What I like about Vienna (part1)

Two and a half days aren’t enough to explore the full potential of a city. That’s why I can only present a few snapshots this time. Besides, I am too tired for a decent post these days.

Have been working on another professional blog for a paid project (no URL, pole) the last couple of weeks and whenever I open my own blog, I think about a relaunch. After all, I am still using the same template since 2006!

I urgently need to get some sleep asap and refocus my agenda on other, much more important matters (like my thesis, for instance).

‘Nways, back to Vienna and some visuals:

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What a roof!

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THE best ticket machine I’ve seen in Europe so far. Took us less than 10 seconds to buy a ticket for the metro. See my ramblings on RMV/Frankfurt am Main to understand why this is so important to me.

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Lovely street-art next to Hotel Orient.

No, don’t ask. Garen showed us that place…

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Best ice-cream and Italian sweets in town. Even at 11 pm and when it’s like -7°C cold outside.

Oh, and they have good coffee.

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Still need to figure out why they’ve put this number on all waste bins.

Interesting to compare German German with Austrian German.

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I will actually go for almost any beer, but – just for the records – they also have Guiness.

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Now this is very impressive. Even have a panorama shot of this somewhere (I still need to go through all of my snapshots and upload them on flickr).

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The obligatory service for tourists. But a nice one indeed!

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Compared to buildings from the past, modern architecture is as uninteresting as most modern cars that will break down after 100.000 kms.

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Modern art + her.

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Vienna Magic

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The globe

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One of those Friedensreich Hundertwasser buildings.

I grew up on his art – maybe everyone in Europe who is somehow interested in art did – and I really, really like it. Hundertwasser also published a manifest on dry toilets in 1975 which is just another cool reason to adore this great visionary artist and intellectual.

You won’t have to visit Vienna to see his work, but since he was born in Vienna, they have the best collection around.

I’d even go as far as saying that Hundertwasser is one of the few visionaries that put my vision of a better world in a clearer picture.

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Foyer @ Wombat’s Base – a great, clean and cheap city hostel. I’d recommend this to anyone who’s still looking for good accomodation in Vienna.

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“We’re sinking, we’re sinking….” – “Wot are you thinking about?

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Errr….well….

Ok – that’s about it for today. These 2 1/2 days weren’t enough and you can see by the pictures that we even didn’t have enough time to enjoy everything during daylight (due to AfrikaCamp, see previous post). Train ride from Frankfurt to Vienna is quite convenient though. Took us 7h – even the above mentioned hostel is next to the railway station. What a luxury!

liveblogging from AfrikaCamp in Vienna, Austria

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Fellow blogger Mzeecedric and I are today attending AfrikaCamp which just started a few minutes ago.
Please stay tuned for more as I will try to update this post throughout the day (see updates below). Oh and btw, there’s no ustream from the event (no videos). Sorry!

First of all: Africa = continent = many different countries, cultures, etc. (just to be clear on that).

AfrikaCamp is some sort of follow-up to the BarCampAfrica , which recently took place @ Mountain View/Google HQ in the US.

It’s my first ever vísit to Vienna btw and I am already quite surprised how great this city is!

10:00 am:
We arrived at W@lz, the location for the AfrikaCamp.

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The whole of Austria is covered in snow.

11:00 am:
Sessions planning started, Cedric and I will be talking about AfriGadget.com and some blogs we’ve created for dev aid sector / German NGOs.

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There’s free WiFi. Yaay!

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Free chocolate provided by FairTrade. Nice!

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Christoph Chorherr giving an introduction to the different session to some of the ~ 40-50 attendants.

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BarCamp-styled sessions.

11:30 am:
Attending the first session by Helge Fahrnberger of helge.at about laafi.at and OpenStreetMap project they are doing on Ouaggadougou.
Helge is one of the organisers of the AfrikaCamp.

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Helge Fahrnberger talking about laafi.at and OpenSourceMap.

12:00 am
Christoph Chorherr talking about two schooling projects in SouthAfrica: “social sustainable architecture” and “Ithuba Skills College“. Interesting quote from a school headmaster in SA: “We provide schooling but no education”.

[pic to follow asap]

They are also using dry toilets as the sanitation system. GREAT!

12:47 am
Yours truly presenting Erik’s slides on AfriagadgetP1010348
Mwalimu JKE :-)

Had to recharge my netbook after 6hrs in use. Lovely little live-blogging device (despite of its tiny keyboard).

01:20 pm
Having lunch with a guy called Kavindra who works in Vienna as a consultant at a Indo-European Developemnt Agency. Nice vegetarian stew followed by free drinks – thanks to the organisers of this fine event!

02:00 pm
Attending a session on ICT4D.at by Martin Konzett, Karola Riegler, Florian Sturm and Anders Bolin

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Audience clearly dominated by MacBooks. Hmm… ;-)

Martin and Anders showing a preview of their upcoming documentary on mobile phone uses in East Africa. Martin says there’s a 90% penetration of Nokia phones in Africa. Very promising documentary btw which will be released soon. Martin and Florian shot it with a Nikon D90 with different lenses

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Says this guy is a famous athlete who’s constantly on the phone.

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A pouch / CD sleeve made of a Kanga as alternative cover for the upcoming DVD.

Martin also talks about empowerement and mobile financing. Someone from Togo in the audience mentions that we need to have a better infrastructure in many African countries. Debatte started about technology and how it is used in many places.

03:00 pm
Attending a session by Andrea Zefferer & Andrea Ben Lassoued who are presenting their projects @ http://www.clean-it.at and http://www.kinderpate.at

Clean-IT is a project that focusses on an improvement of working conditions among IT-manufacturers (in China) by setting some social standards on the demand side…

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Kinderpate.at focusses on finding sponsors who are willing to support disabled kids.

03:30 pm
coffee break

04:00 pm
Giving a short video interview to Martin Konzett and Anders Bolin, both of ICT4D. Talked about AfriGadget and that we’re are currently looking for a French speaking editor who could cover parts of the francophone Africa on AG. I hate being in front of a camera, my first ever interview/pitch. Camera goes on (fisheye lens) and you’ll have to talk about your agenda for 4 minutes.

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But I wasn’t the only one – seen here: Florian Sturm, Anders Bolin and Martin Konzett playing the same game with Andrea Zefferer.

04:30 pm
AfrikaCamp continues, two or three more sessions – but without us. We had to leave a bit earlier for downtown Vienna. Met an old friend of mine with whom I’d been schooling back in the days in Nbo and whom I hadn’t seen in ages.

Soo….AfrikaCamp imho was a great success, met many interesting people who are doing interesting projects, having the right visions on what works in the African context and what doesnt (NGOs tend to be more realistic then the bigger donor orgs). ICT4D.at guys are quite ambitioned, doing a good job on a tight budget. Make sure to check out their awesome documentary once it’s released on DVD (see comment below)

Else: Vienna is a GREAT city, will def. be back for more. Even my new netbook proved to be portable enough and was a great live-blogging device.

Kudos to Helge, Christoph and Karola who organised this BarCamp + Africa event!

Cheers from Vienna :-)

[UPDATE]
Florian of ICT4D also compiled a very interesting summary of the sessions I couldn’t attend. It’s a pitty that you can’t follow all sessions at once as everyone has interesting ideas to present.

A list of all sessions + list of ICT4D.at interviews are also available.

Afrika BarCamp in Wien im Januar 09

Eben via ICT4D feed entdeckt: AfrikaCamp Wien Jaenner 2009

Wieso ich das gut finde?

  • Follow-up zum BarCampAfrica in Mountain View
  • Afrika muss imho viel mehr in den Fokus des europäischen Bewusstseins gerückt werden (gibt es so etwas überhaupt? Jedenfalls: Afrika + Europa = imho gemeinsame Zukunft)
  • Ich war noch nie in Wien und würde dann gerne auch Afrah und Garen besuchen.
  • BarCamps = lohnen sich fast immer in vielerlei Hinsicht
  • ich könnte einen Vortrag über Afrigadget.com & Ushahidi.com halten
  • idealer Grund um endlich mal wieder Zeit in afritwit.com zu investieren (Pool von afrikanischen Twitterbenutzern bzw. solchen die einen Bezug zu “Afrika” haben)

Wer kommt mit?