3-4 July 2012
Hilton Sandton
Johannesburg, SA
www.comworldseries.com/vasafrica
from the telecommunications, media & ICT industry in
Africa. Furthermore, this second annual
event was far more extensive than the 2011 event, both in terms of content, and
in terms of including more of the 'disruptive' players in the ecosystem. Day 2
in the conference keynotes was all about focusing on this potentially
disruptive element, as operator executives spoke alongside social media and OTT
gurus.
The day kicked off with Google's speech, delivered by
business development expert Bryan Nelson, about how local content & app
providers must make their offerings more 'searchable'. The keynotes then saw a fantastic 'Ecosystem
Brainstorm' with leading experts Prins Mhlanga, Managing Exec. of Vodacom's
Digital Media, Maxime Cuvellier, business development for Orange Technocentre,
Randall Abrahams, MD at Universal Music SS, Ben Zaaiman, CEO of mLab SA and
Andrew Herd, Multi-Media Manager at ABN Digital. The audience thoroughly
enjoyed the discourse between these different players in the ecosystem, but what became clear was that
operators have a need to take the lead in important matters like billing for
content, and that a lot of simplification of such systems still needs to take
place.
The conference then moved on to focus in particular on
the social media side of things, with illuminating presentations from both
Vodacom'ss Prins Mhlanga, and the CEO of popular social networking platform
Mxit, Alan Knott-Craig. The audience
then benefitted from a 'Social Media Panel & Tweetathon' with questions for
the panel being delivered from the audience via Twitter using #VASAfrica. The panel really addressed controversial
issues challenging providers of social networking platforms, including child
protection controls, and general privacy rules. Expert opinions and examples
from Alan Knott-Craig, Nic Haralambous, CEO of Motribe, Tshepo Selokela, Tech
'Bunny' at Cell C's Customer Support Office and Bradley Shaw, Tech Editor at
Rolling Stones Magazine. The clear
message from the panel was that operators really need to modernise and pick up
pace if they want to compete with successful social networking players like
Mxit. In fact, Alan Knott-Craig did not hold back in letting the audience know
that the traffic on operator's networks in a month is comparable to that on
Mxit's platform in a day. The network isn't overwhelmed because the software
engineering used by Mxit is far more capable than the systems in use by
operators - so there are definitely still lessons to be learned.
The rest of the day was dedicated to the inaugural Mobile
Marketing Summit, proudly in partnership with the Mobile Marketing Association
SA, with a real focus on issues like; how to reach African consumers through
mobile, how to guaranty quality content, using mobile to build relationships
with lower-income consumers, examining whether Africa is ready for apps, and
leveraging the mobile web in a meaningful way. Simultaneously there were
fascinating VAS case studies from mPedigree, Orange Community Phone Project,
Dr. Math and the BBC Worldeide Service.
This could not have been achieved without event sponsors
Comviva, Spice, Business Connexion, Intersec, Huawei, SSD-TECH, Adaffix &
Lumata, without whom the free passes for operators, app developers and other
key industry segments would not have been possible. Thank you to our Sponsors!
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See You Next Year!
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Re-Aligned focus for 2013:
Digital Services Africa 25-26 June 2013
Sandton Convention Centre
www.comworldseries.com/vasafrica
