The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

Tomorrow, I will be in Cape Coast for the 4th  +Barcamp Cape Coast . In 2010,  +Kobe Subramaniam  attended  +Barcamp Takoradi . He was so inspired and motivated by the event that he led a team to organize the first Barcamp Cape Coast in November 2011. Since then, Barcamp Cape Coast has been a fixture where it happens a week after the Fetu Afahye festival in Oguaa - the local name for Cape Coast. Kobe's been supported by the likes of  +kofi yeboah  who he's on the  +Barcamp Ghana  team with. This includes +Rachel Hormeku  who attended multiple Barcamps last year and is growing into more responsibility. Other leaders that have arisen out of this 4 year growth include  +Papa Baffoe Aikins   +Kwesi Quagraine  and  +William Osilaja Boampong  who is now part of the +GhanaThink Foundation 's  +Ghana Volunteer Program  team. The theme here is growth but one important theme is also that of branding. That's wh...

Press releases are long. I don't even know why. But you will read them if you are really interested. Or at least look for the bolded text and numbers. Otherwise, this message is pretty simple. National Volunteer Day - where many people in Ghana volunteer their skills, effort, time and money to make Ghana better around a day (or two or three) is here again. September 20-22 . You can do something in your own small way. You should. You should also let us know before hand, so we promote, support, join you. Or you can join us. Interested? The details are in the press release below. The +Ghana Volunteer Program  (GVP) is a program being run by the GhanaThink Foundation, an NGO based both in Ghana and the USA. National Volunteer Day , which falls on the 21 st of September is our major activity . It was instituted as part of GVP in 2013. The initiative is to get as many people as possible in Ghana to volunteer their time or do community service on the Founder’s Day Holiday . Whil...

One of my favorite things to do at Barcamps and in fact, events in general that I attend or have a vested interest in, is how they heard about a particular event. As someone who is part of a team that organizes many events via the  +GhanaThink Foundation , I want to know what's effective and efficient across every thing we do. Working hard is good, working smart is better. At +Barcamp Tamale  2014, we asked a similar question. How many people heard about this event from Facebook ? A good number of people raised their hand. "How many of you heard about this event from Twitter ? " A smaller umber but still respectable number of people had their hands up. One of the participants shouted " Whatsapp ". It is allowed. So we asked accordingly. A surprisingly good number of hands went up. Much fewer hands went up when we asked about radio . Even fewer for email or from a website. A good number of attendees heard about the event from their friends - for me, the mos...

The Kumasi Konnect initiative is growing. When we first promoted it, a gentleman called  +joseph osei  emailed us saying - "My name is joseph, i work with Ultimate Radio, and I will like to be involve in the Kumasi Konnect initiative". I knew of Joseph, because I had seen him email the  +BloggingGhana  mailing list and knew he lived in Kumasi. I was really happy that he approached us about getting involved in  #KumasiKonnect . I knew what exactly we wanted him to do, since he was with Ultimate Radio and was a blogger he'd help us with marketing. After finally reaching him via Twitter , the team asked him to recap the first event. He came back with a post that talked about the first event which featured Frank Boateng and the second (upcoming event) featuring Valerie Okudzeto . Foresight. Get tickets for  tickets for this one at Ego Tickets . Below is the press release he wrote and circulated amongst many websites (albeit edited a bit). I love Joseph's...

Sometime last year,  +kofi yeboah  had an idea for a monthly meetup. He had returned from Kenya where he attended the Amani Institute and was brimming with ideas. I admired Kofi, he reminded me of myself when I was younger. To a great extent, that's probably only because he is younger than me. I've known him since  +Barcamp Cape Coast  2011 and he's grown into being more awesome, aspirational and inspirational. I wasn't surprised when he sought to organize a monthly event for social entrepreneurs in Accra. Today, that idea has given birth to Kumasi Konnect and a lot more like it are about to follow. Watch this space. Kofi ended up moving to Kumasi late last year to start his national service with  +Clean Team Ghana . Today, he's traveling to Singapore to represent Clean Team at the BOP Convention Expo. I've heard many great things about Singapore from friends like  +Curtis Vanderpuije  and I know Kofi will come back and share a lot of great exper...

The first time I went to Tamale was for +Barcamp Tamale 2011. Ever since then, I always look forward to visiting again. When there is the opportunity to meet the young movers and shakers, the young changemakers, doers and entrepreneurs there, it is a huge added bonus. That's what Barcamp Tamale is about. If you are in or around Tamale, you can't miss this event on August 23rd. If you can't be there, tell someone who can. Stay tuned to the hashtag #bctamale. Kudos to the organizing team of +Mohammed Muntasir Nashiru   +Yakubu H.Yakubu   +Kwaching Jessica   +maccarthy lomotey   +Enoch Robot Boy Appiah Junior   +Peter Awin  with the able support of +Leonard Hagan   +kofi yeboah   +Kobe Subramaniam  and the +Barcamp Ghana  team of the +GhanaThink Foundation . Barcamp Tamale 2014 is a free networking forum bringing people together for a day of discussion, demos and dialogue on Tamale, Ghana and beyond. It will take place on Augus...

I haven't released my Togolese alter-ego. My friend Thelma gave me some helpful material to learn French but my fluency is nowhere close to what it could be. So allow me to start off this blog post with some more English. Or you can skip it all to the French part. I have already given you great info with the title of this blog post :-) It's very exciting for us at the GhanaThink Foundation to partner with the US Embassy in Ghana to organize TechCamp West Africa . Sounds a lot like Barcamp right? Yeah. You can learn more about multiple Tech Camps done all over the world at this website and at this wiki . Tech Camp West Africa will bring together some of the most influential, innovative and impactful young people in West Africa for a weekend of ideas, actions and projects. GhanaThink and the US Embassy in Ghana look forward to all the cool things that will happen this weekend of November 14-16 . We're looking for applicants, as this is open to citizens of Ghana, Togo,...