Ghana Bloggers Meet-Up in August

Ghana bloggers do meet once every month to dissect issues concerning blogging in Ghana and how to run the group. There's no group in this world without issues, therefore we deem it necessary to meet every last Thursday of every month.

In the month of August, we had a developer/blogger guest, Miquel Hudin who was in the country for MakerFaireAfrica [techno-exhibition] and decided to introduce his blogging platform [maneno]-(meaning ”words” in Kiswahili) to us. According to him, his platform is tailored for the sub-Saharan conditions and seek to invite more Africans to become bloggers.

Before the Ghana bloggers meet-up, Miquel was touring Cape Coast and Kumasi so couldn't meet him before joining the rest of the group at Smoothies on the Oxford Street in Osu that Thursday.

I was late in showing up for the thursday-ish meet-up because I had to bring a few Gh-bloggers[Emmanuel Bensah and Charles Amega-Selorm ] who couldn't locate where the group was meeting.Getting to Smoothies, I saw this large crowd of about 20+ people. I was almost telling myself; "I'm in the wrong place because I had no idea we were going to have more guest than before." I finally joined, introduced myself and everyone was kinda glad seeing me for the first time because, most have heard and read my blog but haven't seen the Human being Mac-Jordan before.. I was happy to see Erik Hersman - Founder of AfriGadgets and Emeka Okafor - Author of Timbuktu Chronicles. I follow their blogs and I get more information in the techy world from their blogs.

One issue raised by Emmanuel.K.Bensah II was the fact that most of the bloggers were returnees writing about their life in Ghana through the filter of their overseas experience, but how that was changing...

The most interesting part of the meet-up was when Erik Hersman spoke about blogging for money. He started blogging as a hobby until he realized he could make more from it. He writes about technology in Africa and when starting AfriGadget recently; it quickly surpassed his popular personal blog, WhiteAfrican.

If my memory serves right; the following Ghanablogging members: Cornelis Rouloph Otoo, David Ajao, Samson Ojo [was my first time meeting him, story about him will come later], Toke Olagbaju, Nana Yaw Asiedu, Nana Kofi Acquah, Edward Amartey Tagoe , Gameli Adzaho and Emmanuel K. Bensah jr II.Lora Akati is a student at the University of Ghana who want to be a blogger as usual. I joked about her been a *model-blogger* because she's got the looks of a model. I therefore invited her to join us for the meet-up and also afford her the chance of meeting other pro-bloggers.

I introduced her to everyone and according her, she really received a lot of goodies from most of the earlier bloggers especially Wayan Vota and Miquel Hudin.

I later got alone very well with Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, William Kamkwamba (who autographed his book; "The boy who harnessed the wind"), 'iTosh' Hamilton Juma from Nairobits, Chika Okafor Uchenna - a Nigerian Entertainment photo-blogger and Brian Shih from Inveneo pretty well @ Container opposite Papaye for a beer drinking spree...

***Sorry for the late posting of this article. Please bear with me as I have a lot to do, to write and to work on during the past weekend.***

Photo: Credit - Miquel Hudin