Archive for 'Social Media'
Shameless Self-Promotion
Brand South Africa’s US country manager Simon Barber is interviewed about the bloggers tour by John Maytham on Cape Talk. Click below to listen. The Business Day column John mentions can be read here.
Get your South African and African initiatives on Muti
Yes, Muti.co.za is a submission site where anyone can submit content and have it voted up or down by the community.
But the Muti folk (Neville, Dave and Charl) have kindly placed the SA Rocks banner in the advertisement spot in the Muti sidebar.
I cannot express my gratitude enough to Neville for helping me […]
Introducing We Blog the World
Introducing We Blog the World, a new blog I’ve been working on for a few months.
The creation of this blog was pushed forward to prepare for an upcoming blogging tour I’ll be taking with 11 other bloggers to South Africa in late November. More on the International Marketing Council sponsored tour in a follow up post including a list of participating bloggers.
We Blog the World is dedicated to global storytelling from multi-faceted views. These stories range from general travel experiences, background on a country’s infrastructure, economic changes and the effect they have on one part of the world to social changes, the political landscape, cultural nuances, art and music.
Together with other bloggers from around the world, we’ll write about the latest Web 2.0 solutions, green technology and other tech initiatives that are making an impact internally and externally. Some posts may include an interview with a CEO or founder so you’ll get a flavor of the personality behind the innovation. You’ll also catch posts on travel logistics as well as food, wine and fun things to do, all with rich photographs and video to help narrate the experience.
Look for updates here and on We Blog the World in the next week as we gear up for the tour. A screenshot of the home page below although I suspect there will be some tweaks between now and we head off. Thanks to Michael Gray, a WordPress and SEO genius who has been helping me make this launch possible.
Social Capital in South Africa
In 2000 sociologist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone. No, I haven’t read it yet, but the title sums up his central observation: across the United States league bowling is on the decline. Putnam is concerned by this because it is representative of the general decline in group activities by Americans. And group activities like league bowling, community BBQ’s, and trivia night at the local pub are what generate social capital. The less we interact, the less social capital we have.
So I lost a few thousand dollars over the past couple weeks. Anyone with a modest investment in stocks and mutual funds did. Do I care? I don’t care. Couldn’t care less.
I could lose every single penny to my name and I know that I’d be just fine. I would call one friend and ask to stay at his place for a couple months until I get back on my feet. Then I’d call another friend and ask her to introduce me to the right people to get some job interviews. Then there is another friend I’d call – the one with the extra car – and ask to borrow it for a few months so I could get around. And to make sure I stay fit I’d visit my friend who works at a gym and see if he could give me a free membership.
That is social capital – relationships which also happen to serve as a sort of social insurance. Those individuals are there for us with the assumption that we would also one day be there for them. It is why we network at conferences, why we hand out and collect business cards. It is also why we drop names; as a way of demonstrating our social capital.
As Clay Shirky observes in Here Comes Everybody, one of the reasons fewer Americans are participating in fewer group activities is because it is more of a pain in the ass to do so. “When an activity becomes more expensive, either in direct costs or increased hassle, people do less of it, and several effects of the last fifty years – including smaller households, delayed marriage, two-worker families, the spread of television, and suburbanization – have increased the transaction costs for coordinating group activities outside work.”
That, however, is an observation of America in the 1990’s, at the apex of suburbia, shopping plazas, and cookie-cutter housing. Ever since my generation graduated from college everything has changed. We rebelled against our parents’ glorification of trimmed green lawns and gated communities. We have moved to urban centers and we speak with embarrassment of our suburban roots. And, via the internet, we have met more people than we could possibly hang out with. For any 20-something in urban America today there is no lack of social capital, only a lack of time.
South Africa today reminds me so much of the United States in the 1990’s – dilapidated downtowns, poor public transportation, enormous malls on the outskirts of cities, and lots of gated communities. Pretty much everything my generation is trying to reverse today in the United States. Social capital in South Africa remains extremely consolidated in an exclusive (mostly White) business community.
In the United States there are many institutions with the sole purpose of distributing business class social capital in communities where there is little. Philanthropic foundations are getting especially good at this – inviting young leaders from marginalized communities to conferences where they can hobnob with leaders of the so-called privileged class. I see little evidence of anything similar in South Africa.
As I see it, there are four requirements for “success”. (A word I always have to put in quotation marks.) First is ambition. You have to want something. Second is hard work. You have to be willing to work hard for it, even if that means delegating tasks rather than doing them yourself. Third you need skill. Not talent, which comes naturally, but skill, which can be developed over the years. Lastly, you need social capital. You can be the best writer or the best rapper or the best chef in the world, but unless you know someone who can help you publish your book, produce your record, or get you into an executive kitchen, you’re not gonna make it big.
Yesterday I gave a blogging workshop to a group of around 15 young artists from the township Kwa Mashu. These kids have the ambition, are willing to work hard, and are immensely skilled. (In fact, they are fortunate enough to be immensely talented.)
What they do not have is social capital. They don’t know the directors of theater companies, they don’t know music producers, and they don’t know gallery owners. “These blogs that you’re setting up,” I told them, “they are your paths to social capital.” On their blogs they can meet the right people and they can display their portfolios to show them that they have what it takes. They can also discover other artists around the world, learn from them, teach them, and collaborate with them.
But simply starting a blog isn’t enough. In Here Comes Everybody Shirky makes the distinction between “bonding capital”, which he describes as how much money you’d be willing to loan to any one person and “bridging capital”, which is how many people you’d be willing to loan some amount of money to. Blogging can be a great way to increase your bridging capital: it opens bridges into new communities and opportunities. But to establish really meaningful relationships – the kind that can lead to new partnerships, new businesses, and new clients – it is necessary to meet offline.
That is what is so great about the South Africa-based 27dinner movement, which, in its own words, “aims to bring together informed, networked individuals with a common passion for technology, media and business in an informal but valuable real world space.” The problem with the movement, as you an see here below, is that it’s not exactly the most diverse group of informed and networked individuals.
They are increasing their social capital, but they are not distributing it. South Africa needs a lot more of both. The internet doesn’t automatically bring social capital to a township like Kwa Mashu, but it does make it possible.
[Note: This is only my second time in South Africa and I have only spent about a month total during the two visits so I don’t claim to be anything approaching an expert on South African society. These are just some rough notes based on my observations.]
Int’l A-list blogger roadshow in South Africa on the cards
Have some great breaking news. Simon Barber from the International Marketing Council (IMC) and Brand South Africa is putting together an event, where some big-name international (but mostly US-based) bloggers will be doing a roadshow in the country.
Planning is at an advanced stage. Budgets have been approved and the trip is being arranged by Renee Blodgett (of Blodgett Communications) in San Francisco, who helped put together a similar bloggers’ tour to Israel earlier this year. (Robert Scoble, JD Lasica, Craig Newmark — among others — part of that tour).
Simon, who is based in Washington DC and is the US IMC Country Manager, also blogs on his own blog IZWI and Thought Leader. Simon has put together previous such events which involved a tour here of well-known US journalists. This initiative is Simon’s brainchild, conducted under the auspices of the IMC. It is being planned by local journalist Graeme Addison and is anticipated that it will take place around about the beginning of December/end of November.
I’ve been assisting Simon with a few ideas, names and contacts, but I thought I’d also solicit a few suggestions here. Also, if you’re interested in getting involved in this in any way, then please also let us know here too.
My suggestions, in no particular order, were: Technorati founder Dave Sifry, Richard MacManus of Read Write Web, Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington of Techcrunch, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, the peeps from Mashable, Ryan Block of endgadget, Brian Lam from Gizmodo, Jeff Jarvis, Om Malik, Matt Drudge, Guy Kawasaki, Mr WordPress — Matt Mullenweg, Steve Rubel, Joi Ito, Arianna Huffington from the Huffington Post, Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing, Nicholas Carr from Rough Type and Anil Dash from Six Apart.
The list has a tech bias (my sphere of interest) and a US-bias (as Simon is based in the States and is the IMC US Country Manager). What do you think of the above suggestions? Are there any glaring ommissions? Are there other bloggers you can suggest from the US, or outside the US, that you would like to see come here?
Simon will be checking here to review all comments and suggestions. So please let’s have your suggestions right here, right now!
tags: Africa, Anil Dash, Arianna Huffington, Boing Boing, Brian Lam, Cory Doctorow, Craig Newmark, Dave Sifry, Graeme Addison, Guy Kawasaki, Huffington Post, IMC, International Marketing Council, Israel, Jeff Jarvis, Matt Drudge, Matt Mullenweg, Michael Arrington, Nicholas Carr, Richard MacManus, Robert Scoble, Rough Type, Ryan Block, San Francisco, Simon Barber, Steve Rubel, Technorati, United States, Washington DC, WordPress
Potentially related posts
Blogging South African Innovation
The Brand South Africa team is planning to bring a group of top US bloggers to SA in November. The idea is to have them blog about what South Africans are doing that’s exciting, cutting-edge and not being done anywhere else. We’re looking for examples of innovation and creative problem-solving in areas such as energy, conservation, health, mining, transport, crime fighting, IT and mobile telephony. We won’t have unlimited time, so the less of it has to be spent in conference rooms watching Powerpoints the better. What we want to do is get the blogosphere buzzing at the great stuff that’s going on here but which isn’t necessarily making the headlines. Suggestions, please.
Once upon a time, I lived on a kibbutz
Returning to Israel after so many years was more than a rendezvous with nostalgia. My current life as a publicist, entrepreneur and blogger met the former me, a teenage girl with a pony-tail on an adventure that more than shaped the rest of her life.
This story is a very long one and not typical of my regular blog posts. For that reason, I’ve shortened the introduction – click on more if you’re interested in reading the entire piece. It’s a story of a journey back in time, back to Israel and the life I knew 23′ish years ago, hitching and living on the road and working on a far left Zionist kibbutz, a fact I didn’t know when I first arrived.
My first experience in Israel was a coming-of-age story in countless ways. I never saw Israel as a new country full of immigrants who went there to find a better life for many of the same reasons the oppressed and the misfits flocked to the States at the turn of the century.
Nearly all of my encounters during that trip so many years ago were with misfits — misfits who were on a journey to find themselves and each other. They came from nearly every corner of the world, had a wide range of belief systems and religions, and ranged from 17 to 70.
The universe whacks me upside the head
It’s been a month. More than a month, actually. On the one hand, the time has flown by. But even with the rapidly flying calendar pages a month can be a very long time.
Especially when you find yourself creatively constipated.
In my case it’s largely due to the fact that for the last several weeks (four weeks, to be specific) I could have sworn I was sitting on a large pile of what felt like five or six chewy blog posts.
That rather lumpy mass, however, was something else in disguise.
Procrastination.
More on Ayelet Noff interview: Miriam Schwab
Well-know Israeli blogger Miriam Schwab was among the myriad people who have had trouble getting authenticated to post comments on my blog (sorry), so I am posting this note for her re my interview with Ayelet Noth:
“I’m sure Ayelet didn’t quite mean what it sounds like she said, but in
any case I would like to point out that women can have kids and be very
entrepreneurial. In fact, giving birth can (strangely) act as a
catalyst for making sweeping and exciting changes in one’s professional
life.
I got married really young, and had a bunch of kids by the time I was
25/26. Not only did I not quit and park myself in my kitchen, each kid
pushed me to make changes in my career. I had three kids while in
university. After the third was born I decided to get my first real
job. The next one led me to quit and start my own biz. The next led me
to discover and explore the world of blogging and social media, and
turn my business into a social media marketing service provider.
There is enough of a stigma in the workforce against women with kids,
so we women should watch our words and make sure that it is very clear
that we can have kids and careers. Actually, the fact that we have
personal lives, I think, contributes to our value at work. We don’t
mess around (too much), and are very efficient and focused.
As someone once said to me: “if you ever need something done, ask a
busy person.” Women with kids are busy, and we’ll get things done. “
Twitter: Not Mainstream, but Seeping Out of the Echo Chamber for Sure
One major flaw in Kara’s informal survey: Equating this wedding she was at with “outside the Silicon Valley echo chamber.” I’ve been stunned how quickly people outside the Valley have started following me on Twitter. My in-laws asked my husband if it was an invasion of our privacy to “follow us” and while I was out of town my parents– who use absolutely zero social networking or social media sites and are doing good if they read anything I write — sent an email to my husband that read, “What is a Twitter? Is it just like a one-line blog?” I was floored. And, let’s not forget international. Every time I travel outside the U.S. I’m stunned by Twitter’s ubiquity. After all, mobile apps are much stronger outside the U.S. In my own informal polls, people in Europe and the Middle East rank Twitter among the most global companies in the Valley, well above Facebook even.
In short, Twitter isn’t mainstream, but it’s getting outside the echo chamber fast. The problem is it’s not necessarily in predictable ways. It’s in random spurts.
