This has been an interesting week regards getting keynote speakers for the conference.

I’ve had one well known person, with a massive following, come back to me and say that he’d love to speak at the conference; another individual is going to be too expensive (I mean really, really too expensive – we’re not doing this one to make a huge profit, ‘cos we want to make it as cheap as possible for as many people as possible); and another one is expecting a child to arrive, so has other priorities on his mind (which is to be expected – good for him!)…

So it forces me to ask whether there is a point where we don’t do this? I’m an optimist, much to my colleagues dismay sometimes, so I’m sure it will all work out fine, but I am worried that for any number of reasons the conference won’t measure up to my expectations.

Now, that’s not a totally bad thing.

I’d rather have 50 passionate people in a room where we get to really thrash out African web and emerging tech, talk about innovation and business opportunities, swop some code, share ideas, make new friends, and then go on to change the lives of Africans all over the continent; than have millions in sponsorship, get too many speakers, not have enough time to do them all justice, have too many people with too high expectations, …. blah blah blah – you get the picture.

I’m after qaulity, not quantity. So I’m not afraid of small numbers and less speakers than I would like. But I do want quality, and unfortunately flights cost money…

We all know that success is borne of perspiration and sheer dedicatiion to a task, so it may take 5 years for the conference to reach some sort of success – question is, are you happy with that? Would you come if there are only going to be 50 to 100 people? Are you willing to share your ideas with the top 75 innpovators in Africa today?

We’ve always been committed to a bottom up type conference, so your thoughts in this are much needed and appreciated – what are your expectations, and what can we do to make them a reality?

Get commenting, we’d love to hear from you

PS – we’ve got one keynote speaker bagged, so when we have a firm date decided, that will be announced.