Today is the opening of the annual Gartner Africa Symposium held annually at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC). Rene Jacobs, the Managing Director of Gartner Africa welcomed over 1200 delegates to this 3-day tech-fest. The conference runs in parallel to the with an expo from technology vendors. We have met before at the Computer Society’s annual IT Personality of the Year award, for which Gartner is a partner. There is over 1,200 business and IT leaders at the Symposium.

The theme of this year’s conference is about Leadership. According to a Gartner survey, over 70% of CIO’s felt they do not have the right skills. South Africa is still bleeding from the technology brain drain. You have to get involved in education, not just IT education, but business education. She quoted Bill Gates’s Creative Capitalism speech from the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year. He said the most powerful innovation happens when a company uses its top talent to solve problems for the impoverished. Government, business and non-profits can work together to stretch the market forces and eventually doing so, reduces inequalities in the world. Rene asked everyone in the audience to imagine the impact of each company adopting a school to help them improve output. To imagine each individual sponsoring a child from grade 1 -12, even up to tertiary level. What difference would that make in terms of South Africa’s skills shortage. She quoted another Gartner estimate, that IT industry is responsible for 2% of the carbon emissions, the same as the airline industry

The rockstar analyst, Peter Sondergaard, head of Gartner Research Worldwide took the stage next like he was rallying the troops. He highlighted a few of the key issues to be discussed over the next 3 days including:

Workforce: the people required will not be in the organistion. Skills will be needed and demand will continue outstrip supply in the technology industry.  From now to 2010 qualified IT professionals who also have very good experience in business will be in an extreme short supply worldwide. And all this is the result of a vacuum in IT leaderships skills as more and more people from the baby boom generation leaves the organisations. When companies who opt for outsourcing or offshoring, they inadvertently create a draining of leaders in their organisation because those people running the IT systems are not staff who can be groomed for leadership. He said you have to define what talent means for your organisation and begin to capitalise on resources worldwide. This is essentially embracing the flat world theories as described by A call that was echoed by subsequent speakers is that to get involved in Education. Think outside the box, way outside the box. Make IT attractive for digital natives. Act now before it’s too late. Quality of IT projects will decline: IT organisation will suffer lack of leadership talent.

Green IT is the other key issue with Gartner:

1. Reconsider Green-IT’s importance. Managing carbon tracking inside and outside the organisation.
2. Measuring “green” or carbon cost per transaction.

Peter handed over to the conference’s chairperson, Debra Logan, another distinguised analyst. She said IT and growth is tied together very strongly. A year ago there was a positive outlook for the world and the  there was an especially positive outlook for emerging economies like South Africa. Since 2007 there have been several adverse events in the world: sub-prime crises in USA, the earth quake in China, electricity problem in South Africa earlier this year. South Africa still has a growth rate of 4.1%  and it’s still a growing and vibrant economy. Another catch-phrase that many of the analysts kept repeating is the Two Speed economy globally and in South Africa: 71% of South Africans still believe we can successfully host 2010 Soccer Worldcup. There is more investment happening in South Africa compared to BRIC countries…

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This is a portion of an interview for Huisgenoot magazine from 2007. I’m not even sure if it was ever published because the journalist was forced to redo the initial interview, which focussed on Skype to include a few questions about Internet access.

1. What are the different Internet access options available to South African consumers?

Dial-up: is the original mechanism used by home users to connect to the Internet access. Your computer connects to the Internet via telephone line. Your operating system like WindowsXP or Linux uses a modem to connect a computer and a telephone line to dial into an Internet service provider’s (ISP) node to establish a modem-to-modem link, which is then routed to the Internet. It is an analogue connection and by comparison the slowest Internet connection. Prices vary from R45 to R145 per month.

ISDN: is a circuit-switched telephone network system, designed to allow digital transmission of voice and data over ordinary telephone copper wires, resulting in better quality and higher data speeds than
are available with analogue. It was often used in videoconferencing because it provides simultaneous voice, video, and text transmissions. Pricing is a combination of monthly subscription + hours dialed into the Internet.

Broadband: is an “always-on” on Internet connection which can be both over fixed telephone lines (ADSL) or wireless connections. Research by Arthur Goldstuck predictes South Africa will have 1.37 million broadband users by end of 2008.

• ADSL is the form of DSL of all broadband connections. Telkom launched commercial ADSL in 2002 and prices have come down several times since then. Bandwidth capacity and speed has increased now to where up to 4mbps is available. Most ISPs offer ADSL and prices range widely depending on how much bandwith you use. Beginners should start with 1Gig account and business users 3Gigs.
• 3G: is the 3rd generation of cellphone standards and technology. 3G technologies enable cellphone network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved efficiency. Pricing varies based on many different packages. You can purchase a contract and get the modem free; you can buy the moden and use pre-paid airtime; or you can use a 3G/HSDPA phone to connect using Bluetooth. HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a new mobile data protocol and is sometimes referred to as a 3.5G (or “3½G”) technology. It’s available from Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Virgin Mobile.
• iBurst: is based on IntelliCell technology from ArrayComm in the US. It uses radio frequencies with base stations and modems. Pricing vary from R49 to R1099 per month. They operate on a reseller model like ADSL so you can purchase it from most ISPs.
• MyWireless: is a form of Internet connectivity that uses “wireless” technology by creating a radio-based connection to the Internet using network of specially erected towers (base stations). As such, MyWireless provides a secure Internet telecommunications platform at speeds of up to 512kbps. It’s similar to iBurst. Pricing varies from R499 to R1500 per month.

All internet connections require a modem unless you are using your cell phone as a modem. There are packages that includes free modems and some that don’t which can be more expensive per month.

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Gareth Roberts, a new member of the team here at NETucation,  alerted me to a new computer worm that attacks Facebook and MySpace users. One very important piece of information left out of most of the news reports on News24 or MyADSL is that ONLY on users running Microsoft Windows are prone to this attract. Facebook users receives links to download the worm via Inbox messages from infected users while links are posted in MySpace commentaries when infected MySpace users log into their account. Current variant of the worm is faked as a codec installer named as codecsetup.exe. When the worm is ran, a dialog box will pop up with the message “Error installing Codec. Please contact support“.

These days I use an Apple Macbook Pro (thanks Google.org!) running the Mac OS X operating system that is substantially more secure than MS Windows. The most important thing to remember with your computer security is to avoid clicking on anything unfamiliar or that you do not understand. Delete suspicious emails on sight and ask your ISP to enable spam filtering before those emails even get to your computer or laptop. In 99% of the cases you won’t miss a thing…

Yes, this may sound like a paranoid approach to conducting your on. However, all computer viruses or worms have spread exactly because Internet users have been gullible. The explosion in use of social networking websites was always going to create new outlets for th creators of computer viruses or worms. Facebook has over 90 million active users and MySpace has over 240 million profiles and most of these people are brand new to the Internet. When something is a novelty you are bound to click on almost anything. What has impressed me the most about the social networking phenomenon is how quickly users are adapting and learning from group behaviour.

According to McAfee this is a low risk virus so you should not panic. However, its important to look at this screenshot and this other one, so you know what to avoid. If you are sick and tired of the vicious upgrade and update cycle on Microsoft Windows why not try Ubuntu Linux.

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In May 2007 the South African blogosphere was shook to its core with the abusive allegations from the SA Male Prostitute Blogger. Patricia de Lille, leader of the Independent Democrats party, took this personal and raged a campaign against blogging and MXit to be controlled. Now the lists of shame that has been circulating on MXit is likely to cause a similar outcry from authorities, parents and the community at large.

My question to you is whether this reaction may be justified?

How would you feel if the same of your son or daughter appeared on such a list? Whether it is true or not, often the damage done by this uncivilised behaviour can have a lasting impact on the teenagers involved. At that peculiar age of development the sensitivity to outside criticism is higher than before or after.

Here’s 5 suggestions if your children’s names appear on such a slut list:

1. Remove their cellphone for a week or two because the more they look at it these messages, the worse they feel. And get them doing other activities where cellphone is not important. Avoid the Internet because they are bound to Google this shame lists.
2. Encourage them to stay in doors with family or get their friends to come over and visit at your house because the more they go outside, people will keep asking them how they feel. And telling people how bad you feel has never made anyone feel good. Give them a break from the barrage.
3. Ask the Principal for a week or two leave of absence from the school and get a doctor’s certificate if necessary. You must protect your own sanity and your children’s during this delicate stage.
4. If you can, send them away on a holiday to another city where nobody knows them and get their mind off the nasty things being siad in the messages.
5. Report this to your local police department and get a case number. Also report it MXit and ask for a track number or reference number. They current are currently revamping their call centre (0861-00-6948) so send email to support@mxit.co.za.

Anyway here’s the official press release from MXit about these issues I discussed on Channel Islam last Friday. They issued this just before going on air and it was read out by the host of the show to help calm down the outrage in the communities.

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Khaya Dlanga is South Africa’s top video blogger with over 10,000 subscribers to his Youtube channel. His most recent video is a hilarious little dance move he calls the Skype Dance. If you want to know more about Skype, download it otherwise if you want to learn more read this beginners guide for South Africans.

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