MIKESTOPFORTH

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 [...]

This is a video of a recent talk I did at the exclusive Tintswalo equestrian estate (note the horse’s bum in the background) with the MasterMind Group of Professional Speakers, of which I’m a member. I decided at the last minute to ditch my PPT slides in aid of the old fashioned approach. Your critical [...]

Mandy de Waal has kindly written up a profile and interview with me in her new Moneyweb Life Wired section… I’m pretty honoured and it’s a very flattering piece. Other people she’s featured include Charl Norman, Vinny Lingham, Ronnie Apteker and others. Thanks Mandy!

This blog is powered by WordPress – the phenomenally popular and powerful open source blogging CMS (content management system). As with most open source initiatives WordPress has enormous online community contributing to it and improving it on an ongoing basis in the form of plugins, themes and more. We even have some pretty clued up [...]

I had a fascinating chat over Skype with Rafiq Phillips this morning. In case you don’t already know, Rafiq is a prolific blogger and Web AddiCT, he was recently featured on Carte Blanche in a piece about Web 2.0 and has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bono and the founders of Google at global [...]

Oops, stumbled in a bit late… freakin’ traffic. Thanks to Vincent Maher and Vodacom for my ticket – here are my observations: Rick Joubert: Vodacom Mobile Advertising “Mobile is the seventh mass media… Print, Recording, Cinema, Radio, TV, Internet, Mobile. Reach, targeting, frequency and response make the mobile medium so compelling. “Mobile has twice the [...]

Inspired by Chris Brogan’s traffic explosure (explosive + exposure = explosure… TM “me”) thanks to StumbleUpon, I’d like to ask you to stumble this blog if you like it. If you don’t, or disagree with the ethics behind this egotistical request, don’t. You’ll get over it soon enough. Is there a better way (other than [...]

Vincent Maher and I spent a fascinating day in a very sunny Cape Town with the Design Indaba team today. On the way to the session at the gorgeous 12 Apostles Boutique Hotel (kudos to the staff – best service I’ve experienced in ages) we got chatting about the state of the social Web, and [...]

You gotta hand it to Mandy – she knows how to get read better than the rest of us do. The insatiable Mandy de Waal has made the transition from hard core journalist and real world entrepreneur into the Web 2.0 equivalents in record time and I daresay she’s ruffling a few sensitive feathers in [...]

Or at least I thought so. Sure, we struggled to hear at times as we competed with another party upstairs at Primi Forum Melrose Arch, but all in all I think it was a super evening. Just under 100 people rocked up to the biggest 27dinner so far, we might have even clocked 100 as [...]

There are still 25 or so places remaining at this month’s 27dinner in Jozi. Please don’t forget that it’s being held on the 28th do to the fact that the 27th falls on a Sunday. We’re lucky to have Charl Norman and Jason Hobbs presenting, and I’m pushing and prodding another speaker to join us. [...]

Popular business social network LinkedIn and the New York Times have struck up a content partnership that makes a whole lot of sense to me – in fact the MyGenius blokes should think of integrating something like this into their site… (because none of the other changes I suggested have been implemented, yet). From ReadWriteWeb: [...]

…my book. But let me first tell you why. Quirk eMarketing have once again firmly established themselves as our country’s leading eMarketing authority with the release of their textbook eMarketing: The essential guide to online marketing. From their blog: eMarketing is a 300 page textbook aimed at tertiary education students, business owners and marketers who [...]

Thanks to Neville‘s Muti link I’ve just picked up on a very intriguing post by Y Combinator, the seed-funding venture firm built around Web 2.0 startups, talking about ideas they’d invest in. Being a bit of an entrepreneur myself I was immediately drawn to the post, and a couple of things surprised me… First of [...]

This is a little late in coming but I’d like to take a moment to share my experience of Internet Solution’s Internetix event in Cape Town with you. I was invited to speak at both events (Jo’burg is still to come, Cape Town was held yesterday) on the subject of Harnessing the Social Web.  To [...]

Carl sent me a link to Lively today – it caught my attention immediately. My first thought was, this is what Second Life should’ve been. The fact that it’s unashamedly a Google product helped a bit too. All the site tells you is that you can “Create an avatar and chat with your friends in [...]

Jeepers, things are cooking. We’ve had to really step up a gear in the last few months to respond to the demand for social and mobile media interventions from agencies and companies alike. I’d like to brag about two projects in particular. Firstly we’re doing work with Internet Solutions in developing IS Labs, an “initiative [...]

By day a photographer for the Citizen newspaper, Neil McCartney is one of those unsung heroes who bring us the sometimes uplifting, other times devastating images that capture the history of now. I’m not sure what he does at night though. Opting to publish his images on a personal blog too, Neil’s site often tells [...]