September 7th, 2010 in Fire (Social) and Wood (Spiritual)
This week I attended a 2-day workshop on Food Security at UCT’s Graduate School of Business, convened by Milla McLachlan and Ralph Hamman of the Food Security Change Lab, and facilitated by Reos.
This was a continuation of a process, which included a number of workshops and Learning Journeys around Cape Town, Johannesburg and Limpopo, all aimed at answering the question What will it take to ensure sustainable food security in South(ern) Africa?.
They have consciously brought together different voices, including government, NGO’s, large corporates and small social businesses such as ourselves.
Early on the first day Adam Kahane spoke…
August 18th, 2010 in Earth (Literature), Fire (Social) and Metal (Technical)
Northern Sotho is the only official South African language without an active Wikipedia…
August 9th, 2010 in Earth (Literature) and Fire (Social)
This weekend a number of us held a workshop at Wits University to discuss forming a South African chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation – the non-profit foundation supporting projects such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary…
August 4th, 2010 in Fire (Social) and Wood (Spiritual)
A Facebook friend shared an animation from RSA Comment entitled First as Tragedy, Then as Farce…
June 10th, 2010 in Fire (Social)
World Cup fever has finally hit Cape Town…
May 30th, 2010 in Earth (Literature) and Fire (Social)
A sixth African-language Wikipedia has reached the 1000 article milestone, with Wolof now sitting at 1068 articles.
Two other African languages, Somali and Kabye, are also closing in on the milestone, both having moved quite quickly into the 800′s, passing the relatively stagnant Igbo and Kikongo.
African Language Wikipedias
Language
1/1/2007
3/8/2009
30/5/2010
Swahili
2980
12631
17998
Afrikaans
6149
12568
15259
Yoruba
517
6261
8858
Amharic
742
3333
3810
Lingala
292
1148
1255
Wolof
1068
Swahili remains the largest African-language Wikipedia, and is moving rapidly ahead…
February 18th, 2010 in Fire (Social) and Water (Personal)
I attended Talking Heads this evening, part of the Infecting the City Festival, courtesy of 2 Couchsurfers who were staying with me, and were part of the festival…
August 3rd, 2009 in Earth (Literature) and Fire (Social)
The Swahili Wikipedia has just passed the Afrikaans Wikipedia to become the largest African-language Wikipedia by number of articles.
African Language Wikipedias – number of articles
Language
1/1/2007
16/12/2008
3/8/2009
Swahili
2980
7807
12631
Afrikaans
6149
11285
12568
Yoruba
517
6246
6261
Amharic
742
3251
3333
Lingala
292
1074
1148
Full list of Wikipedias
So while Swahili has raced ahead with great momentum (it grew by four in the course of writing this article), and Afrikaans continues solidly, the pace has slowed somewhat for Yoruba, Amharic and Lingala…
July 30th, 2009 in Fire (Social), Metal (Technical) and Water (Personal)
I’ve just come back from Obstreperous Olive, the latest incarnation of the famous Geek Dinner.
It was lots of fun again, with talks ranging from Fritjof Capra’s systems thinking, Umberto Eco’s Mouse or Rat essay on translation, Clean Code and whether to dump someone with clinical depression.
That was just at my table.
The actual public talks were Joe Botha on the Open Spectrum Alliance, Matthew Buckland on 20FourLabs, Media 24′s reaction to their space shuttle codebase, John-Luke Hutchinson on Real relationships amongst the Noise, and Could Twitter be a ‘Decision Network’, and myself in a talk entitled Placebos, Nocebos, Quackery and Big Pharma.
I didn’t actually mention the H word in my talk, but as I knew it would, it came up in a question, and in a rant discussion afterwards…
July 9th, 2009 in Fire (Social) and Water (Personal)
After a few of my recent Ethical Co-op newsletters referred to climate change, I wasn’t too surprised to get contacted by those who believe it’s all a hoax…
