iWeek XV set for 19 to 23 September in Joburg

18 July 2016

iWeek XV, the fifteenth annual Internet industry conference, takes place in Johannesburg from 19-23 September. The conference brings together South African Internet industry professionals and offers workshops and training opportunities for companies active in the Internet sector.  Most of the conference sessions are open to the public, and attendance is free. This year’s conference is co-hosted by ISPA and INX-ZA and brings together a large number of industry bodies as participants and partners, which includes the ZA Central Registry (ZACR) and the ZA Domain Name Authority (ZADNA).

The Internet Service Providers’ Association celebrates twenty years of activity, and is hosting a number of sessions on topics important to ISPs. These include product workshops with wholesale service providers, workshops on cybersecurity, ISPA’s Code of Conduct, the national SA Connect plan, and a panel discussion on online content regulation. A gala dinner will take place on Monday, 19th September to mark ISPA’s twentieth birthday.

Two full days of specialised technical content are planned for Tuesday, 20th and Wednesday 21st September. Network engineers and technical staff can attend presentations and workshops on routing registries, IRR usage, network automation, network visualisation and end-to-end IPv6.  The FTTH-C will be providing a full day of content related to fibre deployment and regulations.

Also on Tuesday, 20 September, domain name practitioners will have an opportunity to hear updates on the .ZA domain name space from ZADNA, and on the .dotcity and .africa projects from ZACR. The afternoon includes a registrar compliance workshop for companies interested in becoming registrars for South African domains. For those interested in secure domains, a half-day DNSSEC workshop takes place on Thursday, 22nd.

WASPA is a new partner for this year’s event, and brings a full day of content focussed on mobile service providers. On Tuesday, 20th, as well as sessions covering mobile content and the South African numbering plan, there is a half-day workshop which will provide a detailed overview of the South African regulatory framework, ICASA’s role as the industry regulatory, and a high-level view of the legislation and regulations which shape the industry.

The Gauteng Chapter of the Internet Society will be hosting a South African Internet governance forum at iWeek. This forum will bring together industry, governmental, and civil society representatives to debate Internet policy questions, and discuss South Africa’s role in determining how the global Internet operates.

Long and more focussed sessions take place during the week, and these are designed for ISPs to provide staff members with new technical skills. AFRINIC are providing a one-day workshop on number resource management, and a three-day course on IPv6 implementation.

A number of other industry associations are valuable partners in the week’s events. The SA Wi-Fi Forum, WAPA, FID and SAIIAF will all be hosting meetings during the course of the week, and participating in other sessions.

The highlight of iWeek is always the SuperTeacher gala dinner, where ISPA and the CoZa Cares Foundation celebrate the finalists and award winners from the South African ICT teachers supported by the program. This year’s dinner is sponsored by Neotel, who have also funded the participation of many of the program’s participants, since its inception.

A detailed program and registration form will be made available soon on the iWeek web site, but we’d like to encourage you to pre-register for iWeek XV now, so that we can send you an email once registrations open. Click here to do that now: www.iweek.org.za.

There are still some sponsorship opportunities available for iWeek XV. Please click here for more information: www.iweek.org.za/sponsor.

If you have any questions about the event, please drop the iWeek team an email using following address: iweek@ispa.org.za.