Mike Stopforth

I recently met the team behind SARugby.com (nice domain acquisition there) after a conference. They’re a cool bunch who are keen to grow their site by engaging with bloggers and the SA social media scene in general. This in a recent email from David Wessels:
SARugby.com have launched a competition for all South African [...]

Scary question: what if it doesn’t work?
Scarier question: what if it does?
How much of your planning time is allocated to ‘what to do when it works’? I think too many startups miss out on opportunities to capitalise on successes due to outright shock.
When you succeed, how will you prolong / broaden / [...]

HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn’t) — HBS Working Knowledge
Essential reading
(tags: wikipedia web2.0 wiki hbs Enterprise2.0 collaboration social)

Awesome news - Business 2.0 magazine, based in San Francisco, has marked Afrigator as one of the top 31 Web 2.0 startups worldwide to be watching. This is a huge accolade and a testimony to some of the hard work that has already gone in to Afrigator.
That said, we have not been sleeping - [...]

This outstanding video, spliced together using clips from Disney animated movies, explains the basics of copyright law. Thanks to Dennis McDonald.

For the first time on Friday night Cerebra hosted 27 Dinners in two major South African cities simultaneously (Jozi and Durban). I really hope this is a sign of things to come and that as we hear murmurings and rumours of 27 being taken abroad to London and San Francisco that soon we’ll be [...]

If you are interested in the Enterprise 2.0 school of thought, and want to see some examples of where social media and software are being integrated inside corporations, take a look at Cases 2.0.
The effort is being spearheaded by Andrew McAfee of the Harvard Business School. Also, if you have worthy examples [...]

One thing has surprised me more than anything else since diving headfirst into the dodgy world pf self-employment in September 2005; the value of Public Relations.
Now I’m at risk writing this because I have been pretty critical (especially at the earliest stage of my consulting career) of PR and secondly because I probably don’t know [...]

Creating a Cute Cat Frenzy - TIME
More testimony to the long tail theory and a proof that it can pay to market to the fringes
(tags: web lolcats funny niche marketing longtail)

Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work
Richard MacManus’ top 10 Facebook Apps for business people
(tags: facebook web2.0 apps tools applications list productivity business socialnetworking socialnetworks)

Web Attack
BusinessWeek takes a look at what happens when bloggers bash brands, and what execs can do about it.
(tags: 2007 advertising blog blogging Blogs business communication community management marketing online pr presentation reputation search socialmedia tech web web2.0)