MIKESTOPFORTH

I’ve really enjoyed opportunities over the last few weeks to connect more regularly with the local Young & Rubicam team and their Wunderman cousins about social media and it’s impact on local markets and individual consumers. I’ve also been invited to a few book launches and more recently, to meet with Simon Silverster, EVP Head [...]

I had hoped to blog a lot more about my experience at SXSW Interactive this year but barely had time to breathe, let alone document all that happened in Austin. I will say this though, it lived up to (high) expectations and more – I’ll definitely be going back next year. Since getting back life [...]

About a month ago I had a brainfart and nearly didn’t come to Austin to attend SXSW. Thank heavens I came to my senses – the trip has already been worth it on so many levels. In the short time Allan Kent and I have been here we’ve met some amazing people, seen some rather [...]

So my first interview (first for my sexy little Flip Mino HD camera and first at SXSW) is with my old friend Erik Hersman of WhiteAfrican.com and Jon Gosier of Appfrica.net. The sound isn’t great but we were in the middle of a packed diner (called IHOP), where Erik forced pancakes drenched in butter and [...]

The dudes in Cape Town updated me with this news release today – more good news for our baby, Afrigator! Taken directly from the news release: Afrigator shoots up the ranks to take the ninth spot on the Online Publishers Association according to latest stats by Nielsen Online. Cape Town, February 5, 2009: Afrigator Internet [...]

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 [...]

Dave Duarte has grown the Nomadic Marketing brand into the definitive local social and mobile media education programme – nothing else comes close. The combination of excellent content, the backing of the UCT GSB and professional facilitation mean that it ranks among the best of it’s kind worldwide. And now Dave is bringing Nomadic Marketing [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Big news from the Afrigator team today is the launch of AdGator – Africa’s first blogging ad network. We always envisioned Afrigator being a platform that bloggers could not only use to ‘market’ their content but also a source of revenue for them, and finally we have a model that allows us to do just [...]

I have been tagged by Scott in the Worldwide Blogger Bake Off – a viral marketing initiative designed by Quirk eMarketing to raise funds for Breadline Africa, one of their charity clients. Basically the idea is that I bake a loaf of bread (which will be interesting), blog about it, and then tag other bloggers [...]

Day 1 of TechEd is behind us and it was a brain-straining one. I managed to catch the last half of co-CEO Leo Apotheker‘s opening keynote after traversing Berlin in search of a chemist. The highlight of Leo’s keynote for me was the announcement of EcoHub, “a community-powered solution marketplace” designed to “accelerate the discovery, [...]

If you didn’t catch it in the last update I posted – I was kindly invited by SAP’s VP of social media relations Mike Prosceno to attend their TechEd conference in Berlin as a blogger. By some bizarre stroke of luck I landed up with an empty seat next to me on a very full [...]

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.

The family and I got back from a much needed break at Crystal Springs in Mpumalanga on Sunday, but the fun and sun of the previous week was quickly brought down to earth by the mountain of stuff I realised I had to do this week. That’s the problem with going away – you bump [...]

Have your say… n Who Authors Beat Magazine? Scott Gray Vincent Maher Vincent Hofmann Justin Hartman You, Mike, you prat! Other… View Results