MIKESTOPFORTH

If you’ve spent any time at all reading anything I’ve published on this blog you’ll know SA conferences companies are my own personal bugbear.  They suck.  Typically they pick up on a popular trend, and with little to no knowledge of that space, whether it be opencast mining or social media, strive to make as [...]

Justin is, as I write this, launching Afrigator‘s newest innovation to our fellow African geeks at BarCamp Nigeria in Lagos. Gatorpeeps is a micro-blogging platform, not unlike Twitter or Pownce (which died), that makes it really easy for existing Afrigator users to connect with other Afrigator users in 140 characters or less, and with all [...]

I’ve never cared much for politics. This is largely because I felt intimidated by it. When I don’t feel knowledgeable about a subject I simply steer clear of it to avoid looking lke an idiot. I could never understand politics because it never made sense to me. I think I understand now that I had [...]

A couple of weeks back I received an email from Rui Esteves, a co-founder of Vida e Caffe, of which I am enormous fan. After the enormous success of Vida Rui has not rested on his laurels, instead choosing to reinvent the beer industry with the same passion and conviction he and his business partners [...]

I knew last night’s 27dinner in Jozi could only have had one of two outcomes. Being the first dinner to enjoy full brand sponsorship (more on that later) there was a risk of it being too commercial and boring, even prescriptive. I knew I didn’t want that. On the other hand, it had the potential [...]

I love free stuff. Want to win me over? Send me free stuff. But then I think that works for most humans. I still get a warm tingly feeling when a post office slip arrives, or even better, the courier rings the doorbell for me to collect some random corporate gift or token. Doesn’t matter [...]

Just before I sneaked out of the office yesterday I received a surprise in the form of a hand-delivered package containing a flash disk and a letter drawing my attention to the launch of SA’s newest tech podcast, The Digital Edge. As soon as I got home, and in between whipping up supper and greeting [...]

In March 2007 (jeez, that long ago??) I wrote a post titled Ten Young South African Digital Citizens To Watch. In it I highlighted the guys and girls I believed would make a big, meaningful impact over the next few months in the South African digital space. I’m pleased to report that many of them [...]

I was privileged enough to receive an invite from Reuben Goldberg to join him on an episode of his popular talk show The Internet Economy which airs every Friday night from 7-8 on ClassicFM. We spoke about the broad subject of social media in South Africa, the article I wrote the other day (the Next [...]

Or at least that’s what my neighbour, Jacques, will be hoping. Early this morning Wendy woke me up asking me to unplug the computers, modem and phone lines because of a serious electrical storm that had set in (we get some pretty mean lightning where we are so this is a fairly regular occurence). Stumbling [...]

The honeymoon is over. Much of the hype and noise surrounding social media and its meteoric rise (especially in the USA) has abated. Perhaps owing to the global economic crisis, arguably due to the apparent lack of sustainable business models and possibly as a result of some semblance of reasonable thinking, we’re no longer reading [...]

…is only sometimes through his stomach. The way to this man’s heart, at least, is through a 6,27 litre naturally-aspirated V8 engine under the hood of one of the scariest ‘passenger vehicles’ on the road today. You know I’m an Audi fan – let’s state this up front, and having just invested in a shiny [...]

I think everybody complains. Especially South Africans. Complaining is our 12th official language. Some complain and do nothing to fix what they’re complaining about. But others – the select few – seek to change whats wrong with the world with invaluable random acts of kindess (stolen from Evan Almighty). Two such people are very good [...]

I received an email from Shelley Wilson, an honours student at Vega who is doing her thesis on viral video. She’s put together this ’15 tips for viral marketing videos’ clip, with an accompanying article (quoted below) that she’d love your feedback on. I’m all for feedback, so let her have it! We live in [...]

Just a quick note that we’ll be meeting up this Friday evening at Cappello, 19h00, for drinks with Erik Hersman – would be cool to see y’all there.

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The 29th 27dinner, held on the 25th to accommodate more folks (weekends aren’t ideal for these things), was, I think, an improvement on previous dinners. The new venue, Cappello in Sandton City, suited our presentation format far better and encouraged a more networky vibe. Thanks to Garsen (the owner) and his team for their refreshingly [...]

I’m pretty excited about a few conferences that’ll be happening in the next few weeks. There have been a series of successful marketing-related Web 2.0 conferences this year that have served to raise awareness around the power of social media as a platform for engaging consumers, but top quality conferences addressing the application of social [...]

Honestly, I’m convinced we hire some of the coolest and cleverest people in the country at Cerebra. Just take for example this email from Carl, subject ‘Can’t work with this poop any longer …’ which landed in my inbox this morning, had me in stitches, and which I couldn’t help but share publicly. I haven’t [...]