Diapers, cots, prams, bottles, soft toys, baby clothing, teething gel are just a few thoughts that spring to mind of an expecting mom. To enrich parents and parents-to-be more about baby stuff was the SABC Education Baba Indaba. The Baba Indaba was designed to inspire new moms to delight in their pregnancy, bring fresh ideas to parents, stimulate toddlers and entice kids with various essential, interesting and fun products.

This annual event was held in Durban, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. On 23-25 July the CTICC was the venue where parents, babies, toddlers and tweens were entertained, inspired and encouraged to discover a world of fun and education with a variety of exhibitors. For the first time in South Africa the Kids Indaba, which focuses on children between the ages 6-12 years, was part of the already well-known Baba Indaba.

Among the necessary new-born products, nutritional and healthy food, educational cartoons and maternity fashion shows, was Bridgetown’s very own Reconstructed  Living Lab (Rlabs) to stimulate the children via computers. Rlabs was determined to take Social Media Surgery to the younger generation, who were eager to interact with technology. Rlabs aimed to increase the understanding of technology and to educate the children between the ages of 6-12 years about various educational sites, children from as young as three years old were playing games on the Wii, X-Box and the PC’s.

Most of the children who passed-by showed an interest either by pulling their parents towards Rlabs or running towards a pc or the games projected on the screens. They were knowledgeable as well about the internet and exchanged their favourite sites with the Rlabs team.

Technology has weaved its way to the very young ones and to enhance the phrase “…if you can’t beat them join them,” Rlabs encouraged the parents to embrace the ever transpiring evolution of the online world by introducing them to sites beneficial to their children’s development.

Two of our team members Craig and Brent was out in Johannesburg for 3 days to do training with MobieG. The purpose of this training was to equip  the MobieG team to use  JamiiX, the web based tool allowing you to manage multiple conversations from different Social Networks and Instant Messaging platforms. Jamiix is the platform witch MobieG will do the mobile counselling from. The training also covered the topics “Art of Mobile Counselling” and “The Mind Of a Mobile Counselor.

The launch of MobieG mobile counselling service was on Sunday and to get access to their services click  here “Caring in a non caring world”

Content:
This one day training “hands-on” workshop will cover the following areas:
1. Background to Social Media and tools such as blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, wikis, and multimedia file-sharing sites
2. Provide guidelines to how your business can utilise and reap the benefits of social media
3. Practical opportunities for participants to engage with some of the Social Media tools
4. Social Media and mobile phones
5. Drafting a Social Media Policy for Businesses

Objectives:
• Understanding of Social Media and its context
• Identified tools that could be integrated into the business sector to support its vision and objectives
• Introductory level of hands-on experience using social media tools
• To use mobile phones as possible social media devices
• Understand the importance of Social media for Businesses
Workshop Details:
All required equipment will be provided for the workshop and this includes all refreshments for the day. The price of the workshop is R1, 500.00 for the day or RSVP your seat with the code RLABS by the 5 July 2010 and we will waver your fee by 33% (You Pay ONLY R1,000.00).

Workshop Details:
Date: Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Time: 9:00 – 13:30
Address: Impact Centre, 66 Tarentaal Road, Bridgetown,Athlone, 7764
Contact person: Clinton Liederman – Clinton@rlabs.org – 021 6991453

In preparation for substance abuse week (which is this week) , Rlabs has teamed up with Mxit to bring drug advice and support to the tip of Mxit subscribers fingers. 28,000 plus subscribers added the Angel Information Service . On Monday the team had to be ready as  they did not know how many people would come online seeking advice and support with their substance abuse problems.  For the week  a 12 hour service session, the following statistics were achieved with a them of 10 counsellors:

• Number of Conversations: 1283
• Number of Messages: 7654
• Average Conversation per counsellor 44

The technology we are using to manage the conversations is JamiiX

Today we decided to do the Mom3.0 Cafe Session differently. We will be doing it Speed Dating style. Here is just a brief description of what speed dating is.

SPEED DATING: Wikipedia

Speed dating is a formalized matchmaking process or dating system whose purpose is to encourage people to meet a large number of new people.

SPEED DATING: RLABS

The reason for us doing the Mom3.0 session speed dating style is that we want to introduce the moms to as many Social Media sites as possible. This is also a good way of doing recap with the moms and for those that joined the class late.

Melissa Jonhson one of the students says: “I could do so many things today as I had many tabs open. I had my Facebook, Gmail, Blogger and Hootsuite (twitter) open at the same time. This session was so fruitful!” So it seems these new speed dating sessions are paying off and we will be looking forward to having more of them with the moms in the future.

A special thanks to all the moms for attending the speed dating session as this would not be possible without you ladies. And to all the facilitators. Keep up the good work.

On Saturday Etv Tech Report (Etv) visited RLABS to do a story and some filming on what we are doing and how we are using Social Media to empower our communities. They arrived to at RLABS round about 1.30pm and started almost immediately with the interviews and gathering information as to how RLABS came into existence.

They did an interview with Marlon Parker the founder member of RLABS and then later requested to interview some of the staff and management team. They selected Craig Ross (Innovations Manager at RLABS) and Monique Ross (She’s The Geek, his wife) to tell them more about their stories and how RLABS had helped them in their recovery.

Craig and Monique both come out of a lifestyle of gangsterism and drugs and have amazing testimonies. Most important of all they are using what they have learnt to help others that have been in the same boat they (on drugs) have been. Look out for Etv’s new show and the story of RLABS.  Etv will be back at RLABS on Saturday to do a story of Marlon Parker’s new initiative: JamiiX.

Today we back  at RLab doing two projects today the first one is our citizen journalism with young ladies from schools in our surrounding area today Marlon Parker is teaching them how to create a fan page. The citizen journalism group got a name check out their page  iMo’journ

After the Journalism project we had a follow up blogging session with She’s The Geek. In today’s session Monique did picture blogging with the ladies and they shared the blog post on Facebook

Feel free to read the blog post of the ladies remember this is their second blogging session www.mom2zero.com

Yesterday we ran a Social Media class with the girls City Mission Educational Services. We had not had a class with them for a while now. In yesterday’s session we did a recap on Gmail with them. These girls have a long way to go and much more to learn.

I remember when was first exposed to a computer about 2 years ago and did not know anything. It was a very overwhelming feeling and did not know if I was going to be able to finish the course. Well if I see where I find myself today I know teaching these girls is not impossible.

I am looking forward to the next session with them. We will be taking them to the next phase which will be Facebook. Soon they will be bloggers and setting the World Wide Web alight. Watch this space.

We have to impart in them what we have learned. If someone did not take the time out to teach us we would not be where we are now.

RLABS’ Social Media Factory is doing the Social Media Strategy for the movie: I Now Pronounce You Black and White. We had a competition running on Facebook to win two sets of tickets to the Cape Town Premiere of this movie. Today we did the draw and have two lucky winners.

The winners of the two sets of tickets are Lee Williams and Naasirah Dollie. Congratulations to you guys and we will be seeing you there tomorrow evening. The premiere will be hosted at Cinema Prive,Canal Walk. Viewers can expect to see the first screening of I Now Pronounce You Black and White at their local Nu Metro cinema from 14th of May 2010.

Almost a week has past after the Innovation Fair World Bank event and still its a hot topic for the RLABS team. Today we welcomed Tony Stuart from a local news paper “Athlone News” who did some interviews with the team who did the social media campaign and sharing their experience of this event.

Tony Stuart asked us to share about the life style we have lived and how Reconstructed Living Lab has play the part of our reconstruction. If I would answer how RLABS has has played a part of my reconstruction this would be my answer:’It is the love that they have for people and the community and giving me a opportunity for the creative juice to flow .To put the cherry on top RLABS encourages and supports new innovation that we want to bring in the space. Tony was a bit shocked to hear the stories of the team and how social media has played a part of their reconstruction. This article will be in The Athlone News next week and will be posting it stay tuned.