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Having met Erik just once a while back at one of the first 27 dinners I jumped at the chance to catch up with him this time round in SA. For those of you who know nothing of Erik he is the founder of WhiteAfrican, Afrigadget and Ushahidi among many other things I am sure.

The first meeting was the “tweetup” held at Garsen’s Capellos in Sandton. There I caught up with Erik and this is what he had to say:

Then I attended the MobileActive08 conference and had a chance to talk with Erik again. We chatted about Kelele, the first African Bloggers Conference being held in Nairobi next year. The MobileActive08 conference was surprisingly very well organised, massive and educational. The reason I say I was surprised is because I really knew nothing of the conference before I attended. I handed out many, many, many business cards, connected with great people and learned alot.

Erik, as always, is jetting of to Pop!Tech very soon so he’s on the move but at least I managed to tie him down for a few minutes.

The lucky devils. Zoopy JHB was fortunate enough to get in touch with the stunning Arianna Star who is this years host at Sexpo!

Last night, instead of joining the thousand or so people partying at the iPhone 3G launch, I was slaving away at my laptop for almost 5 hours.

This is not to say that I didn’t have a blast, the VIP section was a treat as they always are.

The event was one that was intended to be a tester for the Zoopy JHB crew. It was our first major live event that we covered.

Terri Hayward and Klaus Bauer (the Zoopy crew) did a sterling job if I do say so myself. They proved that Zoopy can get the interviews, be on top of events and provide top class coverage as it happens, when it happens - to quote a great radio station.

Some of highlights included speaking to Shameel Joosub, the MD of Vodacom, DJ Fresh from 5FM, the very first official Vodacom sold iPhone owner and Dot Field the Chief Communications Officer at Vodacom. We were taking photographs, doing interviews and uploading for almost the entire evening and it showed.

Zoopy recorded some great stats yesterday and a great achievement for us was having our content shown on CNBC Africa over lunch and in a late afternoon show.

So here’s to many more events being covered, many more shows being seen and many more interviews being done.

If you have an event coming up that you think could do with some almost live coverage, drop me a mail: nic at zoopy dot com.

We’ve just sent out a press release from the Zoopy HQ:

Zoopy increases media delivery speed with local hosting

Two months after receiving investment from Vodacom (which now owns a
40% stake in the company), South African social media site Zoopy has
started to roll out some of the large scale community improvements
they hinted at when announcing the Vodacom deal.

Members of Zoopy.com, which launched in March 2007, are able to upload
and share videos, photos, podcasts and blogs - both online and via a
choice of mobile applications. Until now, users have been doing so
using international bandwidth to connect to Zoopy’s overseas servers.
This is standard practice for most medium to large online businesses
in South Africa, who are often left with little option but to host
internationally when faced with much higher local hosting fees. The
downside to hosting outside of the country, however, is reduced
loading speed of websites and, in Zoopy’s case, media files like
videos and photos.

According to Zoopy CEO, Jason Elk, this is now a thing of the past for
Zoopy visitors. “As of today, we have servers in South Africa that
will deliver Zoopy content using local bandwidth for South Africans.
The significantly slower international speeds and low bandwidth caps
in SA (many users only budget for the 3gb they receive per month) have
left us as frustrated as any other internet user in the country. So
we’re prepared to do what it takes to deliver our media at amazing
speeds, whether viewed on Zoopy.com or embedded on other sites or
blogs. And for our members, an increase in upload speeds when adding
media to your Zoopy profile will make things quicker and more
convenient too,” says Elk.

Zoopy has also just increased their upload file size limit from 100mb
to 200mb. Elk explains, “If we’re giving visitors a quicker and more
comfortable experience over local bandwidth, we wanted to add to the
enjoyment by giving them more space to express themselves as well.
Members now have 200mb to play with and can upload longer or better
quality versions of their videos, for example. As always, this service
remains completely free.”

“These improvements are part of a determined plan to bring the Zoopy
community everything they need to manage, view and share their media
in all the ways they’ve hoped for, and more”.

This is a very important step for us for various reasons. I wont go in to much detail as there is an entire blog post dedicated to the topic on the Zoopy Blog so head over and read it.

For now visit muti and digg and vote up the post.

I have only seen this now on Zoopy but the Lovely New Medial Lab at Rhodes University managed to record and summerise my presentation at the Digital Citizen Indaba.

Thanks to the involved party for doing a great job. Here’s the video: