Read in today’s edition of L’express :

Infotech 2009 will be held on 18-22nd October 2009 Thursday 19 to Sunday 22 November 2009.

Every year, Mauritians have been disappointed by The Tech Fair, which finally turns out to be very dull! Nothing interesting nor innovative despite the tons of adverts and promises on the behalf of the organisers and the participants.

And this year, NCB announced their innovative idea :

The visitors will be able to buy items in the fair.
pff! What an idea! *cough* *cough*

Previous years

For me, this expo has merely been a trade fair since ever.

The ISPs will be boasting about their 1Mbps internet connection while other countries are getting much more, at a lower price. And for sure, they will be exposing their 3G modems which cost a lot without any better connectivity. Of course, the rabbit modem will have to be there!

IT resellers will be displaying their laptops at excessive prices again. The biggest of them will be putting crazy 50% sales, which is coincidentally valid for the whole year.

Since the few years, Mauritians now know exactly which stands will be worth a visit… Apple and Emtel (i.e. their models!)

Personally, I am not excited about this event anymore! The first Infotech was nice and much better than all the expos which followed.

I remember going to the Infotech 2005 with uni friends, 2006 with my Nomad Tshirt, also in 2007 but not that of 2008.

Infotech, what should be there?

I am sure, all of us have their own ideas and of course, its no use criticizing without giving some good examples. Examples that would give another proportion to this event.

Unique Events.

Google Day Mauritius should be considered as an example. Do you imagine, the kick off of Google Activities in the African Continent started with a 2 day conference in Mauritius?

I would definitely call this great event as The Event of The Year 2009, and the credits go to the Board Of Investment. Events like this would be the most welcomed, especially for a tech expo in the cyber island.

Some months back, there was a yahoo engineer and some other guys in Mauritius. This should interest web developers.

Promote the web.

This event would be The Ideal Opportunity to make Mauritians discover the web. Internet is not only about doing stupid quizzes on facebook!

Blogging should have been introduced at a national level. There can’t be a better opportunity to promote this activity in the island.

Our bloggers community is growing, and we are bringing a change to the traditional Mauritian web.

Bring back the Web d’Or!

Finally, there’s something which really need to be re-introduced.

Organized by Mauritius Telecom in the years 2000, the Web D’Or was The web competition for the best web sites of the island. Unfortunately, it was never renewed after the second edition.

These are only a few interesting ideas.

Come on, we are talking about a tech expo, not a trade fair where people would be selling pickles or artisanal products.

Any suggestions?

Related Posts:

• Infotech 2010
• Why you should go to Infotech 2009?
• G-Mauritius : 2 wonderful days with Google!
• What do you dream to see at Infotech?
• J-3! We are nearly there!

It has been announced yesterday on facebook.

When?

The second bloggers’ event is scheduled for the 11th July 2009 and will be held on the public beach of Flic en Flac.

Why there?

Most of those who responded on the suggestions post(here) and on Morinn’s blog were excited about some event with activities and the beach seemed to be the most convenient place. No Booking, No Costs, No Problems.

Who can come?

Everyone!

This is an opportunity to learn more about us bloggers and at the same time, bloggers can meet their readers!

We encourage you to bring your friends, brothers, sisters, uncle, aunty (chachi, chacha, dadi, and dada)

It would really help us if you confirm your participation on this facebook event. This will allow us to have an estimate of the number of attendees.

How to get there?

We believe that Flic en Flac is easily accessible for most of us. Of course, it will be difficult to please everyone but since the last time we were at Port Louis, we decided to move to the western coast. 15-30mins from Quatres Bornes, about 30-45Mins from Port Louis (by car of course).

We will try to organise transport facilities by picking up some bloggers on our way. We politely ask our blogger friends to let us know if you can help us in this job.

What will we do there?

As most of you suggested, we will have fun games on the beach, probably with prizes. Yes, we are currently looking for sponsors who can offer gifts to the winners and this will be communicated to you later on. Lets talk a bit about the games… Treasure Hunt, Beach Volley, Tug of war, beach soccer among others.

We will keep all of you updated in the different blog posts that will keep coming in the next days.

So friends, book your next saturday (11th July 2009) for the “Bloggers under the sea!”

We can do it again!

Get ready, take off your clothes and put your swimming suits (ok, am joking lol)

Related Posts:

• Suggestions for the 2nd Bloggers’ event!
• Price of Petrol (Dec 2009)
• Price of Petrol (October 2009)
• Price of Petrol (August 2009)
• The conspiracy : Ruling over the world

My dear friends, bloggers and readers…

Following the success of our first bloggers’ meeting of 2009, a next event is already in its way… On the 14th March 2009, for the first time in Mauritius, 25 bloggers were all under one roof, that of  Mac Donald, Harbour Front, Port Louis. This meeting has been simply great since most of us were only virtual. I am sure that most of those who attended would agree that the “small” get together was enriching while sharing our common passion… blogging. A similar gathering was also done a few years back together and this gave me the opportunity to introduce myself to the few bloggers who existed at that time.

However, this time we want to organize something even better than the last time…

Let’s say

• a bigger place just for us… with no need to look for chairs each time some blogger reached mac do,
• a larger number of bloggers… and building a larger community
• and why not some fun?

We sincerely hope that there will be much more participation. We have a few ideas about the event but we would like to have yours and also your complete support in this event.

Your suggestions are the most welcomed!

Please everyone follow the indications till Morinn’s Blog and make sure you don’t get lost anywhere…

Do tell us :

1. What you expect in the next bloggers’ event ( Topic, Theme, Objectives )
2. Propose us some nice places to hold the above mentioned event and
3. Come up with some ideas to make it more interesting and enriching experience.

PLEASE submit all your ideas to Morinn’s blog…

I really mean everyone, whether you are a blogger or one of our dear readers, without whom life in our blogs would be very boring!

Related Posts:

• J-10 : Everyone’s invited!
• Bloggers go hiking in Black River Gorges…
• Bloggers heading towards Black River Gorges, are you in?
• Great second bloggers’ meeting
• First Bloggers’ Meeeting 2009, Promising!

As Morinn announced a few hours ago, the bloggers meeting has been finalised.

Date : 14th march 2009

Time : 14hrs

Venue : Mac Donald, Port Louis(anyway, there is only one in Mauritius, lol)

Choosing the venue

Together with Morinn and Jevin, we started to find a suitable place for this meeting.

Not that easy first of all since we wanted to make something nice for the first one, but later we realised that we had some constraints;

• According to the first list, we are expecting 20 bloggers.
  So, finding a resto for around 20 persons in about 1 week was a big tough.
• From the initial list, we did not have the exact number of confirmed bloggers, hence we had to look for a place which can accomodate all of us, a few to a large number.
• We opted for Port Louis, since we believed it was the most accessible for all of us.
  ya, we know, gonna be hot in the capital.
• Since many of the bloggers are students (College and Uni), we had a tight budget for the meeting.
  Thus, we can’t afford looking for big restaurants.
• We made a list of a few restaurants where we enquired about the price and possibility to hold our meeting there since we thought of reserving some tables of a restaurant to be sure that we won’t be kicked out.

lol, another opportunity for me to meet my brother

Choosing the time.

As most of us seemed to be ok with a meeting in the afternoon, we decided to schedule it for 14hrs.

Why not a lunch?

Some of you may ask yourself, why don’t we meet up for a lunch?

Again, the answer is : The unconfirmed number of bloggers attending the meeting.

Also, handling about 20 persons in a first meeting will be a bit chaos since a few of us have never shown ourselves in public.

For a first meeting, a rounder, chips and some coke would be more appropriate, no need to learn how to hold spoon and fork in 5 days time

lol, joking haha!

To sum up,  we had to take into consideration that many of the bloggers would perhaps have a limited budget since they are students.

Also, the list not being final, we could not reserve a nice restaurant since we would have been required to pay some advance fees, which we did not have yet.

You want to attend the meeting?

For this first meeting, our aim is mainly to know our blogger friends.

So, if you are a blogger, check out Morinn’s post and the facebook event page.

Dont worry, once the bloggers’ know each other, we will come up very soon with other more interesting events

We hosted the event on facebook as it is much easier to maintain a confirmed list of people, updates etc…

Keep visiting for updated news and hope to see all the bloggers there!

Related Posts:

• J-10 : Everyone’s invited!
• Suggestions for the 2nd Bloggers’ event!
• First Bloggers’ Meeeting 2009, Promising!
• Introducing guest articles…
• Mauritian bloggers, you are wanted!