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Contents contributed and discussions participated by francispisani

francispisani

Social Media All-Stars | ClickZ - 0 views

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    This list is comprised of people who are the luminaries and pioneers of the social media frontier. I plan to do this periodically and by no means do I feel I will get this 100 percent correct the first time, so please let me know your thoughts -- be social! Do I personally know some of these folks? Yes -- so voice your opinion where you feel there is bias and we will adjust accordingly moving forward. These are in reverse alphabetical order.
francispisani

Top 20 Social Media Experts | Socialnomics - 0 views

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    I had some fun this week in my ClickZ column by highlighting the best in brightest in the social media field.  You can find the detailed article here: Social Media All-Stars As the title showcases I selected 10 Social Media All-Stars for each team.
francispisani

The next 20 A-listers | - 0 views

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    I'd like to take a moment and recognize 20 people who I believe to be the PR and digital A-listers of tomorrow. Granted, there are a number of others I could have added to this list, but this was just intended to be a start.
francispisani

Social Media Gurus, Real Work and Diversity - 0 views

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    The only real problem touching on diversity I see in the "social media space" is this: About four dozen assholes in the US and Canada making up an imaginary social media "industry," who suddenly realized a week ago that with all the navel-gazing and ego projection fueling their "thought leadership," they have mostly managed to cater to people who conveniently look and sound just like them. Wow. How did THAT happen? By the by, if they ever manage to pull their heads out of their asses long enough to get some oxygen back into their brains, they will either meet or remember having met - among hundreds of thousands of other social media users who are not pre-midlife crisis white dudes - Rohit Bhargava, Maz Nadjm, Jeremiah Owyang, Gabrielle Laine Peters, Karima Catherine Goudiam, Bonin Bough, Liva Judic, Monika Melsha, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Penn, Danielle Lewis, Peter Kim, Charlene Li, CD, Hajj Flemings, and many, many, MANY more who, last time I checked, contributed more to the social media world than all of their "white" social media guru blog posts combined, and managed to do so while being other than strictly caucasian.
francispisani

Kundavi - A global hub for creativity and innovation in Los Cabos, Mexico - 0 views

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    Kundavi is building a global hub for creativity and innovation in Los Cabos, Mexico.
francispisani

Egypt's Entrepreneurs Look Beyond the Revolution - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Six months after an uprising led by people like her ousted Hosni Mubarak and overturned the established order of the Arab world, Ms. Mehairy has joined the ranks of Egypt’s newest business class: the entrepreneurs of the revolution. Instead of leaving Egypt as she had planned, she is staying to nurture a start-up called SuperMama, an Arabic-language Web site for women that has 10 local employees.
  • “Everyone is worried about what will happen next,” said Marwan Roushdy, 20, a student at the American University of Cairo who is developing an app called Inkezny to locate hospitals anywhere in the world. The name means “rescue me” in Arabic.
  • Mohamed Rafea, 30, and his cousin Ali Rafea, 23, are also optimistic. They along with three other young relatives co-founded Bey2ollak, an app that lets users warn each other about congested traffic routes. “We are lucky that we don’t need the support of anything except good wattage, as opposed to manufacturing goods or opening a store. Those kinds of businesses need the support of the government,” Ali Rafea explained.
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  • Like many in their cohort, Mohammed and Ali Rafea, who won one of the internships at iContact, are trying to solve some of Egypt’s problems through technology — and hope to turn a profit in the process. After the revolution, they said, Egyptians were turning to Bey2ollak to pass along information about the safety of the roads. “We added a new status to say that a road is a danger zone and there are protests and thugs,” Mohamed Rafea said.
  • and Sawari Ventures, a Cairo-based venture capital firm,
  • Ahmed el-Alfi, the founder Sawari Ventures,
  • Seeing the potential in Egypt, Mr. Alfi left Southern California in 2006 to move to Cairo. “Most of my friends questioned my sanity for making that move,” Mr. Alfi said. “But I was very encouraged by what I saw.”
  • “These entrepreneurs are thinking big and globally, and they are creating Web apps that you could see in Dumbo or Palo Alto,” he said, referring to the neighborhood in Brooklyn. “They are building companies and products that can be very influential. I would invest 30, 40 or 50 thousand dollars in these young entrepreneurs.”
  • As Mr. Gerber, one of the American delegates, put it: “We were just so amazed by the business acumen we found in Egypt.”
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    Six months after an uprising led by people like her ousted Hosni Mubarak and overturned the established order of the Arab world, Ms. Mehairy has joined the ranks of Egypt's newest business class: the entrepreneurs of the revolution. Instead of leaving Egypt as she had planned, she is staying to nurture a start-up called SuperMama, an Arabic-language Web site for women that has 10 local employees.
francispisani

In India, an Official Puts a Webcam in Office - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Little Brother is watching you. Enlarge This Image Sanjit Das for The New York Times Oommen Chandy, the chief minister of Kerala. That is the premise for the webcam that a top government official here has installed in his office, as an anticorruption experiment. Goings-on in his chamber are viewable to the public, 24/7. In an India beset by kickback scandals at the highest reaches of government, and where petty bribes a
  • Little Brother is watching you.
  • That is the premise for the webcam that a top government official here has installed in his office, as an anticorruption experiment. Goings-on in his chamber are viewable to the public, 24/7. In an India beset by kickback scandals at the highest reaches of government, and where petty bribes at police stations and motor vehicle departments are often considered a matter of course, Oommen Chandy is making an online stand.
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  • as with everything captured by the webcam there was no audio
  • “This type of tokenism is also quite useful,”
  • Mr. Abraham said webcams might be a far more powerful tool if installed in police stations, drivers’ licenses offices, welfare agencies and other places where Indians interact with officials who sometimes demand bribes to do routine work. A few agencies around the country have started such surveillance, he said, but most have not.
  • transparency is tedious
francispisani

MediaShift . Social Media Plays Major Role in Motivating Malaysian Protesters | PBS - 0 views

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    Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have played a major role in motivating some of the demonstrators in the run-up to the rally, which went ahead despite a police ban and lockdown imposed on sprawling Kuala Lumpur on the eve of the July 9 protest. The demonstration organizer, Bersih 2.0 -- a coalition of 63 NGOs (non-government organizations) that wants changes such as updated electoral rolls and a longer election campaign period -- has its own Facebook page, attracting a similar number of "likes" as the page urging Najib to step down, with 190,000+ fans at the time of this posting. The latest notable update is another petition, requesting 100,000 backers for a Bersih 3.0 -- although organization head Ambiga Sreenavasan has said she does not foresee any similar protests in the immediate future.
francispisani

New site shames bad Lebanese drivers - TNW Middle East - 0 views

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    Cheyef7alak takes a name-and-shame them approach to outing irresponsible drivers. Rather than put up with small traffic violations that are run of the mill in Beirut's streets, Cheyef7alak encourages users to snap photos and shoot video as the violation is happening. These then get saved for posterity on the Web for everyone to see.
francispisani

Video: 'Africans have Facebook account before email address' - TNW - 0 views

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    Silicon Valley is a  great place to be, but I'm increasingly becoming interested in what impact technology is making in emerging markets like countries in Africa. In these markets there are bigger problems to solve than building yet another photo sharing app (think Color). I sat down with  Mbwana Alliy who works with i/o Ventures to help startups think about emerging markets. He describes himself as the bridge between Silicon Valley and the Tanzania/Kenya technology scene.
francispisani

Where Africa and Technology Collide! - WhiteAfrican - 0 views

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    The iHub is Nairobi's nerve center for technology; a place where we can grab coffee, create apps, find funders and build businesses. It's where the community of web and mobile programmers connect with each other, businesses, the government and academia.
francispisani

Developing Telecoms | Joining the dots in Africa - backhaul investment will capitalise ... - 0 views

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    It's foolish to compare African markets holistically to say Europe or Asia, but in some characteristics - such as the optimal number of operators in a territory to guarantee sufficient competition and economies of scale, it's clear that Africa has far too many operators in many of its countries. Uganda for example has seven operators - from a total market revenue perspective, it's over capacity. Because ARPUs are so low, one of the key things that companies need to do - both within a territory and on a pan-Africa basis - is consolidate some of the back office functionality. For example, inter-continental minutes clearing; it's expensive for a small operator in a country like Uganda, but if you can consolidate that into a group like Zain or MTN, then it makes a lot of sense. It's still early days, and in most of the major markets it can be advantageous to be small, agile and commercial, and to let the consolidation happen at a later date. It can be difficult for large telecoms groups to come into markets like that and effect change that is positive and doesn't impede the process of customer acquisition. DT: So the investment that a larger player would bring to the market is not necessarily the right move for now? MG: Potentially, some of the economies of scale of a larger group - i.e. an operator working at 35% - 40% market shares - or the capabilities that it can bring will be advantageous. However, there are relatively few markets where that's true; South Africa and to a lesser extent Ghana and Kenya all have the foundations of competition established, but in the majority of areas that isn't the case.
francispisani

AkiraChix - 0 views

shared by francispisani on 18 Aug 11 - Cached
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    This is a group for ladies with interest in Information Technology. Right now we are based in Kenya but we intend to spread our wings to all corners of the world. The aim of this forum is: to empower the gal tech community in Kenyato use the Akira Chix to reach out to other gals in community and encourage them to pursue careers in the field of technologyto integrate use of technology in solving life's problemsto facilitate collaboration and communication among the tech galzto inspire gals to be transformational leadersto enlighten the community on the technology sphereto motivate the gal community to continue in their technology development
francispisani

The Problem With Silicon Valley Is Itself - TNW Entrepreneur - 0 views

  • As a Brit who gave up cheerleading the European tech scene to make the pilgrimage to Silicon Valley to live, eat and breath the world’s leading hub for technology startup innovation, I’ve been largely unimpressed and disappointed by the quality of startups here.
  • there’s only two, out of two hundred, I think are game changers. Now, don’t get me wrong, Silicon Valley is an incredibly inspiring place to be. Everyone is doing something amazing and trying to change the world, but in reality much of the technology being built here is not changing the world at all, it’s short-sighted and designed for scalability, big exits and big profits.
  • I’ve come to the conclusion that entrepreneurship in the Valley has become productized
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  • It’s never about the technology or impact it’s having, it’s about the game of entrepreneurship; getting users, funding and exiting as quickly as you can.
  • From an investor’s perspective, it’s a clever model; you put a group of extremely talented and hard working graduates together, give them seed funding, keep them lean and they pivot until they get you a hit and you make your return. But I wonder if the model is counter productive, producing risk averse entrepreneurs who, if they follow the right procedure, are almost guaranteed success in the form of a talent acquisition or exit. Should this be what entrepreneurship is about? What happened to irreverence, thinking outside the box, wanting to make a difference in the long run?
  • the gold-rush mentality.
  • there is innovation happening around health care related startups
  • One of the reasons for lack of innovation in the Valley is that entrepreneurs are not exposed to enough real-world problems.
  • consumers in the USA clearly want to play Angry Birds, whereas in some African countries consumers are more likely to be searching for their nearest Malaria drugs clinic.
  • you wouldn’t even imagine
  • many entrepreneurs can’t get to the US because of visa issues
  • Startup Chile
  • There is one thing though, that continues to set Silicon Valley apart from every other technology hub on the planet and that’s access to finance.
  • But the funding landscape is changing due to the cost of innovation decreasing rapidly which means anyone with a laptop and a WiFi connection can get an idea off the ground for dirt cheap.
  • Geeks on a Plane
  • i/O ventures
  • more media should cover tech outside the Valley
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