - Graeme Scala, editor of Brainstorm requested an exclusive interview with Helen King and fellows for 3-page article by Paul Vecchiato in the October issue of Brainstorm.
We are especially pleased that Aslam was able to make the event after a little bit of confusion with the invitation and extremely short notice ;-) This just goes to show that we have a very strong relationship with the Department of Science and Technology.
A big thanks to everyone for getting actively involved in the events and to our spokespeople for offering up their time for media interviews. Helen, Wendy, thank you so much for taking care of Aslam's arrangements in Cape Town.
Some cool things to look out for next month: Mark Horner is in the final stages of completing the texts (FHSST) and we get to start talking about Siyavula.... Watch this space :-)