The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

“Imagine you have gone to your favorite bar in Ghana with a few friends, amidst a lot of people you do not know. It is like you have camped at a bar. You would have conversations that matter to you. Now, remove the alcohol, the music, add a lot more groups of friends, add the strangers, networki ng, interaction and keep the good vibes . Then you have a Barcamp”. Ato Ulzen-Appiah , the director of the GhanaThink Foundation talks about how he and his fellow co-founders learnt about Barcamps, participated in one in the Googleplex in California ( Barcamp Africa 2008 ), organized the first one in Ghana and have now taken it personal, towards its vision of building a critical mass of young patriotic, passionate, positive, proactive, progressive and productive people in Ghana . A Barcamp, according to GhanaThink, is a free forum which is all about learning, sharing, networking and mentoring. The GhanaThink Foundation is a social enterprise that mobilizes and organizes talent for the prim...

I asked my Senegalese friends to name their  top 5 songs  ever, from Senegal . I do not have a Senegalese alter-ego yet, but I have met Gelongal and Youssou Ndour and I led  Museke . I also asked  Google  Gemini (yes, not Meta AI, Chat GPT, Grok, Deepseek, or POE - because, I asked it through Google Sheets). You know it is my friend these days right? I also contributed my top 5. My first time in  Senegal  was in 2016. But prior to that, since 2002, I had been learning about Senegalese music from my  African friends , all around the USA, while at  MIT . I got to know more about this when me,  Edward Mabonga, Phelele Fakudze  and others started  Museke  in 2006. It was great to see some of my friends suggest songs that we were jamming to back in the day. I wanted to do a list of top 5, but there are too many songs. So I have aggregated  11 , to represent Senegal in the World Cup of  #MusicWeDeyFeel ...

I asked my Kenyan friends to name their top 5 songs ever, from Kenya . My Kenyan alter-ego, David Ochieng Mwangi , also contributed, thanks to all he has learnt around Museke . I also asked Google Gemini (yes, not Meta AI, Chat GPT, Grok, Deepseek, or POE - because, I asked it through Google Sheets). You know it is my friend these days right? I also contributed my top 5, while reminiscing this list from 2009 . My first time in Kenya was in 2011. But prior to that, since 2002, I had been learning about Kenyan music from my Kenyan friends at MIT . I got to know more about this when me, Edward Mabonga and others started Museke in 2006. It was great to see some of my friends suggest songs that we were jamming to back in the day. I wanted to do a list of top 5, but there are too many songs. So I have aggregated 11 , to represent Kenya in the World Cup of #MusicWeDeyFeel . The starting eleven . Drop your opinions, props, suggestions in the comments section . Here we go, in no part...

We at GhanaThink believe strongly in our mission: mobilize and organize talent for the primary benefit of Ghana and our vision: build a critical mass of patriotic, passionate, positive, proactive, progressive and productive young Ghanaians . Our mission is very broad so there are so many things we can do but we would only do what's easiest for us to succeed at given our state and situation  . We started GhanaThink with the spirit of volunteerism . To this day, GhanaThink is run by 100+  volunteer members and labour , including myself.  Volunteeringh opportunities with us exist for all Barcamps we organize. Aside the members, we normally have a group of volunteers per each local team,  and if we need more, we look for some. Currently, we normally get new volunteers through our community - Konnect , etc or people who we have noted who want to volunteer with us. Volunteerism is when people decide to help get something done to help others without being paid for it ....