Traveling Geeks

Mobile, social media & what’s next

Here are some answers to questions in a recent Moneyweb interview Mandy De Waal did with me a while back.
1. What role does social media play in 24.com’s strategy?
Social media plays a key role in 24.com’s strategic thinking. Internationally, it’s the social media sites like You Tube and Facebook that are dominating the web rankings […]

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Have you Obamafied your website today?

Nobody likes an antisocial site. Social sites are winning the traffic stakes, and even elections. A politician from Honolulu showed us how it’s done.
I never thought that one of the best examples of a social site would come from a politician, but it did. It’s a lesson for all websites, including media players, on how […]

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How tagging enhances SEO: An example

Here is a perfect example of how a comprehensive semantic tagging strategy can add to a site’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Just did a search on Wikipedia and Mail & Guardian — the site I used to run back in the 50s :-). The results were interesting.
Instead of the Wikipedia entry showing up as the […]

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ANC turns to social media

It looks like a battle front for this year’s elections will also be fought online. South Africa’s biggest political party is attempting to raise the (rather low) bar by announcing a mobile site, enhanced presences on social media platforms, and an online initiative, myanc.org to invite debate, comment and networking around their election manifesto.
The ANC […]

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Energy Alternatives

Underground coal gasification, solar power, the pebble bed modular reactor and Inga 3 were among the topics discussed when Eskom hosted the bloggers to dinner on Dec 8. Presenters were Barry MacColl, Technology Strategy and Planning Manager, Dave Lucas from the Climate Change and Sustainability Department and Dr Steve Lennon, Managing Director for Resources and Strategy.  Q&A here. If you don’t immediately see links to each of the names, be patient, they should load shortly. Also don’t miss that audio buttons under each of the slideshows.

Taken by Stormhoek

On December 1, the bloggers were welcomed at Stormhoek winery near Wellington. Owner Graham Knox had some some of his wonderful champers labelled in our honour (the stain in the picture happened after we got the stuff home). He told us about his winemaking philosophy and we were treated to a tasting. The Pinotage, in particular, was glorious. Later that evening, we repaired to the Lanzerac in Stellenbosch, where Graham gave us a presentation on Stormhoek’s groundbreaking use of social media to build a globally renowned brand.

This just in. Stormhoek is trying to crack the wine market in west Texas. A small market, but as the man says, if you can sell a South African wine in west Texas, you can sell it anywhere.

Gaza on YouTube: Film at 11!

Muizenberg Beach at Sunset

African sunsets are always dramatic even when they miss the vibrant oranges, reds and purples. Below, birds play at sunset in Cape Town’s Muizenberg Bay.

Too Many Encounters & Stories to Come up for Air

The blog has been a bit quiet lately but not through lack of things to say or visual content to post. And, 90% of that content has little to do with PR, marketing or the world of Web 2.0 due to an extended trip to Africa, a place that touched my soul for the first time more than twenty five years ago. Okay, perhaps the place ran my soul over with a bulldozer.

In addition to capturing one incredible story after another from a wide range of South Africans, Zimbabweans, Kenyans, Brits, Belgium and Dutch folks and more, I am meeting with technology and sustainable energy companies and people, as well as designers, artists, technology and social media visionaries.

Additionally, a cast of journalists, bloggers, scientists, botanists, gardeners, photographers, architects, farmers, pilots, environmentalists, politicians, authors, sculptors, bankers, real estate agents, miners, chefs, musicians, dancers, faerie preservationists, dreamers, psychologists, vets, game hunters, jewelery designers, psychics, solar experts, hot air balloon racers, sailors, wood carvers, captains and builders have all landed in our path between the Zimbabwe border and the most southern point in Africa Cape Argulas.

Connectivity has been slow and limited and given that a lot of the content we've captured has included video, stories will come when they come, no doubt slowly until there's decent broadband or until the encounters stop coming. Look for images in the next few days as placeholders until the stories can be unveiled. And as for images, this has been by far, my favorite place to shoot on the planet. Costa Rica and Paris are close seconds. Morocco is probably third.

[Video] TauTona Gold Mine

Another video from our bloggers’ trip to South Africa.

In March 1886, nearly forty years after the California Gold Rush, legend has it that Australian gold miner George Harrison stumbled across a rocky outcrop of gold in what was then the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek. Says Wikipedia: “Ironically, Harrison is believed to have sold his claim for less than 10 Pounds before leaving the area, and he was never heard from again.”

That 10-pound claim soon transformed into a mining village called Ferreira’s Camp, which today we call Johannesburg.

The above-earth portion of the gold reef (’rand’ in Afrikaans, for which the South African currency was named after) discovered by Harrison has since become the most profitable source of gold ever found on earth. 40% of all gold mined on earth comes from this single reef.

And, as we discovered 3.5 kilometers below ground on our tour of the TauTona gold mine, that gold reef continues pretty far underground. Here’s a video of our tour:

The mine, in fact, is so deep that were it not for the ice cold air conditioning pumped down from above, the temperature would be around 55°C. When electricity outages hit South Africa last year the mine was forced to close down for nearly a week.

I was impressed by the obsessive focus on safety throughout the mine. Still, as John noted even before our trip, being a miner at TauTona remains a dangerous affair. (More than four people die in South African gold mines per week.) During the introductory presentation at the mine we were shown a graph of TauTona’s improving safety record over the past ten years. There was, however, a slight increase in deaths last year. A new part of the mine vulnerable to seismic activity was causing a flurry of ground fall and resulting deaths. The mine executives decided to cease mining there once the death rate reached a certain threshold. Still, I could picture in my mind someone coldly calculating the potential financial profits in one column and the loss of human life in the other.

We were told that, depending on the price of gold over the next couple years, AngloGold Ashanti plans on digging the TauTona Gold Mine even deeper – perhaps all the way to five kilometers beneath earth. The funny thing about economic crises is that they tend to be good for gold mines as investors hurry to exchange weak dollars for solid gold. While the rest of the world slumps, it’s boom time for gold towns like Battle Mountain, Nevada. So, as long as the global currency markets stay weak, expect TauTona Gold Mine to get deeper and deeper.