The agenda is looking good, even if I say so myself.  Pat Phelan is doing a lot of great research on competency centres, training and really driving down costs in operating ERP, Johan Jocabs brings strong local knowledge and some of the leading thinking on CRM, and Dan Sholler has the measure of NetWeaver and related technologies. As chairperson I get to do the raffle , talk about user experience options and give an overall positioning presentation. It will be a busy few days.

It will also be interesting as the event is a couple of days after SAP Sapphire in Orlando, so it will be an opportunity to see how (or if) SAP’s messages have resonated with the local customer base.  Some of SAP’s most innovative customers are in South Africa, and it is always good to see ingenuity of those organizations.  South Africans aren’t afraid to say it as it is, so it will be lively.

I have been involved with the South African ERP and HR  community for most of my working career, so it will also be good to see familiar faces and old friends.
As usual Lisa and her team do a fabulous job in organizing it. If you’d like to attend, drop Lisa a note via the website.

It will be great to catch up with family too. While I’m there I’d also like to hook up with any South African startups in the HR /ERP space, I’ve been impressed with what I have seen so far, but I’m keen to see more.  I will have a few days in Jo’burg  meeting clients  and I’ll be popping down to Pietermaritzburg to watch my brother run Comrades (a rather long jog of 89 kms).

5 hours north east of Johannesburg there is a Game Reserve. You can see giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, many birds, and lots of buck. Lions laze under the trees. You drive your car slowly by, counting off the animals you see.

Now, speak with a gentle but excited whisper, “Every now and again the lioness gets up and chases a zebra. The zebra must run fast or die; the hunter and hunted. Darwinian. “

I’m no David Attenborough, but you get the point. The game reserve is bigger than Wales and Denmark. The animals are totally wild. It can cruel and wicked.

At the Safari Park, things are a bit different. The Lions are fenced into an enclosure, about size of 5 football fields, and after a while you forget the fence is there. Once you leave, the lions get fed by the safari park staff. The other animals live a comfy existence in their own zone.  Yet it all looks realistic, if you haven’t seen the real thing. If you only have an hour it is great, because it can take a week to find that tree that the lions are lazing under if you are in the Game Reserve.

Checking software references is an important part of evaluating software.  Just remember the difference between the Safari Park and the Game Reserve. Is the vendor feeding them through the fence, or are they chasing their own dinner?  Don’t just ask the lion, ask the other animals too.

image via Sam and Ian on cc flickr.  Thanks!!

via the TED site. Ushahidi — a crisis-tracking tool with roots in TEDGlobal 2007 — has been awarded a $200,000 grant for development from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Spend a moment watching Erik in Action. link here if it doesn’t display in your reader.

Well done Erik and the gang.

Web 2.0 technologies are having an impact on UK politics too.