On 22 June 2010 11:38, Dave Kissoondoyal <dkissoondoyal@hotmail.com> wrote: Dear Evan,

I see that Africa has been forgotten in the proposal.

Dave, It is often incorrect -- and occasionally insulting -- to infer that something is forgotten simply because it is not included. As you yourself have recognized, there is no conference in Africa that serves the same super-regional role as the three I mentioned. The ones I chose were done because 1) This is intended as an initial experiment. Of course other conferences can be suggested on follow up. But I wanted to limit the original attempt to three in order to make it more acceptable at a budget level. 2) These particular events are globally known to attract an extremely diverse audience of business people, end users and media. These events attract massive media coverage, thanks to the new-product announcements (and I would work to leverage that media coverage to our advantage). I want to make it clear that this is not meant to replace other outreach activity, but simply solidifies and expands on an "out of the box" idea that has been informally discussed for many years. - Evan