Citizen With A Voice

The way we see life has a different meaning to us all. In this day and age we all have the power of the media to share our stories.

The Introduction to Social Media class at  RLabs  went into the surrounding community to do Citizen Journalism. The diverse group of participants had no problem finding stories to blog about.

Kerwin Smith one of the participants

With many different projects running on the City Mission grounds it's easy to say that peoples lives are being impacted in a positive way. I am looking forward to be reading the stories from our very own journalist.     

Social Media

Semantic web is the word that is on everyone's lips these days and this was the first words spoken at the Social Media Boot Camp hosted by Rlabs.
Mike Santer Director at Rogarem presented a talk on the future internet.

Examples: If information about shops,restaurants,cars,music,movie tickets etc. were stored in RDF files, Intelligent Web could collect info form many different sources combine info and present it to users in meaningful ways...that in itself had all our attention. Our very own Clinton Liederman took us on a journey with the Geosocial Universe, saying that 55% of journalist say that Social Media is important or somewhat important for reporting and producing story's, and how companies who still don't make use of an online presents is missing out big time as Google is better then the yellow pages.
The founder of RLabs Marlon Parker who just came back for spending time in the Silicone Valley has a total new mind shift on how this are being done inspired us with his talk on Local,Social and Mobile. We ended the day of with a brainstorming session planing our online fund raising & campaigning with the help of Collin Habberton from givengain South Africa and now we running our Do Good, Give Hope winter campaign.

Thanks to Rlabs for what i have learned my favorite tool is facebook I would like to learn more about blogging

my story

at RLabs we were taught about gmail,google,blogger and facebook my favourite is facebook i simply love it , i would like to know more about google.

Starting rlabs

rlabs interview

This was an intervie from rlabs

My 1st video on blogg,Marlon on IDM & Rlabs

RLabs Academy

Social and New Media - Week 5

Hello everyone,
This evening we had 12 geeks in our session. Last week they started blogging and tonight was a continuation of Blogger. Above are some pics of the sessions.

my first class

my pics of my first blogger class .As you can see i am really focusing.We are a class of about sixteen beginers.

Andre Blignaut

Hi there all of you. Hope you like my pic and you have a blessed week GOD BLESS THANK YOU...

Social and new media

This is my class . I am proud to be part of this group.They are such positive people they make you feel confident .
so

First Class

This was a very exciting night for me to sit on laptop for first time.It was a great experience for me and i felt very good about it that i can achieve something like this.This is great and i feel good.

Social & New Media - Week 3

What an exciting evening here at RLabs, we are in our third week of Reconstructing our community with Social media and tonight we are exploring Blogging. We will be sharing stories and introducing our readers into the lives of Men and Women who took a step out of their comfort zone and now embracing the challenge of learning all over again. Our learners in this specific class are from ages 30 to 70. This is an amazing inspiration to the avid Bloggers out there and we wish them all the success as they venture into the Blogosphere.

Happy Blogging!!
Love the RLabs team

My introduction to blogging

In March 2011 i was introduced to blogging at RLABS ,at first it seemed complicated but i am willing to learn.

my story

My name is Ethel Marsh, i am a matured lady. I am living with my daughter and her family.My daughter introduced me to Rlabs. I am so excited that i could learn so much about technology and even when i am retired i can keep up with modern technology.One thing i learned,is that you never to old to learn something new.Also meeting people and building up relationships.Share things that you have learned with others. I am looking forward to the end.I have just heard that the oldest student in this class is 70 years old ,that is a great inspiration for me.Many thanks to the facilitators for sacrificing there time to teach us.God Bless.

OH NO HIS BACK AGAIN....

Yes I'm back, they say..

"Greatness comes not when things always go good for you.

But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes.Because only if you've been in the deepest valley you can know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain." by pravstalk .

I'm feeling so amped right now.. you wont believe :) in the next 3 hours I'll be on my way to London flight boards in heathrow. ssh..... Not to mention but just about 3:55pm this afternoon I had the privilege of being part of a lock down, now I know you like. "Lock down?" but Yes, Marlon Parker was locked in for 24hours by Rlabs Staff in a small room in their new building they hoping to revamp as their new Head office building. You can read more about it here: RLabs Site and check out live stream.

So excited about my holiday, I will be meeting up with Brent Williams (Facebook Page) in London.

You will be reading more about me here and there also on Facebook.

check it out ;)

RLabs and JamiiX Mobile Counselling

The last week has been exciting at RLabs as their JamiiX counselling team have been working hard in changing the world one message at a time. JamiiX is a cloud-based solution allowing its users to manage conversations via various Social Network Chat and Instant Messengers. Typically described as a "Contact Centre on the Go". During a session the following is achieved per hour:

- Each advisor have an average of 40 users (250 - 300 users are assisted per hour)
- Average of 20,000 messages are exchanged per hour
- 5% of conversations during a session will receive an offline referral
- 2 out of 5 Users are new to the service
- Bulk of our users communicate via Mobile Chat platform MXit

What really excites us is when we hear stories of people whose lives are being changed because of the members of the community who sacrificially offer their time to help those in need. Today was another such day where one of the JamiiX Mobile Counsellors met with a subscriber to the service offline for further support. Well done to all at RLabs for the amazing work you are doing and we celebrate with you and the rest of the online community through the BEES Awards finalist nomination dedicated to you.

Launch of JamiiX in Europe

The second leg of the JamiiX World Tour was Helsinki, Finland where it would be the first time JamiiX will be made available to Europe. JamiiX is a Web 2.0 technology that manages and aggregates conversations via (Mobile) Instant Messengers and Social Networks in a central place. The story of JamiiX is that it is the first Web 2.0 technology conceived and developed on the "notorious" Cape Flats in the Western Cape, South Africa.

This European launch of JamiiX was a follow up of the Cape Town event a few weeks ago. With guests from various industries and technology companies including (Nokia, Mobile Brain Bank) including our hosts and partners (Pajat). The event was held at a stunning venue the Royal Ravintola Klub and Terrace where we welcomed the guests with some great South African tunes and Cape Town atmosphere.


The event was co-hosted by Aalto University and sponsored by SAFIPA. The evening was an opportunity to share the history of JamiiX and the people behind it as well as share some key points about JamiiX:

1. It is currently using the FREEmium model.
2. It is a distributed system to manage mulitple conversations via web
3. It is easy to register
4. It is hosted on the Cloud and make use of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model
5. JamiiX eXchanges have special features that was on demo to the crowd
6. Push Technology and conversation management tool is changing the way people will manage conversations
7. Introduction to the JamiiX Open API
8. JamiiX as Contact Centre 2.0
9. JamiiX on mobile


The partner in Europe was also revealed at the launch event with lots of interest from various sectors. The guests at the launch were able to play and test JamiiX after the presentation and Q&A session. Overall the JamiiX technology was very well received with possible contacts and clients to be revealed soon. Thank you to everyone who attended and Helsinki for opening the JamiiX doors to Europe. This adventure is also a testimony that innovations from the dusty streets of Africa can have a global impact. Well done to everyone at RLabs and the community who are the reason for celebrating. Next part of the journey will be in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Source: Reconstructed Living Lab

Human Face to technology

Over the past weekend the RLabs Team was again in the Academia space. This time it was not a Social Media Surgery but sharing stories. Cape Peninsula University of Technology had an open day and they invited the RLabs Team to do a presentation and to share the RLabs story. Some of the team members shared their personal experiences of how they are using technology to empower communities through innovation . Monique Ross (She's the Geek) shared how creative one can be in IT and IT is just not on a PC but working in a real world bringing it together to reconstruct lives. . 343 kids attended the CPUT Faculty Open Day this past Saturday.