One of the largest and most exciting gathering about digital culture in the world, re:publica 15 is only a few days away. The annual event that brings together bloggers, hackers, online activists and social media experts among others from all over the world is happening again this year from the 4th to the 7th of May in Berlin Germany. Kenya will be represented by Six women mostly drawn from the Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE) and the iHub. There will be only 1 Kenyan gentleman, Ahmed Maawy from SwahiliBox.
The event which was founded in 2007 as a blogger meeting has since grown to one of the largest global gatherings for not just bloggers but to include anyone interested in what is happening in the digital space for candid discussions the on-goings in every part of the world.
This year’s edition is going with the theme ‘Finding Europe‘: Among the 450 speakers from more than 45 countries for re:publica 2015 are Six women from Kenya who will participate in three days of celebration and debate with some of the most important trailblazers and forward thinkers of the Internet, packed with 300 hours of programme from a wide range of topics from politics, economy, science, society and culture.
The team is :-
1. Brenda Wambui – Co-Founder, BrainStorm & BAKE Member
Panel: #AfricaBlogging – Politics blogging in Sub-Saharan Africa
Panel: The revolution will be written in HTML
2.Njeri Wangari – Project Lead, Kenya Monitor (A BAKE Project)
Panel: #AfricaBlogging – Politics blogging in Sub-Saharan Africa
3. Nanjira Sambuli – Research Manager, iHub Research
Panel: Big problems, big data, little privacy? Ethics of data use in development contexts
4. Sheilah Birgen – Community Lead, Mlab East Africa
Panel: Big problems, big data, little privacy? Ethics of data use in development contexts
Panel: 10 Things Europe can learn from Kenya
5. Mugethi Gitau – Community Manager, iHub
Panel: 10 Things Europe can learn from Kenya
6.Martha Chumo– Founder, Nairobi Dev School
Panel: 10 Things Europe can learn from Kenya
7. Ahmed Maawy – Executive Director, SwahiliBox
Panel: Global Innovators – Hacking culture, innovation spaces and start-up scenes in Singapore, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Brazil
The conference will have a broad focus on issues related to the digital society – from net politics and technological innovations, music, culture and media, to health and education. This is meant to foster innovation and create synergies between net politics, online marketing, network technology, digital society, and (pop) culture.
Some of the notable names in the industry who will be speaking at the conference are:- Ethan Zuckerman (MIT), Jacob Appelbaum (Tor Project) and Reed Hastings (Netflix) among others. Find the full list of speakers here.
The official hashtag for the event is #rp15 for live updates from the event.
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