Mike Stopforth

…because after this he’s going to be hard to get hold of.

Henk is the founder and MD of Skyrove (who I advertise on my blog not because he pays for it, but because I love them so much :P) and without doubt one of the nicest, smartest and most humble people in the industry.

I hope this compliment to him and his hard work will mean even more success. Well done bud!

Today has been an embarrassingly sentimental day for me. It marks the three year anniversary of my first ever blog post. Ha ha. Had I known in advance the realms of geekiness I would be sucked into I might never have ventured so far, but in retrospect I’m glad I did

Just after that first post on the faith-themed Idle Banter and before starting this blog, much of my creative energy was invested in TomorrowToday’s blog, which you can check out here… My foray into citizen journalism sparked a chain of events that included quitting a comfortable job at this company to work with people at another completely different company, trying to build what I called a ‘blog consultancy’ at the time (yikes) that eventually evolved into Cerebra…

For some reason I’ve been ignoring MyGenius.com - the Southern African social network for business people. I have been a member since late 2006 - MyGenius’s very early days - and never quite got in to it. I get the odd message from a MyGenius member wanting to connect but have spent little no time on updating my profile or adding content to the site.

Recently I decided to give MyGenius another go based on two realisations. Firstly, the value of social networking is undoubtedly found, or much easier mined, in niche communities. The quintessential example is Charl Norman’s Zooped Up community for owners of modified cars and suchlike - completely useless for me but absolutely invaluable and addictive to people entrenched in that community. MyGenius cannot be compared to MySpace, for example, because it’s not trying to be a globally dominant player. It’s simply trying to do what it does well.

Yes, it’s an odd request, but I have a good mate who is driving a very worthy project called Siyakhula (we are growing) that seeks to offer basic PC and Office instruction at a drastically reduced rate to disadvantaged communities, and he needs about 25 decent PC’s…

My good mate Erik Hersman is passionate about techology and passionate about Africa. He has combined these brilliantly in the recent past in the shape of projects like Ushahidi and AfriGadget. He’s been rewarded for his outstanding efforts by having AfriGadget named as one of TIME Magazine’s 50 top sites of 2008 alongside the likes of Yahoo! Answers Health.com, Mint and more.

Without going into too much detail, do you support Ramon Thomas’ assertion that the article written by Mandy de Waal about the who’s who of Web 2.0 in South Africa was ‘distasteful and offensive‘ or do you think Nic was right in saying that Ramon’s response “immediately marginalises his audience and those involved in his article”?

Have your say…

I don’t have an MBA but the little I do know about business tells me the ultimate goal for anyone starting or running a company is that it be profitable. Everything else - production, people management, marketing, accounting - is fashioned around that single purpose. I want Cerebra and Afrigator to make money. Sure, I want them to be fun, interesting and progressive - but they must make money.

I think it’s fair to say that websites like Facebook, YouTube, Zoopy, Twitter, Technorati, Digg and others aren’t meaningful and/or popular because of their technology (although good tech helps), but rather because of the vast networks of human beings using them. It’s humans that make Web 2.0 apps popular, not code. But looking at the significant list of apps and services I use daily, it’s hard to pick out any that are making money, never mind profitably so.

It’s a little late, but I’d like to thank all who attended last night’s 27dinner in Jozi (we were at Primi Piatti, Melrose Arch) yesterday evening. Considering the cold, dreary Cape Town weather the turn out was good and the vibe was even better.

Our speaker line-up included Ramon Thomas who spoke about Technology Stress in a Wireless World (view the preso at his site) followed by Jason Hobbs who gave a fascinating and stylish report on research he’s done into the disproportionately large, but thriving internet cafe industry in inner city Johannesburg. The photo essay and report are both available at his website (which is also pretty impressive).

If you have nothing better to do feel free to watch me talking about “The importance of Networking” on Alishia Seckam’s show, ‘Africa’s Entrepreneurs’ on CNBC Africa at 13h50 20h30, tomorrow, Tuesday 28 May (we’re recording at 14h00, sorry for the confusion).

The producer has nominated MyGenius, local business social networking site, as a case study and I hope to cover the subject of personal digital profiles and the Google CV, if I get the chance.

So as usual I’m the last person to get around to posting that our little project has grown up again.  But then again I’m the only person who really works for a living

Charl Norman scooped the launch announcement this morning, and Justin updated the Afrigator blog with a list of cool features the new version boasts.