Press release: Internet Players Gather For iWeek Conference

Published on: 2005-08-25

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Co-hosted by the Internet Service Providers’ Association of SA (ISPA) and UniForum SA, the internet communitys fourth annual iWeek conference is taking place from 14 September to 16 September 2005 in Houghton, Johannesburg.

In an effort to include as many attendees as possible, attendance at iWeek is free although delegates are required to register at https://ispa.org.za/iweek/2005/ prior to the conference.

The pace of change in the Internet space since last years iWeek conference has been remarkable. For example, government took tangible steps towards deregulating the telecoms industry and Voice over IP (VoIP) is now legal. Its time to take stock of these developments and plan a way forward so we can protect our interests and grow the industry, said Masedi Molosiwa, Joint Chair of ISPA.

The iWeek conference will feature speakers of the calibre of Mthobeli Tengimfene, Chief Director: Internet Access & Software Development of the Department of Communications, international speaker, Dr Willie Black, the founder of Nominet UK, the national registry for domain names ending .uk, Rudolph Muller from the Department of Business Information Technology, University of Johannesburg & Founder of MyADSL and Tebogo Khaas, President of the SMME Forum.

Current industry topics addressed will include the ICT Charter, broadband, Internet development, spam, legislation and VoIP. The conference will also play host to the members-only ISPA Annual General Meeting (AGM) on the last day.

The Super Teacher of the Year awards will also take place at iWeek. The awards recognise teachers that have participated in ISPAs Train the Teachers project and successfully imparted their newly-acquired knowledge to their local communities.

The project assists in solving the computer literacy problems experienced in schools and is funded by UniForum SA. Since the inception of the initiative in 2001, 633 teachers have been successfully trained. In addition, ISPAs social development committee will be training a further 90 teachers during the September 2005 vacation.

Training is conducted by accredited training organisations using school computer labs set up by the UniForum SA School of the Month project. All training is conducted on the open source software installed at these venues.

Partners of the Train the Teacher project are ISPA and UniForum SA, while sponsors include Hetzner Africa, MTN Network Solutions, Internet Solutions, UUNET SA, ZAnet Internet Services and Intoweb.

The venue for iWeek is the Pharmaceutical Society, 52 Glenhove Road, Lower Houghton, Johannesburg. Interested parties not able to attend iWeek will be able to access all papers presented at the conference on the ISPA website from 19 September 2005.

Event sponsors include MTN Network Solutions, DataPro, Internet Solutions, Posix Systems and Storm. Delegates will be provided with wireless connectivity at the conference.

Further Information

For further information, please contact the ISPA secretariat on the Contact ISPA page.