Thoughts on Internetix

Eve Dmochowska    Think about it    

I attended the Internet Solution conference, Internetix, on Tuesday and I just wanted to blog some thoughts around it.

Conferences are a dime a dozen, of course, but I don’t think I have ever attended one in South Africa that I enjoyed as much. Which got me thinking as to why exactly Internetix was such a success, and whether that success can be replicated by smaller companies.

Some factors that contributed to the day:

The venue: held on Dimension Data’s Campus, where IS sits, the conference venue is ideal for a conference of this size. The auditoriums are world class, the technology is (mostly) spot on and the networking spaces are top notch.

The speakers: For starters, the speakers were from various disciplines. Amongst many more, the speakers included Ravi Naidoo talking about S African creativity, Mark Gevisser talking about the future of S Africa under Zuma and Justin Spratt talking about the future of telecommunications under the power of Voip. There was a panel made up of the key telco people in S Africa (representing IS, Icasa, Telkom, and Neotel. Alan Knott Craig was part of the panel in his personal capacity) and Roy Blumenthal talking about the need for personal creativity. Tying it all together was the thread of the “What if” question…an excellent way to allow diverse topics to co-exist, while not boring the audience. All speakers had knowledge, passion and experience in their field, and it showed.

The attendees: This was probably the highlight for me. The conference was extremely well attended (I heard that there were probably more than 1200 people there), but I felt as if I was walking into a friend’s private party. It seemed as if half of the Geekretreaters were there. Obviously my advantage is that I have cool friends who actually attend events like Internetix, but even if I didn’t, the venue and the setup was very condusive to mingling, breaking out and socialising.

No agenda, hidden or otherwise: Ultimately, Internet Solutions put on a show for its clients and other people for the purpose of opening up the audience’s minds, and daring us to ask the “What if” question. No pushing of product. Even if there was an agenda you could immediately tell that it wasn’t to :

• make money
• push IS capabilities

This made for a conference that was neutral and accessible. And interesting. I also got the feeling that a lot of the attendees were there as IS’s guests (I was, thanks to Justin Spratt). But I think that even those who did pay, forked over only about a R1,000 or so. This makes for a nice change from the R5,000 ticket prices that are the norm these days.

South Africa needs more events like these: gatherings for 500+ people, with varied and top notch speakers, thought provoking tracks and affordable prices. I can’t imagine that the big corporates would struggle to make it happen. But I know of other, smaller players who are trying to shake up the conference industry, such as Gareth Knight the organiser of Tech4Africa happening in August 2010, Netprophet and Tedx.
Let’s hope the trend continues.

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