Thursday, August 21, 2008

Africa Now & Future

Randomly there has been a lot of Africa related activities crossing my path this year. Africa is a big continent with many nations and people, so my reference to it seems vague. Apologizes but my thoughts are hazy and will be since I don't know my specific involvement yet.

My CEO, Allan Lunsford, wrote a post over at InsideWork, "Africa Now," which provides his reflections on Africa since he did some real estate projects over there in the '80s for World Vision. Currently, our firm, the Lunsford Group, has an interesting development project in the works, which I hope to write about in the future (maybe my colleagues, Dan or Geoff, will post about it:).

Before I started at the Lunsford Group in March of this year, Christine and I attended TED during which I committed to joining Neil Turok's TED Prize wish for an African Einstein. One of my prior blog posts is here. For numerous reasons, his vision excites me and I looking forward to my involvement with this effort.

My good friend, Hamon, has been leading business-oriented mission trips (i.e. micro-financing) to East Africa over the years, and most recently to Malawi, which is one of the least developed nations in the world. Christine and I look forward to supporting him on this.

Even among the numerous events in Silicon Valley, I came across BarCamp Africa. Typically, BarCamps are casual conferences (also user-generated conferences) focused on technology. BarCamp Africa is different since it's covering multiple topics related to Africa (i.e. technology, mobility, art, social justice, sustainability, micro-finance). The location hasn't been announced, but it will be held on October 11, 2008. If you're in the Bay Area and plan to attend, I'll see you there.

Anyway, over the next few years it seems I will be involved in two or more Africa related projects or ventures, so it will be fun to see how everything unfolds.

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