On 3 August (just some 9 days away), BarCamp Zimbabwe will be held in Harare. The event is for tech startups, geeks, entrepreneurs and generally the whole tech community in Zimbabwe. We’re excited about it. We’ve longed for tech startup events like this one and we feel this will take tech in Zim to another level. It will spark bigger things, bigger events and hopefully attract some investment into great ideas and great people.
If you haven’t already, you can sign up for the event on this url: barcampzim.eventbrite.com. Places are going fast, you need to grab yourself a seat before it’s too late. The event is being funded by sponsors, so it’s free to attend. ZOL, Byers Design and Webdev are the sponsors so far. In addition to the platinum sponsorship, ZOL will also provide Wi-Fi at the event. Sponsorship slots are still open to more sponsors (details here).
Unfortunately there is limited capacity, so you have to sign up now if this looks like something you don’t want to miss. We really wanted for the event to just take place, no-matter how small, and hopefully encourage other individuals to do similar initiatives to get Zimbabwe’s tech startup ecosystem alive. We all need this. Zim needs it.
We (as Techzim) are part of the team behind the effort. The other individuals are Joseph Manzungu, an open source enthusiast, and Richwell Phinias, the man driving Dariro.com. Techzim writes about tech issues in Zim so, naturally any event bringing tech people together to share, learn and explore gets us super excited. We’re really looking forward to this.
Now to the big news for startups:
One of the exciting things that’s going to take place at BarCamp Zim is the Startup Challenge. This is a positive for startups and Zim’s whole mobile and web startup ecosystem. Startups will be able to get feedback and ideas from fellow attendees and most of all, some exposure to their projects, which hopefully will attract skills, partnerships, and ultimately some funding.
But that’s not all; courtesy of the BarCamp Zim platinum sponsor, Zimbabwe Online (ZOL), startups will also have the opportunity to win some US $25,000 in cash and internet services in the Startup Challenge. If you’re a startup and have a great project you’re working on, read details on the following url to enter: http://barcamp.jumpstart.co.zw/startups
See you there!
Update(1600hrs):If you got the “Sold Out” message on the event registration page, please try again, we just added some 25 more tickets.
Update (1800hrs): If your ISP is iWayAfrica, you probably can’t see the barcamp.jumpstart.co.zw site right now. We know because we also can’t view the site and we’re on iWay. Some routing issue we’re told. What a bummer!
To get to the site anyway, use an international proxy like anonymouse.org
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14 comments
Great Stuff
If you got the “Sold Out” message on the event registration page, please try again, we just added some 25 more tickets.
this is a gr8 idea. But my question as always with these kinds of events is on the issue of intellectual property and how pple’s ideas will be protected. I understand Google had a similar event that ends this month …. but the question is on whether there will be any measures to protect pple’s ideas… of coz i wouldnt want to be a pessimist and think that there are some ill intentioned pple out there….but eish…
’11 – Great point. I think the startups presenting their ideas should be well versed in how to make a pitch without revealing their intellectual property (IP).
Since startup pitching is new to many startups in Zim, it may be necessary for the sponsors to have a pre-pitch session, with the startups, on how not to reveal much of their IP while not preventing their idea from been well understood.
On the other hand, this is really really good for local soon to be startups, and very encouraging for the business and economic future of our country. Thanks to all who put this together, and thanks to TZ(our favorite zim site) for exposing this to the world.
Q. TZ. Will this event be recorded?
thanks for this great event to be launched on the third of august i think we are going to benefit a lot as students pursuring for programming
Hie guys,im in UK and hopeto come to Zim soon to contribute in the economy by building cutting edge web application as i went to uni to do a masters in this sort of thing.I also think many zimbos dont get support like free internet and computers from education providers which is really a shame considering that zimbos are very educated pple.WATCH OUT FOR ME 🙂