MIKESTOPFORTH

It had to happen eventually. Someone with some time, skill and a sense of humour has created Rex the Lion (rather smartly too) to poke fun at the local egosphere. Bravo – this should be fun. Early celeb mentions are Rich…!, Nic and Cluckhoff. Good times!

Yesterday the Afrigator team and I made a big stink about how we thought Regator looked a whole lot like our project.  As is often the case I think we got on our high horses a bit and I regret not doing my homework properly because after Scott Lockhart, founder of Regator, got in touch with us to explain that any similarity betwen the two sites is pure coincidence, I’m feeling rather sheepish and need to retract my previous post.

As Justin has outlined the sites aim to achieve different things and might even be complimentary, who knows.  Either way learn a lesson from me and make contact before mouthing off (one would think I should know better by now…)

Good luck to the Regator team as they grow their userbase off a good start.

On TechCrunch, Mashable and RWW yesterday, the announcement of new blog aggregator Regator.  Here’s what it looks like: Remind you at all of this? Maybe I’m just having a bad day, but it wasn’t even Justin or I that originally picked up on the similarity(ties). It’s all over Muti thanks to Robin Pietersen and there’s [...]

On 12 November 2006 I published a post on this blog and later repurposed it for Biz-Community commenting on how I thought Stork had missed the point completely with their “blogging housewife” 30 second spot for TV.  After my Biz-Community article went live I got a call from Unilever’s agency, McCann’s, to set up a meeting and explore the possibility of acting on what I had suggested.  I was pretty chuffed they’d listened, put my ideas to the agency who subsequently presented to Unilver.

Unilever’s answer? Loosely quoted, “we’re not sure blogging will translate to business”.

This after spending who knows how much on producing the blogging ad and flighting it hundreds of times.  Crikey.

Anyhow, I let it rest on the understanding that they were probably not going to shift, and besides, I had gotten pretty busy on some other accounts.

I use the Stork ‘Half-baked’ attempt at piggy-backing the social media trend as a classic ‘how not to’ in my presentations, but can’t anymore – it seems they’ve come around.

Longtail have developed foodcrEATions for them – “an interactive kitchen to share ideas, inspirations and tips about cooking, crafts and life”. It’s a good looking site in the early stages of adoption but it has super potential – congrats to Japie and team.

It was inevitable that the 27dinner movement would eventually outgrow it’s PBwiki-hosted home in time.  The movement has grown substantially and truly exciting things are coming up.  The new site is up at 27dinner.com.

I’d like to humbly request that you understand that the new site is (and will continue to be) a work in progress, it’s not meant to be perfect this first time around so your feedback and insight would be greatly appreciated.

Nothing changes about 27 – you still get to attend for free and we’re going to try ensure that the content is not only up to standard with some of what you’ve seen before, but even better so.  We’ve also decided to respond to the numerous enquiries we’ve had from companies wanting to get involved in the form of sponsorships, etc. in such a way that it doesn’t detract from the ethos and culture of the movement.  In other words, we’ll only allow companies to get involved if it adds to your experience and pumps energy and value back into the community.

So check it out, let us know what works and what doesn’t, and what needs to change.  And thanks especially for you continued support of the dinners countrywide.

It doesn’t matter who you are – if you haven’t yet gorged yourself on the veritable goldmine of inspiration that is the collection of videos of talks presented at TED conferences and freely available at TED.com, you’ve either been hiding under a rock or you need better friends.

For those of you who don’t know yet, this is how the TED site describes the TED phenomenon…

The big news in the South African social media scene today is the acquisition of a 40% stake in popular social media sharing site Zoopy by mobile operator Vodacom.

TECH4FRICA, a “web and emerging technology conference for Africa” being organised by Gareth Knight (of Kindo fame) has officially launched it’s website with info about the upcoming event. It’s due to be held at The Forum in Bryanston over 3 and 4 October and already at this early stage has a very impressive speaker line [...]

I have a confession to make – I clicked on a banner ad on Facebook.  The ad asked whether I was a cricket or rugby expert (aren’t all fans experts??) and encouraged me to share my thoughts and opinions on a new global open source sports network called the Bleacher Report…

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.

One of my professional speaking colleagues, Erik Vermeulen, forwarded a very cool email newsletter to me the other day. Normally that would tick me off but the newsletter, produced by Scott Ginsberg (check out his site and blog, they’re awesome), had an article titled 46 Marketing Mistakes Your Company Is (Probably) Making that caught my eye. I read it an thought I’d share it with you – some of it ought to be familiar already but there are a bunch of cool thoughts I thoroughly enjoyed…

Some time back I wrote a post on this blog titled What Is Web 2.0? (Or Web 2.0 For Beginners) which was my humble stab at defining some of the (then most significant) drivers of the Web 2.0 movement / phenomenon / ethos. This post will attempt to do the same for the much-hyped and bandied about phrase, Enterprise 2.0.

If you’ve seen any of my presentations or read this blog for any length of time you’ll knw that Dell and I have some history.

Since the now infamous incident when a glitch on Dell‘s local e-commerce led to the sale of literally thousands of laptops for next to nothing thanks to the SA blogosphere, I have been in touch with Dell’s marketing team. The subsequent goodwill Dell fostered thanks to regular attempts to play an active role in the local online community (like sponsoring the 2007 and 2008 SA Blog Awards and inviting bloggers to top-notch product launches) has helped position them as a progressive brand in the consumer electronics / IT sector that really gives a damn about digitally connected citizens and social media. This is significant considering the bulk of their business comes from massive corporate accounts, not dudes like you and I.

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…

Sachi and Lee LeFever of Common Craft fame occupy a very special, non-romantic place in my heart :) Back in the oooold days (about 3 years ago), when I was still quite unsure of the jargon and buzz behind Web 2.0 and social media, Lee was one of the few ‘A-listers’ who invested personal time and energy into answering my silly questions.

Today they’ve turned that gift for translation and a passion for all things social into a very cool business, producing informative, entertaining videos that quite simply, well, explain stuff. Whether they’re making videos for their ‘Plain English’ series of technology-related shows or for corporate clients, the LeFevers have fine-tuned the art of translation using the very tools they evangelise. Few businesses can boast that!

I met Darren Gorton online and then for the first time in person over a cup of Vida coffee. Darren must have walked away from the meeting with a very interesting first impression though, because he picked the worst day in the history of my short life to touch base – not his fault of course, I was just in a horrible place. He very kindly maintained contact though and although I haven’t had a chance to make up for our first meeting yet, he has been updating me with the progress of a fascinating project he’s co-ordinated, dubbed The SA Blook, which has now come to fruition. From the introduction to the Blook on Darren’s site:

Welcome to the SA blook, a collaboration between South African bloggers with a strong belief in the future of our nation. Essentially, it is a book, originally published online and written by a diverse group of writers with strong views about our country and the reality South Africans find themselves living in…

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.

A bit of fun…