Internet Society South Africa

BOFs / Community Forums
Community Forums (or bofs - birds of a feather) have been happening since the before ISOC was even established. ISOC-ZA continues this membership activity and industry tradition.

April 18 2007: Prof. Lawrence Lessig addressed all members at the SABC auditorium on the freeculture.co.za topic. Hear the audio (part 1 - 18.3MB mp3 - streaming, part 2 - 18.3 MB - mp3 streaming and part 3 - 6.4MB mp3 streaming) and see the (28.9MB pdf) presentation that goes with it.

November 1, 2005, the 2005 ISOC-ZA Annual General Meeting was held at the Bandwidth Barn, 125 Buitengracht St., Cape Town, 17h30 for 18h00 to 19h00 (click for map).

On July 10 2005, Forum discussion held on; "What can we do about the high costs of telecoms?" A wide range of civil society representatives were present and agreed to establish a multi-stakeholder approach.

On May 10 2005, the forum met to discuss usability and standards with usability expert Chris Higgo. The talk and discussion exposed issues to members about why things on some websites don't work, aren't displayed properly or you can't fathom out what to click on. For those who've been involved in commissioning a web site and wanted to know more about the key criteria for success.

On 5 December 2004 at the Cape Town International Conference Centre, ISOC-ZA facilitated a joint forum between ICANN and the World Blind Union on Internet Accessibility for the blind. The forum was webcast for those that could not attend. The panel consisted of worlwide experts including:
Hein Wagner: International Sales manager for Thawte Consulting, born blind and whose achievements include: marathon running, a Cape to Rio yacht race, winning member of the World cup cricket team for the blind
Vint Cerf: ICANN chair and 'father' of the Internet John Klensin: IETF representative to ICANN
Amadeu Abril: partially sighted Internet pioneer and ex-member of the ICANN board, and
Dave Williams: founder and CEO of www.acbradio.com
Covered by ITWeb on Nov 25, and Dec 8

On 6 July 2004 in Cape Town, Karel Rode (Western Cape Security Special Interest Group) and Craig Balfour (CLUG - http://clug.org.za) spoke about more viruses and worms that are worming their way into the majority of desktops.

On 4 May 2004 in Cape Town we were discussing VOIP with a selected panel of industry experts and government decision-makers on this subject. The panel included; Mr. Alan Levin (Renowned African Internet Activist), Envir Fraser from the Department of Communications, Mr. Andre Ferreira (VoIP Networking Specialist) and Richard Heath (Attorney from MWEB and ISPA).

On January 14 2004, Cape Town: Dimo Calovski from the UNCTAD Electronic Commerce Branch spoke followed by Wendy Seltzer who chatted about the role and transformation of civil society organizations in the information society. Wendy is a staff attorney with Electronic Frontier Foundation. Covered by ITweb

In the late nineties and early 21st century members in Gauteng arranged a number of social bring and braais, with some degree of success!

Archive: One of the earlier archives is of Mike Lawrie in celebration of 10 years of Internet Connectivity To commemorate 10 years of leased line Internet connectivity in South Africa a function was held at the IBM Conference Auditorium, Sandown on the 28th February 2002. Mike Lawrie gave an informal talk entitled 'A funny thing happened at Rhodes one day'. Anecdotes about the early days were also read out during the function.The inaugura annuall ISOC-ZA Merit Award was presented to: Mike Lawrie for his outstanding contribution to the Development of the Internet in South Africa. In addition, the ISOC-ZA committee unvieleld its plans for the rest of the year. See notes and links from the Network Startup Resource Centre for historical information