Sometime last year I got into a conversation with a woman on Twitter whose twitter handle was simply SMT95. We exchanged several tweets and she asked for my number. I gave it to her and she called me. She introduced herself as Sadia Sisay.

We spoke for 2 solid hours on anything and everything. But mostly about Twitter, the point of black history month and not being able to find underwear that complimented our skin colours. By the end of that conversation Sadia told me that she was going to start a new enterprise producing underwear for women of colour!

A few months later and I get a call from Sadia informing me that she was on her way to Paris to meet an experienced lingerie designer!

Me: So you have done it? You are going to bring knickers especially designed for black women on the market?
Sadia: Yep!

Me: Good luck dear and let me know what I can do to help
Sadia: You will be sorry you asked Ida, I will be in touch

We remained in touch and I followed her progress and the ups and downs of having to nurse her mother through ill health for a whole year.She remained focused through it all.

In the mean time I had taken on the role of curating Africa on the Blog and Sadia was one of the first people I contacted when I was looking for contributors. There was a passion about her on all manner of things concerning the African Diaspora and I wanted everyone to hear that passion and what Sadia had to say. We eventually met face to face in October last year.

After all of that hard work Sadia’s dream of bringing underwear for women of colour to the market has been realised and she has called this brand new label beingU

But like any new product on the market folk need to hear about it and in this case lingerie retailers are reluctant to stock it until folk are actually Asking for it

So to help Sadia along I have designed this simple questionnaire and I would be grateful if you would please spare 1 minute to take part

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In my last post I was on my way out to Uganda from where I am writing. But before I left I had a telephone conversation with  one of the sponsors of the VILLAGES IN ACTION and CEO at Business Fights Poverty asking if I would represent his company at the conference and in return he would cover my airfare! This is someone I met by joining his online forum!

Team ORANGE

I have written about how the actual day went over Ethnicsupplies.org therefore this post will deal with the Social Media story in relation to the conference

There were several people involved in bringing this conference about and the actual idea came about from a conversation on Twitter and I was pleasantly surprised to meet at least 7 people in person, in Masindi, people I had been “talking to ” on Twitter and Facebook for nearly two years or so but had never met in person.

But the real story of the day call it a miracle if you will is the power of  technology to narrow the world quite literary.

SOLOMON, THE SUPER GEEK CHECKING OUT THE WIFI INSTALLATION

Orange™ Uganda  co sponsored this event and provided free WIFI on the day which enabled folk from 6 continents to experience the event on several social media platforms right from their living rooms/offices.

A camera crew was hired to record the event and were linked into the Ustream account of BUSINESS FIGHTS POVERTY an online forum hosted by  NING. the final analysis indicated that 570 people across the globe had tuned in/visited the video stream and those that tuned in were tweeting about what they were watching.

At the event itself at least 8 of us were tweeting about the event whilst some had a running commentary on facebook.  Those following the event on twitter were able to ask questions of the panels and tweeted the panels answers to the questions.

We took advantage of the free high speed WIFI and uploaded photos on Flickr,

Ning , facebook and video clips on twitter and this served to bring the event alive for those that were not there in person

SOME OF THOSE WHO TWEETED AT THE EVENT

What is amazing about all this is the fact this was going on in the middle of a field with no electricity   or telephone line as you can see from these behind the scenes photos from TMS RUGE MEDIA

I understand from the organizers PROJECT DIASPORA that the entire source of funding for this event came from Social Media sources/contacts. I am not privy to the exact costs involved but I doubt very much if they got much change out of $17,000! how about that for crowd sourcing

I don’t know about you but this for me is the biggest Social Media story of year, if you have one that beats this one lets hear it

In my last post I told you about my quest to get to  the Millennium Villages conference, which has since been renamed VILLAGES IN ACTION .  As promised I am back with an update.

As well as raising the necessary BA Air Miles I also wanted to test the whole concept of #crowdsourcing so I will start with feed back on that. The post was tweeted and retweeted at least 44 times! I was truly touched by this.

@SarahArrow and @afriquanwoman took this a step further and wrote blog posts urging folk in cyber space to help me you can view Sarah’s post here and Afriquanwoman’s here

After all this tweeting @Nikkipilkington put me in touch with her twitter contact @KSukalac who had BA miles to donate next my good friend and fellow blogger over @africanontheblog,  @STM95 got in touch she too had in excess of 28000 to donate, if I wanted them

@uusoksa didn’t have any air miles but she sent  a donation of £25 by way of helping me out

At this stage I had enough Air miles I needed to get to Uganda and the next step was for me to call @British_Airways and arrange the transfer of those miles into my account. I was not prepared for what I learned when I called@British_Airways

1. I could only have 19,000 miles transferred to me
2. I would be responsible for the cost of the transfer £140
3. The surcharge fees would still apply £220-£250 of it
4. I would still need to top up the fair as my own air miles would not make up the total that is required to get a free   flight
5. @British_Airways would not waive the transfer fees

At this stage it looked like all was lost but one thing for sure, I had proven that Crowd sourcing or cyber  begging works!

In the days that followed all the twitter activities, I  got an an order for 30 raw silk scarves from my online shop.

Which enabled me to raise enough money for my the ticket and had to do with my networking, building and maintaining those relationships.  I can now get to Uganda!

May I take this opportunity to thank all those who rallied around, I do appreciate the love!

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I love Twitter and other Social Media platforms because they allow me to connect, collaborate and keep in touch with all manner of people from all over the world. I also learn a great deal from others, but it would appear that I am not alone, even Nick Clegg  British Deputy Prime Minister has been at it, it being CrowdSourcing

IDA HORNER

I recently came across Paul Smith’s story, a man that decided to travel half way across the world by relying on the generosity of people or precisely his Twitter followers. You can read about how he got on here . I was so intrigued by his success that I decided to put this to the test myself.

My challenge is to get to Uganda for the Millenium Villages Conference using @British-Airways miles donated by folk on twitter

My British Airways Air miles Account is 29688427 and I need to raise 50000 air miles.

I will provide an update of how I can get on so drop by!

In the mean time if you have had success with what I am trying to do kindly share your tips

There is a new theory that the #FollowFriday recommendations on twitter are open to abuse/SPAM
Nikki Pilkington an expert on twitter advises that in order to avoid this SPAM it is best to write your recommendations in a blog and then post a link to them.

I have a great deal of respect for Nikki’s views on twitter and other Social Media platforms and in my view what she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing. She has come up with a Twitter mentoring scheme called Tweetmentor and I am currently working way through it. Nikki’s twitter handle is @nikkipilkington if you would like to follow her and to find out about her twitter mentoring scheme visit her website http://www.nikkipilkington.com/

@peter_blanchard is a dear friend who want everyone in his network to succeed, he knows a great deal about selling smartly and IT. To find out about his work visit his company website www.ecom90.co.uk

@procphil another dear friend, he is very generous to those in his network . to find out about Phil’s work visit his blog http://streamliningprocesses.wordpress.com/

@SuButcher is great at connecting people, and what she doesn’t know about the planning system isn’t worth knowing here is Su’ website http://www.barefootgilles.com/

@essex_courier another generous soul that shares tips about all manner of things she taught me how to feed my blog into twitter. Read more about Sarah at her blog http://arrowlighthaulage.co.uk/arrowblog/

I love twitter as you may have figured by now but that is it about #followfriday this week . Oh and if you want to follow me I am @ethnicsupplies

Well think again. Whilst at the Africa Gathering I met three important people who were also running seminars.

In this thread I will tell you about one of those people. Dr Chris Hutchison a lecturer at Kingston University. He run a seminar on the University’s Africa project and sat in on my seminar too.

We had brief conversation afterwards, he introduced me to his colleague Catherine we and agreed to meet up to continue the conversation.

May was a busy month for us all and it became near impossible to meet. I had a work assignment that took me off to Uganda, and then there was the BBC Gardener’s World Exhibition during the second week of June. When this ended in the belief that the “fortune is the follow up “I dropped Chris a line with possible dates of meeting him and Catherine

It transpired that he was speaking at a conference in Latvia. I also learned from him that there was a conference at the University on 26 June 2009 and I would be welcome to be one of the speakers, which I promptly took up and my topic was REPRESENTATION and INTERPRETATION

At the conference I learned from Chris that he had been made head of the University’s Africa Project. He and Catherine were currently working on a project in South Africa and want to explore ways of promoting financial independence for the women.

Chris asked if I would consider collaborating with them on this particular project by including them in what I do at Ethnic Supplies Ltd. I agreed to a meeting with Chris and Catherine (who is currently on Holiday) so that I can learn more about this project and consider if I would like to be involved. But I am guessing that collaborating with such a high profile university will be an opportunity not to be missed.

Something else happened at the meeting of 26 June 2009 and that will be the subject of my next post

And it all started with Twitter

I don’t know when or how I got into Twitter but frankly it doesn’t matter. However what does is the ability to connect with others that Twitter provides. I have no doubt folk will debate the inns and out of Twitter for some time to come of as we say in Africa until the cows come home but I would urge you not to dismiss it.

My Twitter story starts with a post sent by Ed whose Twitter handle is chiefmoamba . Ed posted a Tweet in which he mentioned an Africa gathering in London.

This is someone I didn’t know nor he and I can’t even remember how he became my “Follower” nor me his. He politely answered my questions one of which was how could I get hold of tickets to the event in London.

He informed me that the tickets were sold out and asked if I would mind leading on one the seminars! Phew! all of this in just a few minutes of exchanging what is technically text messages!

Having reviewed the details I asked him what on earth I would talk about as the whole gathering appeared to be about ICT. Well those who know me will not be surprised by this.
He suggested that I could talk about my work at Ethnic Supplies

That is easy enough I thought, so I agreed to join them. Here is how the actual day went. I sincerely had no idea how much I relied on ICT in the running of Ethnic Supplies.

What happened next following my appearance at the Africa Gathering knocked me for six. An email arrived in my in box, I along with the other speakers at that event were invited to submit a paper for a conference on Ethics, Roles and Relationships in Interaction Design in Develop and given a deadline of May 10 2009.

I had the usual doubts, will I come up with a good enough paper to submit and even if I do, will it be good enough to be selected etc..

One thing was certain if I didn’t submit a paper I will never know what the outcome would have been or would be. I therefore sat down and wrote a paper and sent it off and waited for the results that were promised on 24 May.

And right on time the results were in on 24 May my paper had been accepted and this is what they said

Reviewer 1
Accept. This author, who is not a part of the traditional ‘community’ of HCI4D, brings similar insights about listening to people impacted by development is critical to success. I think that her perspective would be very interesting – that we could learn from her experiences and vice versa. I also think that there is a potential for interesting collaboration as well. Although she does not explicitly mention ethical issues, they are implicit in what she has written.

Reviewer 2
Accepted, The author has clearly has done some serious thinking about the relevant work. I agree that we can learn by engaging with this person.

I could not believe my eyes and was glad that I had taken the time to submit the paper. I started to reflect on the power on Twitter as well as that following leads through

Have you had an usual experience or amazing results as a result of being on Twitter?