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ISSUE NO 56 JOBS, PEOPLE, EVENTS...

EVENTS

E-TAIL- WHAT ARE SOUTH AFRICAN RETAILERS REALLY DOING ABOUT IT? (17 MAY)

The role of the internet in the South African marketing mix has become increasingly important over the last decade and Retailers can no longer afford to ignore this valuable business asset. DIMA, the Digital Interactive Media Association, along with its associates, will be holding a conference on retailing in the virtual space.

Presented as a series of success stories, the conference will be of particular interest to business people wishing either to engage the internet as a retail channel for the first time, or to improve current models. In keeping with the theme "The Internet: Path to profitability," the conference will deal with issues such as the nature and history of on-line business, successes to date, logistical and customer service challenges and how to overcome them, including CRM strategy, procurement and affiliate programmes.

Says Garin Toren, Conference Chairman and marketing director of Digital Mall: "This conference promises to be a great success. There has been a huge demand from retailers to hear case studies on other projects in the e-tail space. With all the negative news about the dot-coms closing down in the USA, there has never been a better time to hear about our local success stories, from the e-Tailer himself. What makes this conference unique is the presentations by the companies themselves and not the suppliers." Speakers at the conference will include: Lourens Botha - ‘MegaShopper’ (McCarthy On-line), Jessica Knight - ‘inthebag’ (Woolworths), Joe van Niekerk - ‘My Life’ (Electric Liberty), Yaron Assabi - ‘Wordsworth’ (Digitalmall.com) and Hein Pretorius - Kalahari.net (Naspers). The Internet: Path to profitability will be held on Thursday the 17^th of May at the Pharmaceutical Society, 52 Glenhove Rd. Houghton, South Africa For reservations, contact Elaine Zinn: reservations@dima.org.za or complete the reservation form on the DIMA website: <http://www.dima.org.za>

USING THE INTERNET: TRAVELLING WORKSHOPS FOR UNIVERSITY LIBRARIANS

Although online access to the internet has recently been introduced in many African universities, librarians in those universities often feel inadequately trained in its use. The International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), with funding from Danida, is offering a programme of ‘travelling’ workshops on Internet use for staff in nine university library systems in Africa. The objectives of the programme are to:

*provide librarians with a knowledge of the wealth of information and communication resources available on the Internet and with the skills to effectively locate and use these resources;

*provide librarians with the knowledge and skills to train academic staff and students to effectively use these resources;

*provide librarians with the knowledge and skills to use the Internet to disseminate locally produced information;

*enhance the capacity of librarians to provide training in information and communication technologies.

Using the Internet: Course Materials

<http://www.inasp.org.uk/lsp/internet/download.html>

The course materials (presentations, handouts and exercises) are available to download as zip or stuffed archives containing Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files.

For further details contact Carol Priestley at INASP
(cpriestley@gn.apc.org).

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