ITS User Group Conference 2006-Gaborone, Botswana

ITS User Group Conference 2006-Gaborone, Botswana

The Gaborone International Conference Centre. We spent most of our time in this building attending presentations, seminars, and speeches. The hotel was by far one of the nicest I have ever had the pleasure to stay in.

Inside the conference centre. Here in the lobby we had daily tea at 10am and 3pm. In the evening it was drinks before dinner in the main room.

Simon and Juanita in the conference centre. I work in the same department as Juanita every morning in the ITS Support Centre. Simon is the Manager of Auxiliery services and was our designated driver for the trip.

Here we see Rudolph our systems administrator, Tjivee representing finance, Sadia our bursar, and Chuma the assistant registrar.

Tjivee, Sylvia representing human resources, Hayres represting finance, Juanita, Rudolph and Simon having tea on the lawn after the opening session.

Antonia representing the dean of students, Chuma, Sylvia, unknown, Marsha director of ITS support (who I also work closely with), and Tjivee. Standing at back, Juanita, unknown, Rudolph and myself.

ITS organized a formal evening on Monday where everyone was required to dress up. We had an amazing dinner with just about everything you could imagine. There was also a live band playing both african and western hits.

Here is the entire crew reprenting the Polytechnic of Namibia just before entering the main hall.

Gaborone was not overly impressive. I can say that the people are amazingly friendly and for the most part service was far superior to that received in Namibia. Botswana has a fairly strong currency and economy so I suppose my expectations were high. The city seems to be poorly planned but quite possibly it just suffered growing pains as the economy soared.

Antonia, Chuma and Tjivee are not impressed by the shopping! This is the main promenade in the central business district.

Shmoozing before dinner. Tuesday’s evening was supposed to be a pool party but we got rained out.

ITS managment took us out to the bar after dinner. We were commended as being ITS’ oldest client now going on 20 years.

We were invited to the University of Botswana where we took a tour of their beautiful campus. The grounds are quite large and state of the art.

The girls at KFC demanded I get a picture of them.

The drive to Gaborone was long and arduous. It took us 12 hours each way. You can imagine sitting in a car for 12 hours! The worst part is, for the most part, there is nothing to see. Botswana is flat, very flat. There were few animals en route and often we would go hours without even seeing a human being!

We didnt pass many towns on our drive. Even gas stations were few and far between. This is a very informal gas station we found when we were in desperate need of petrol.