From a personal perspective, I enjoy spending time with smart people in the tech space and my jaw dropped a few times this past weekend when I saw what some of the guys were achieving.

To those who feel the need to put down the GR, it’s good to know that people are waiting for us to fail because it inspires and drives us more. And if we try and fail, well at least we tried.

My name is down to help on the project where I felt I could add the most value and I’m excited to play my part.

It was also a great networking opportunity for me from a business perspective and hopefully all the amazing tech start-ups we saw on display will soon earn enough money to hire me as their PR. For now though, I’ll be helping where I can and contributing the the project I’m most interested in.

Giving of your time to a project and receiving a business benefit can go hand in hand.

There’s an ongoing debate regarding the intentions of GeekRetreat and the ability for attendees to go away and actually meet the goals and objectives we so enthusiastically set out while there. Let’s not kid ourselves, we need time to tell whether GR can deliver on those, but the fact that this event brought together so many bright minds and passionate people (and converted those who had arrived with far less optimism) is testament to our willingness to do great things for our country, and specifically education. It all has to start somewhere, and I believe that GR is, and can carry on being, one of those places where people start talking, and small projects start rolling, slowly snowballing until one day we can see social change taking place in SA.

Anyway, a great event, that I feel honoured to have attended – I am hugely excited by the project I will be getting involved in going forward.

Great report back and well done to the organisers, hopefully conversation around the weekend will continue and result in a wider pool of people being aware of the retreat next year, and offering their relevant expertise to the problem of attracting young geek talent.

I do choose to believe it will be, I think the right people are matched with the right projects, and frankly my feeling is if people think they can do better, then they should try to. The point of the retreat was to make South African Internet better for all, and I think that’s what we should be focusing on doing, all of us that can.

While I do agree with Paul Scott that there are others who could have been I think it’s really a case of what is practical. On the one hand you want a small focused group of industry experts but on the other we need the volumes to bring a different point of view to find unique solutions to the problems we are facing. Not an easy mix to find.

Personally I think the group was great and we got the best of the focus and diverse experiences and loads of projects, with committed teams, have kicked off as a consequence.

Looking forward to the next one,

@timshier

There was no African focus at all – the theme was how to make the Internet better in _South Africa_. We also didn’t discuss education challenges in Mali or Kenya strangely enough.

Geekretreat is a way for a _particular_ group of entrepreneurs, Internet business people, educators and journos to work together to do some good. You’re also doing good work? Great – keep it up.

Nicely balanced post. @wesleylynch as been in touch with the LEAP science and maths school (http://www.leapschool.org.za/) to start thinking about scholars for next year’s retreat. The kids already have a science / maths / critical thinking background and would be well-suited to attend.

Thanks for your part in a fantastic event.

1. The largest Free and Open Source project on the continent (AVOIR and Chisimba)

2. Free and Open Resources for Education and the UWC freecourseware initiative did not feature as far as I can tell (freecourseware.uwc.ac.za) UWC has had a free and open resource (FORE or OER) policy in place since 2005.

3. The largest eLearning and learning related software project was never mentioned as far as I can tell.

With a deep focus on learning and building capacity in learning, there seems to be very little African focus as far as I can tell.

Did anyone mention the fact that the AVOIR project has trained interns (and continues to do so on a daily basis) all over Africa and in South Africa in best practice software engineering and collaboration?

Did anyone mention visionaries and pioneers like Prof. Derek Keats in this space?

Seems the deep focus on learning was somewhat shallow from what I can see/read.

Please do prove me wrong, I would love to be!