Mike Stopforth

You know I’m a fan of the Dave Matthews Band. Devastating news for the band and it’s fans today is that founding member and saxophonist LeRoi Moore died yesterday afternoon, August 19, due to complications resulting from a serious motorcar accident near his Charlottesville ranch at the end of June. From the band’s website:

We are deeply saddened that LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, August 19, 2008, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles from sudden complications stemming from his June ATV accident on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. LeRoi had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program.

From Wikipedia:

Dave Matthews paid tribute to LeRoi on August 19, 2008 at the Staples Center, Los Angeles, CA after the first song “Bartender.” “We all had some bad news today,” Matthews told the sell-out crowd. “Our good friend LeRoi Moore passed on and gave his ghost up today and we will miss him forever.” Fans then shouted Moore’s name in tribute.

Personally and rather selfishly, I’m really sad I never had the chance to see the (original) band play live, but I look forward to seeing how they will reinvent and renew themselves, in celebration of the fantastic musician and human being that LeRoi was.

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.

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 South Africans like Adii and Mark who have made WordPress their business.

Recently Tyler and Jason announced that they were organising WordCamp SA 2008 in Cape Town, and that none other than Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress and geek supremo, would be attending. The gathering will be a coming together of geeks, developers, designers, entrepreneurs and more to discuss issues relating to the Web, social media, WordPress and more. It ought to be brilliant!

I will be there, as will Cerebra in the form of a small sponsorship. I think there might still be one or two places available so if you want in on the action, pull in!

…but not on the billboard, it seems. I’ve been planning this post for some time, stopping arbitrarily (and rather riskily) on the side of the highway to snap photos of lifeless billboards, but it seems the incomparable Rui Esteves beat me to it at Ideate.

Now I’m a bit notorious for bashing billboards in my presentations. I ask audiences of hundreds to name as many brands as they can remember having seen en route to the conference, with a smidgen of detail to prove that some detail was retained, as possible. So if somebody yells, “Vodacom”, I simply ask what was being advertised. Most often I get no more than 5 or 6 brands yelled out, and 1 or 2 with some detail. Sadly Teazers dominates both categories on more occasions than not (billboards definitely work for some brands more than others!)

Back to the point though. Rui has picked up that many South American countries, and even some North American states, are either banning billboards or cutting back on the amount of outdoor advertising allowed:

The South Americans are onto something. First São Paulo banned them and now Buenos Aires have decided to take down 60% of them. Outdoor advertising. Billboards. Visual Pollution.

Bans on billboards even happen in America! Vermont, Maine, Hawaii and Alaska, as well as 1,500 towns throughout the US. Across the pond, the Norwegian city of Bergen does the same and many others, including Moscow, are imposing severe restrictions.

Pollution normally conjures up images of dirty air and industrial waste, stuff that’s harmful to your health. What about the community’s health? The appeal of the uniqueness and sense of place? Do we really want to see big corporates whore their wares all over our towns without our permission? Do we want every suburb in our country to look the same? When you are driving around JoBurg, with all the strip malls, parking lots, Tuscan developments and signage… does it look pretty?

I’ve seen a noticable increase in the number of non-active, blank, unoccupied - whatever you want to call them - billboards in and around Jozi of late. Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe not.

Now many brands and agencies would be right in dismissing my preaching and evangelical social media meanderings based on the fact that I have not much to go by except the odd whim. But Rui is the guy who started Vida e Caffe, the best coffee joint in the world, the place where most agencies and companies go to meet and look cool and get their caffeine fix. HIS franchise. Sommer without any billboards to boot

Have you noticed the same thing? Are less companies investing in outdoor ads? Is it my imagination?? Or is visual pollution, as Rui puts it so eloquently, on the decline?

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 conferences. He’s somewhat of a geek celebrity…

Despite all this pixelated fame he remains humble and committed to using his knowledge and his influence for a good cause whenever he can. His most recent project comes in the form of Gerhard Pieterse, Autism’s Executive Director for the Western Cape, who has imprisoned himself in a jail cell in Canal Walk in a bid to raise R1 million for the development of autistic adults and children (interview here). Rafiq has made it his personal goal to educate Gerhard, himself the father of an autistic child, about the power of social media tools.

You see Rafiq believes he can leverage the innate power of these social media tools to generate more PR than traditional channels can, in a shorter period of time. Considering Autism Spectrum disorder affects one’s social skills on an everyday basis, there’s something really powerful about the idea of using social media to raise awareness around it.

So if you want to follow Gerhard’s progress in his jail cell (and hopefully help him reach his goal in record time), check out his Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/jail4bail or go to Zoopy.com and search for ‘jail4bail’ to see videos related to the campaign. Alternatively, if you’d like to the R 1 million autism fund you are more than welcome to drop by Gerhard Pieterse’s jail cell or you can pledge by going to their website. Cerebra’s pledged - how about you and your company do the same??

The Afrigator team has also set up a dedicated topic page to monitor social media mentions around the “Jail4Bail” campaign - please make sure you tag anything you write with “Jail4Bail” to ensure we can track you.

I get really inspired when I see clued-up, digitally-empowered young South Africans using their skills and resources to change the world. It gives me hope when hope is scarce…

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 reach of TV, three times the reat of the Net and is the only media carried upon our person. It’s the only mass-media channel with a built in payment mechanism and where audiences are defined.”

Vodacom are forecasting R 1,5billion in mobile ad revenue (entire market) in 2011 - conservatively.

Rick comes across a little bit arrogant, but it’s not a negative thing. It’s a tangible sense of confidence and I’d crap myself as a competitor…

“Currently financial services, consumer goods, luxury goods, automotive, retail are sectors spending the most money with Vodacom right now - government and ‘Long Tail’ to come. Our business is growing 10% month on month

“Agencies are beginning to set up dedicated mobile resources, but still do not understand the scope of the opportunity, are affronted to the preceived ’slog’ to educate brand clients, have a perception that there is not yet enough scale / reach, etc.”

Lots of Vodacom demos… a bit slow now.

“The role of mobile operators is to:

1. Create inventory around telco services
2. Support the development of a vibrant mobile content ecosystem
3. Provide incentives / value exchange for opt-in
4. Ensure relevance for the end user and efficient targeting for the marketer
5. Guardians of behavioural data
6. Manage end user preferences”

Ok, back from the tea break. Next up:

Roelof van Wyk: Trigger

“The role of YOUR brand in mobile communications…”

Roelof kicks off with my favourite Rupert Murdoch quote:

To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control…

“Traditonal marketing is more or less a one-way conversation, the Internet has changed everything…

“We socialise on our phones - voice, IM, SMS, community…

“Location - traditional media connect, remote control, presence and interaction - multiple applications for location-based interactions on the mobile platform”

Case studies, case studies…

Please note I’m not liveblogging EVERYTHING I see and hear, I’m commenting on the highlights (at least my highlights)

Next up:

Gustav Praekelt: Praekelt Consulting

This ought to be good…

Gustav’s presentation was god but I battled to see the slides or hear him - not the best AV here, and that’s not his fault. I’ll try get his preso uploaded here.

Am shutting down for a bit to listen - have Mac headache.

One of my nicer, completely online friends, Thomas Otter, is doing something pretty spectacular in aid of raising funds for the Zimbabwe Benefit Foundation.

He and some friends are going to do a week long Alpine ride - on their BICYCLES - all proceeds of which (donations wise) will go to the foundation. It’s a worthy cause an one us South Africans should be more aware of than most, so head on over to JustGiving.com to make your contribution (if you can).

Kudos Thomas - it’s the small things that make the biggest difference!

I’m a bit of a Guitar Hero nut. I even have mates over at my house on occasion for Guitar Hero parties (the height of geekiness - yes) and I’ve converted many a previously cool individual to an Xbox-buying-Gibson-wielding nerd. And I’m proud of that fact

Today I got a mail from my good friend Kath Roderick at Microsoft pointing me to this - Guitar Hero for mobile!!! w00t! Watch the trailer here…

Sadly I couldn’t get it to work because it doesn’t look like my Nokia N95 isn’t supported, and I’m not even sure the game is supported by our carriers if you have the right handset, but that’s irrelevant - I’m sure by hook or by crook it’ll be available on my device here in South Africa soon!

Otherwise I’ll need to get a new phone, dammit…