I recently attended the SAFIPA conference in Pretoria, South Africa.

I must say that I hadn’t heard of SAFIPA, which stands for South Africa – Finland Knowledge Partnership on ICT, until earlier this year. It’s essentially a bilateral project between the two governments with the view to foster the local ICT industry.

A common theme at this year’s conference was the triple-helix concept – where government, private sector and academia collaborate closely on a particular project. Also new to me was the Living Lab term which is where a community participates directly in and assumes joint ownership of a research initiative, usually underpinned by ICT (see Wikipedia for more). One of my favourite sessions was presented by Marlon Parker on the Athlone Living Lab (ALL) where he, with support from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the local community are using MXit and other instant messaging systems to provide drug advice support, debt support and other social counseling services.

I was pleased to be asked, along with several other entrepreneurs, to present in an “elevator pitch” session to a mock investor panel. Much to my delight, my pitch on Mobile Researcher won and SAFIPA kindly rewarded me with a brand new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone – a significant upgrade from my previous handset. Many thanks!

I really found the conference to be a great learning and networking experience. Looking forward to next year.