LightSpeed is proud to officially announce that WordCamp Cape Town 2011 is on and coming to the mother city this September!

We are striving to make this the biggest South African WordCamp yet, with top notch speakers from all over the globe (countries represented include SA, New Zealand, Ghana and Kenya) delving into everything WordPress!

The Details:

Date: 15 September 2011
Venue: The Alba Lounge, V&A Waterfront
Location: Cape Town
Price: R135 (includes lunch and a nifty WordCamp Cape Town t-shirt). Tickets are available at http://www.entrytickets.co.za/eventview/WCT2011
Theme: Spring has Sprung

WordCamp Cape Town Badges

The Forge has designed some kick-ass badges for WordCamp CT participants to download and post on their blogs, websites and social media profiles:

Speakers

WordCamp Cape Town 2011 will offer 2 tracks of talks and workshops:

Content Managers and Publishers

This track will focus on the role of content in WordPress Web development, including blogging, content creation, content management and content strategy.

Development

The development track will be focused on the more technical aspects of developing with WordPress, including Plugins, User Interface design and scalability.

There will be slots for 20 speakers to deliver their presentations. Presentations should be 30 – 45min long and there will be a short Q&A session after each talk.

Speakers that have been confirmed include Dan Milward (Instinct) Ashley Shaw (LightSpeed and Feedmymedia), Adii Pienaar (Woothemes) and Matt Bush (Haycroft Media). To see the full list of Speakers, click HERE.

There are still some Speaker slots to fill, so if you want to get involved and wow the WordPress community with your thoughts and insights, don’t hesitate and fill out the Call for Speakers form on the official WordCamp Cape Town 2011 website.

Sponsors

Sponsors are essential to a successful event, as WordCamps are run entirely by volunteers and the only funds available are those from ticket sales and our community supporters. Supporting WordCamp Cape Town 2011 makes tickets affordable for a wide variety of attendees, including freelancers and small business owners with limited funds.

Supporters that have been confirmed are LightSpeed (platinum sponsor), Missing Link (Platinum Sponsor) and WooThemes (Gold Sponsor).

If you want to get involved and help make this WordCamp the most successful South Africa has ever seen, click over to the official WordCamp Cape Town 2011 website and fill out the Call for Sponsors form.

Any and all contributions are welcomed!

It’s All About WordPress

WordCamp Cape Town 2011 is shaping up to be a great event and LightSpeed is looking forward to seeing you all there!

How it began

First there was LaunchPad, in 2006. A business development programme which was moderately successful, but lessons learnt.

Then came Velociti  in 2007, with active mentorship in addition to business skills training. VeloCITI was aimed at ICT entrepreneurs who are prepared to re-assess their business model in order to position themselves for growth. Participants received a clear understanding of the current flaws in their business model and got hands-on assistance in reworking those models, or fixing the flaws. VeloCITI is targeted at young entrepreneurs running a business with potential for growth. Not a lifestyle business but the next Western Cape Success Story. The outcome of VeloCITI: A sustainable business model, measured by achievement against targets such as sales, salaries, headcount etc. 12 companies graduated, 4 winners:

• Redbutton
• Silulo Ilutho Technologies
• Freelancecentral
• MLT Tech

In 2008, 21 companies started, 15 were selected for Velociti and 12 companies graduated. The combined turnover grew from R275k to R1.62 million! Winners from 2008 were:

• Nclose
• Breadbin Interactive

This year

In 2009, 19 companies started, 14 were selected for Velociti and 10 companies graduated:

• Encyclomedia
• Just PC’S
• Lancoza
• Lightspeed
• Personera
• Simply Colossal
• Southern Star Computers
• The Miracle Book
• WhereIsMyTransport
• Zazu Internet

During this programme we covered a lot of content. We handled with subjects as: Value Proposition, Business model, Market and customer segmentation, Marketing, Sales, Pricing, Operations and People Management, Negotiation, Analysis of financial statements, Budgets, forecasts and performance measurement, Growth, working capital, cash flow management, Valuations and exits.

With the 10 Velociti graduates we achieved an amazing growth in the last 6 months. The combined monthly turnover has grown from R 279K to R489K – 75% growth and the combined staff has increased from 20 to 36 – 80% growth.

At the end of the stage we were able to win the  2009 Velociti Enterprise Development Programme. All graduates received a copy of Pastel’s “My Business” Package and because we were on top of the list we also won a new Dell laptop! We are very proud after hard working to win this competition and receive this award.

Prize Giving Pictures

Organizations involved in making VeloCITI possible:

Thanks goes to everyone involved who made this amazing experience possible!

CITI

The Cape IT Initiative (CITI) is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to stimulate and support the growth, promotion and transformation of the ICT cluster in the Western Cape. CITI is committed to bringing all ICT industry bodies, government, academia, industry and other stakeholders together to develop a combined strategy for the ICT sector in the Western Cape.

Bandwidth Barn

The Cape Town-based Bandwidth Barn has been in operation since 2000 and is today regarded as one of the leading ICT business incubators in the world. The goal of the Bandwidth Barn is to fast track the pace of business growth in the ICT sector in the Western Cape by helping businesses to establish themselves, commercialise new products and services, create jobs and wealth and add economic diversity to the community

Peer power

PEERPOWER™ is working in partnership with a number of entrepreneurial support agencies such as The Bandwidth Barn ICT Business Accelerator, the Cape IT Initiative and Nokia’s Mobile Leaders Society. In addition, we also work directly with business owners who want to grow their businesses, increase their turnover and have a trusted and experienced support forum.

CVP

Cape Venture Partners provides specialist advisory & management services to established technology companies and high growth, early stage entrepreneurs and businesses.We look for businesses that are innovative, technology driven, and have strong growth potential. Our approach is highly collaborative and we develop long-term business partnerships with our clients, typically as shareholders.

Provincial Government

The Provincial Government of the Western Cape works in co-operation with the National Government to create laws for and provide services to the people of the Western Cape.

Of course it’s not just working I did during my period here, but I also had fun, a lot of fun. Ashley took us to Beaverlac, a camping site in the middle of nowhere, and I had a great weekend there with Ashley, Frank and Linda. I also went for the Garden Route with Linda where we went to the Cango Caves, we went to an ostrich farm, ride an elephant, did the highest bridge bungee jump of the world and saw lions, rhino’s and giraffes in a wild park. Last Sunday I did the shark cage diving which was a little bit of a disappointment, because I became seasick and we only saw one shark for a few minutes during the 4-5 hour boat trip. At the point where we could go into the cave to see the shark in the water, the shark was gone and we where freezing because of the cold water, we stayed in that cave for 10 minutes without a shark around. This great trip costed 1430 ZAR, so not really worth the amount of money we paid for it.

Today my girlfriend is coming over for a week, so I have a little holiday with her in Cape Town. I want to take her to  some great things Cape Town has to offer like Table Mountain, Lions Head, nice restaurants, let her meet my friendsI’ve met here and of course visit Cape Point. We also want to do the skydive in Blauwberg if the weather allows us.

Next month if I’m finished with my internship at LightSpeed, Linda en me are going to do the Nomad Cape to Vic tour. We will go from Cape Town to the Vicoria Falls in 20 days. We will visit Namibie, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Johannesburg and then come back to Cape Town for a few days and then return to Holland. More about that in the next post.