[afnog] Introducing Southern Africa Network Operators Group - SAFNOG

[Kevin Chege]

Just a reply to Randy on the language issue and then to Badru on ccNOGs:

Language: Currently, workshops are mostly in English and French for Track
Zero, IPv6 and a couple of routing tracks. This has worked ok since most
of Africa speaks one of the two - the third being Portuguese. Portuguese
is a work in progress and some efforts that I am at least aware of on this
include having some capacity building on IPv6 in Portuguese soon. For
Track Zero, there is an online course being worked on that will be in
English first (Q1 this year maybe) and later in French and hopefully later
in Portuguese as well.


Regarding ccNOGs, I see regional NOGs like SAFNOG helping in getting some
ccNOGs established and working. Its possible that people who attend a
regional NOG event will see the value and will want to have their own in
country NOGs focusing on what they want to hear about. Time will tell. For
EANOG, yes most activities I am aware of have been in Kenya as well.
However, there are efforts to reach more people in East Africa. This past
weekend, there was a webinar on Network Design open to anyone and this was
circulated to a number of mailing lists including a few outside Kenya.

Kevin 





On 2/1/14 8:47 PM, "Badru Ntege" <ntegeb at gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi Patrick
>
>
>On Jan 29, 2014, at 10:25 PM, Patrick Okui <pokui at psg.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Badru,
>> 
>> On  29-Jan-2014 12:27:22 (+0300), Badru Ntege wrote:
>>> Hi EANOG only seems to exist in Kenya.  I have not seen any activity of
>>> EANOG outside Kenya.
>> 
>> That's a valid complaint to bring up on the eanog lists (no I'm not part
>> of the current eanog organisers).
>> 
>> However, I do recall that the first eanog event was a training held in
>> Uganda for some ICT ministry employees. I wasn't able to participate as
>> a trainer but the trainers for that event are on this list Š
>> 
>
>You are right but if you remember this was the first attempt for the
>regional event and this was to a specific group where we pooled resources
>facilitators from the region.  Following that it proved unrealistic for
>sustainability and nothing happened until it got revived in Nairobi and i
>understand a number of events have happened in Nairobi under the EANOG
>umbrella.
>
>I think to make my point clear i feel it is better to first build local
>country NOGS then bring them into the Regional Umbrella that way we will
>make sure that we bring relevance to the NOG concept but also make sure
>we extend the outreach.
>
>These National NOGS can then come under the Umbrella of the regional NOG.
> That will actually then show the impact relevance and value bringing
>more distributed knowledge base across the continent.
>
>badru
>



>On 1/29/14 6:22 AM, "Randy Bush" <randy at psg.com> wrote:
>
>>hi kevin,
>>
>>not being an african, i will refrain from expressing an uninformed
>>opinion on local matters :)
>>
>>but i have to ask whether there is hope to support languages other than
>>english?  and, is southern sub-saharan, or kinda way down continent?
>>
>>randy
>>
>>