When Guy Berger was telling me about tweetdeck French translation, he probably did not know that it will be hard to even send an email, forget do the blog posts, podcasts and video.

He was right to make suggestions, given that last year, there was a projector showing all the twitter feeds and given the number of journalists that are here with lots of laptops, you can imagine the amount of social media that would have been in use; it would have been "churnalism".

An hour after Guy gave me the hint and I was busy sharing with the other, the system became slow; I thought it was because of the many internet users and maybe hardware issues.

Then it became bad and all journalists became grumpy because they could not get online; only those with local mobile phones could send tweets, which actually took out the fun.

It was hard to understand how Rhodes University could be down, given its an ISP and is very efficient; by lunch break, we were told that SEACOM was down, which was bad for us.

SEACOM is great, and am sure when the capacity is up, its great but it would have been nice to see who would have been tweeting more; the new media professors or the students or working journalists.

The funniest thing was that the MTN stand just outside was working well and they had public laptops, which as you can guess pulled many people. Love it or hate it, MTN saved the day for some of us.

The SEACOM social media team is very efficient, sent them a tweet asking about the downtimes and they confirmed they had a repeater problem somewhere between Mombasa and Mumbai.

My next question was why the capacity was not being routed through SAT 3 or TEAMS, I thought they had redundancy, given that TATA is all over. They confirmed that they had no redundancy, but why?

Anyway, I am sitting here whining but am lucky to have the modem, can you imagine having 600 journalists and the #ha2010 hashtag on twitter is virtually empty? Hard to imagine.

To answer my questions, today morning I received the following press release from SEACOM and as of lunch time there was no update on this, so take it as the latest.

"SEACOM has experienced a submarine cable failure resulting in service downtime between Mumbai and Mombasa. Current investigations indicate that a repeater has failed on segment 9 of the SEACOM cable, which is offshore to the north of Mombasa. This unexpected failure affects traffic towards both India and Europe. Traffic within Africa is not affected.

SEACOM has initiated emergency repair procedures to replace the repeater. Once mobilized, the repair ship is deployed to the location of the fault to pick up the cable. The cable is then brought on board to undergo the repair – the faulty element is replaced with a new repeater - before being put back in the water.

Whilst the repair process itself will only take a few hours, the overall process may last a minimum of 6-8 days. The actual duration is unpredictable due to external factors such as transit time of the ship, weather conditions and time to locate the cable. For these reasons, the estimated duration of this repair remains uncertain.

SEACOM in co-operation with its clients, is actively seeking alternatives to restore service whilst the repairs are undertaken. "

Elvira van Noort was very excited to see her former professors at the University of Eutrect; it was great they were here to witness how she has "grown up" and busy training citizen journalism in Grahamstown. I almost went to the table to say hello to the professors; given her excitement.

Elvira represents many journalists who are meeting at the same venue with their former lecturers attending the World Journalism Educators Congress, a parallel meeting with Highway Africa.

It is the first time that such a meeting is taking place; so when people complain about the standards of journalism, you can turn to the educators and find out whats going on; at the same time, educators can turn and question journalists on what happened to all the lessons and massive notes given in class.

For a conference that is usually held in September and had few scholarships given the world cup pricing of everything, Highway Africa is very attended and the interaction with the educators is likely to have positive effects.

The corporate sector also turned up as usual; MTN, Telkom and Multichoice are here with huge stands. One of the sessions had the corporates and Nozipho January-Bardill from MTN was asked about the stories she thinks journalists should be covered.

Her answers boiled down to the usual stuff of positive and detailed stories; she gave the example of a BBC documentary on Oliver Tambo and wonders why SABC had not done it. The upshot was that the reason people switch to international channels is mainly because of the depth of reportage.

For the next three days, there will be interactions and discussions on some of the challenges affecting journalism and the continent. There will be no shifting blame because the journalists, educators, public and private sector are there to defend or expound on the status quo.

Ends

This week, I received a media invite from the Nation Media group about accreditation for the Pan African Media Conference. They were asking for $150 for journalists to cover the event.

I read the email again, it was not to participate, but to cover the event, you know, the journalists that come in just for the speeches by the big wigs. Before I could digest the shock, another email came, rectifying the figure to Kshs 2,500 (about $30); but I was still in a shock.

I was in shock because I know media houses have been against charging journalists to cover events. Think about management/motivational events that many people pay lots of money to attend but journalists get in free.

I was once asked for advice by someone organizing a management talk on those tips they did not teach you at Harvard Business school and i was against journalists paying a fee just to cover the event.

So, why is the Nation Media Group asking other media houses to pay in order to cover the event?

I was with some other tech journalists in the morning and we were joking that because the Nation is so big, they can afford to cover the event on their own, across all the platforms.

For others, it was a way for the Nation to get all the scoops by ensuring that they cover everything and lock out the others.

Anyway, I am sure the fee is not that much and other media houses can pay but will it be fair to ask other event organizers to allow journalists in free when other media houses charge accreditation fee?

By the way, the meeting has allowed some bloggers free, so will this be the first case where social media has trumped mainstream media?

Read the email sent below...

RE: PAN AFRICAN MEDIA CONFERENCE JOINTLY ORGANISED BY NATION MEDIA GROUP & AFRICA MEDIA INITIATIVE

We are pleased to invite you to cover the 2010 Pan African Media Conference in Nairobi, Kenya. The conference with the theme, Media and the African Promise is a collaboration of the Africa Media Initiative and the Nation Media Group and will be held from the 18th-19th March 2010 at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The event will reflect on the African media’s past, present and prospects for the future against the challenges of a dynamic globalised environment. The conference has been organised to commemorate Nation Media Group’s 50th Anniversary since the first copy of the Daily Nation rolled off the press.

This conference will draw attendance from leading media professionals from all over the African continent, speakers representing industry and policy development, as well as academic scholars and thinkers from the global media arena. The forum will encourage contribution and development of robust policy related to the operation and development of media in Africa.

Participants will explore issues ranging from the advent of citizen journalism where audiences generate and publish news using popular online platforms and new media such as SMS, MMS, MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, to the role of media and civil society in solving Africa’s challenges, to governance democracy and other perspectives, to the emergence of a global media culture, to reporting change and crisis in Africa, and saving the African environment among others.

We have a great line-up of speakers including: H.E. Joaquim Alberto Chissano, former President of Mozambique, H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor, President of the Alliance, and former President of Ghana, Dr. Hussein Amin, Professor and former chair of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Cairo, Achim Steiner Acting on the nomination of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Dr. Mohamed "Mo" Ibrahim, Sudanese-born British mobile communications entrepreneur, Professor Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and Mr. David Dadge, Director of the International Press Institute(IPI among others.

We invite you to cover the conference. For purposes of accreditation please send a list of the print, broadcast and photo journalists who will cover the event by Friday 12th March to Wanjiru Waithaka at the conference secretariat (wwaithaka@nation.co.ke). For each journalist we will require two (2) passport size photos, an official letter confirming he or she has been assigned to cover the event by your organization and accreditation fee of USD150 (or Sh10,000) payable in advance.

Follow-up email

Dear all,

With regard to the invitation below please note that the accreditation fee has been reduced to Sh2,500 PER journalist.

Regards,

Ends