Here is my final review of the SXSW 2011 interactive conference:

If you want to meet the best people, talk the most business or have the most fun – STAY ON THE SHUTTLES. Let me explain: SXSW has become so big that people stay all over Austin. To help these people get in to town SXSW has organised a series of shuttle busses to run between the hotels and the conference.

I met some of the most amazing people on these shuttles at all hours of the night and day. My advice if you want to pitch to as many people as possible is become a shuttle driver for the 2012 SXSW.

Things turned around for me and the event but unfortunately that had little to do with the panels or speakers, save for Blake Mycoskie, the founder of Toms.com (but I’ll get to that more in a bit).

I have made many good connections, met many potential business partners and many more possible friends. All of this is due to the very well attended Panel I participated in thanks to Justin Arenstein. This panel was the best thing to happen to my conference. Word spread about Motribe, people began contacting me and I have set up many meetings with many businesses from around the world. Brilliant.

The only problem with this is that I missed almost 2 full days of the actual conference due to newly booked work arrangements. But hey, that’s the price one must pay I suppose.

But now on to the final day of the conference. I first attended a talk on rebranding Islam. That was dogshit because the speakers thought the audience were idiots and even, at one point, said “Muslims are people too” at the end of some long-winded and irrelevant story about some other rubbish.

But fortunately my conference and my day were saved by Blake from Toms.com. The man is an amazing speaker. He didn’t use any slides, he didn’t pull out any gimmicks or tricks but he still managed to blow everyone away with his amazing story.

His accomplishments with tom.com are amazing. He has given away more than 1million shoes to children in need and has managed to build an incredibly profitable and functional charitable business. His message is that we can all be charitable and that we can all make money. Incase you don’t know what toms.com is, here’s the elevator pitch: For every pair of shoes that you buy from toms.com they will give a pair away to a child in need. One for one. That is there motto. I was almost in tears listening to his amazing story and then in the next moment bursting with laughter.

I left that talk feeling rejuvenated and ready to build my business. I also left with a new approach to many ideas I had in my head. If only all the other speakers had Blake’s brilliant delivery.

The next massive improvement to the SXSW experience was, of course, the Foo Fighters. I stood in queue for 3 hours even though I had the right passes and paid through my you-know-what to attend the conference but it was worth it in the end.

The Foos took the stage 15 minutes after I had entered the venue and started to drink my first Vodka. They did not leave the stage for over 2 hours. The played their hearts out, I rocked mine and I left feeling hazed by their brilliant live performance. What a way to end the interactive conference. If the only thing I paid for was to see them live at the SXSW interactive closing party then it was money well spent.

So I left contented but more seeking the contentment than finding it.

I still stand by my previous post. I was seeking genius on the trip and fortunately I did not find it. What that has helped me realise (and I think I am not getting to the nitty-gritty point) is that a good idea is a good idea irrespective of the location of said idea. Being in the US or UK or anywhere else doesn’t make you better or worse as a leader, a company or a team. There are very good reasons that companies do well in the US and/or Europe but that is another post altogether.

What I am saying is that deep down at the bottom of Africa we sit and we admire those across the shore. We need to stop. For every Mark Zuckerberg who Zucks with your privacy there are literally millions of people who are failing or trying to make ends meat in the US. In South Africa we have class, quality and the will to succeed.

Now, on to the music for me.

If you have no idea why I keep typing the same four letters that seem to have no relevance let me explain quickly: I am in Austin, Texas at a Music, Film and Interactive (Geek) conference called South By South West (SXSW). It’s my first time in Austin and I’ve just come from New York from a work trip. Things are crazy busy right now but that’s beside the point.

I am having a confusing experience at SXSW. I’m seeing some heroes of the web (Tim O’Reilly) and hearing some of the “hottest” startups in the world talk amongst themselves, or commonly known as panels at a conference.

I’ve had mixed feelings and at the moment my mental state is as follows: I need to listen and realise what NOT to do from these speakers.

The bubble that the world speaks of, it exists. It is real and it encases almost every startup entrepreneur I have met, speaker I’ve heard and evangelist who is trying to evangelize.

There is a fundemental disregard for tech that exists outside of the US (even outside of Silicon Valley), there is a fundemental disregard for tech that previously existed.

Let me give an example of the disregard that I’m talking about:

Yesterday I waited patiently for what I hoped would be the talk of the day: Group Chat, Who Will Rise?
This should have been an explosive and dynamic panel considering the four “hottest” startup CEOs of the four “hottest” group chat apps were all in attendance. Beluga, Yobongo, Convore and GroupMe were present but sadly their brains apparently were not.

At one point the Beluga lady stated that Beluga allows you to receive a vibrating notification when someone messages you, “This has never been possible before” was her claim. WHAT? Are you telling me that you are so ignorant that you think that you invented the push notification on a cellular phone? Idiot. Beluga was recently bought out by Facebook. There’s a service that’s thankfully going to be put to rest. It’s sad because I actually like what they are doing.

The GroupMe guy was maybe the best of a bad bunch because his app at least isn’t an app and can be used with existing tech, SMS.

What’s worse is the entire panel kept pitching the audience as to how different their four services are and that they aren’t competitors. I wanted to ask them: “Who is winning? Which of you has more users? Who has more revenue/profit?” but I didn’t because at the end of their sad panel I realised what I can learn from them all: What not to do.

I also managed to hear the very boring and obvious talk by the Chief Game Designer at Zynga. This sounded like a talk with amazing potential. Alas, another non-starter. The guy (I can’t even remember his name) proceeded to tell the audience that Zynga uses Facebooks social graph to connect their users. REALLY? DO YOU? I’m gobsmacked by Captain Obvious up front but wait it out. He then says that Zynga builds pretty games. Again, really? Thanks. Idiot.

Now I’m actually more frustrated because I know that none of these people are idiots, or can’t be or shouldn’t be because they are being covered by the biggest media in the world as the smartest people in the world. But then I have to ponder: Maybe the media are in on it too? Maybe they are as half-witted as the people they write about? I don’t know. But I’m seeking genius today and hunting innovation. Bring it on.

I’m blown away by the following video:

Let me state upfront that I’m not 100% certain that Mr Pat Condell is serious, ironic or just plain ignorant and blinded by religious dumbing. Maybe a combination of all of the above.

I’m not convinced at all by his uneducated and ignorant response to be honest. I think he is being far too simplistic in his views. He isn’t delving in to the core issues – it’s still not proven beyond doubt that the attacks on 9/11 were Islamic driven (and to insinuate that an entire religion orchestrated an attach is just stupid), if it was a small faction of zealots, a small faction of terrorists, an attack conducted by US internal agencies to prolong the war on terror and war in to Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan for their oil and political power or if it was a political and financial play by an elite group of politicians and bazillionaires. Tell me you know for certain, with irrefutable facts, who is behind the attacks and I’ll make sure to call every major publication in the world and let them know. You can’t, I know you can’t.

Further more, his response is as dogmatic and impractical as he states the Islamic religion is. Would it be OK to build a Christian church there? What about the Jews, Muslims, Hindus and other religions who had followers perish in the attack? America preaches freedom to a point of ridiculousness, so surely any company/organisation/institution is free (by law) to buy and build on any piece of land and not be judged by their religion?

To continue along religious lines – It’s ignorant to assume that all of Islam as a religion and culture dictates jihad in the form of killing others all the time in every form. What about the crusades many centuries ago? Should we prevent Christians from entering the societies of the countries that were once conquered? I think that’s just silly.

Condell seems to have some innuendo with his little rant. He appears to have an agenda and that is perfectly in line with any other religious rant that has ever taken place in the history of the world. Nothing ever appears to be what it actually is. Ever.

So you simply list the alphabet and type in the corresponding letter to your address bar of your browser and enter the first url that appears for that letter:

a – absa.co.za (Online banking changed my life)
b – bit.ly (Gotta keep URL’s short)
c – chrome.google.com/extensions (Looking in to Chrome extensions for Mac)
d – digg.com (No idea what that’s doing there)
e – explosm.net (The hilarious home of Cyanide and Happiness)
f – facebook.com (Uhu)
g – gmail.com (It’s the hub of my world)
h – http://gmail.com (just brought up the first “http”)
i – isohunt.com (Downloads, lots of ‘em)
j – jakeandamir.com (The best webisode in the world right now)
k – knowyourmeme.com (Know your meme crops up in a meme, shocking)
l – lamebook.com (It’s the lame-center of the Fbook)
m – maxgames.com (Typo on a gaming site I was looking for)
n – nicharalambous.com (Not surprising)
o – onthegrid.mobi (Work)
p – posterous.com (Lifestreaming)
q – qatarairways.com (if you can believe it, I got a “Q”! Was searching for flights to France.)
r – readwriteweb.com (Techhub of my world)
s – sarocks.co.za (Not surprising)
t – twitter.com (Not surprising)
u – ultimate-guitar.com (Guitar tab resource helping me learn my favourites)
v – vintage pin-ups (Search term that I have been obsessing over. Chrome allows you to search in address bar).
w – wap.thegrid.co.za (Work)
x – xe.com (Currency site)
y – youtube.com (Shock, horror)
z – zoopy.com ( – )

So there you have it… my URL ABC’s.

Top notch. Now let’s see yours.

Talya Goldberg raised an interesting point: By following @aplusk over @cnnbrk is it not reinforcing, notion that celebrity news/culture is more nb than what is happening in the world?

I think this is an extremely valuable debate that needs to take place.

Celebrity vs Mainstream Media

I studied Journalism at University. I wanted to be a journalist since I was 10 years old. I let that all go. I feel that world is shifting away from mainstream propaganda to celeb propaganda. Let’s be real here, both are forms of propaganda. Who own what media organisation is becoming a massive blur between government organisations, private organisations in bed with government organisations and one-person-dictatorship run organisations. So who’s to say that mainstream is more productive or beneficial than celebrity-generated news or information?

The Responsible Celebrity

It’s not a habit of mine to follow celebrities. I am one of those information consumers who takes a variety of factors in to account when reading types of media. I try to know who owns what, who’s in bed with who and how often they are meeting up. The same applies to Celebrities. I try to make up my own mind about who is an “honest” celebrity and who’s just in it for the next big break. Social media has created a fair amount of transparency for celebrities who are willing to embrace the technology out there.

Case in point is Mr Ashton Kutcher who has jumped head first in to Twitter and Qik. Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore are streaming their lives live as often as one can handle. Kutcher streams video live from his phone on Qik and is constantly tweeting. I like that, I can relate to that and I am sure that the almost 1 000 000 followers agree with me.

With 1 000 000 followes just imagine if Ashton Kutcher was to endorse a fight against the shocking regime in Zimbabwe, or if he was to condone the killing of innocents in Tibet or anywhere else. He would have 1 000 000 people listening, responding and interacting with him and this information.

This is where it becomes increasingly important for celebrities to become socially responsible people. Many are not and this is where the danger comes in. This is where mainstream media has the upper hand.

Ethics in the mainstream

It is generally accepted that the media is the Fourth Estate. The people who govern the people who govern. But who governs the fourth estate? No one ever did. Wait, that’s a lie. There are groups of media leaders who form editors forums and sit and govern one another.

There are trained journalists who are taken to task for factual accuracy and ethical reliability. This is all accepted. But do I care as a run-of-the-mill citizen consuming this media? No. Generally not. Nowadays it’s so easy for me to get online and read the same story with variations of facts from a variety of media organisations.

What I want is to make up my own mind. Just as the celebrities want to do and should be allowed to do so.

Celebstream is the new Mainstream

Recently celebrity has become the new hotness in every way. From their social media campaigns to flashing their under-areas to paparazzi to endorsing NGO’s and social causes.

So why would the same not apply to information resources?

I am in no way saying that the celebstream is going to replace the mainstream. I am saying that the two are now heavily entrenched in society. The maistream is becoming a less and less trusted resource by the masses as citizens are taking ownership of their information and news. Celebrities are simply more popular citizens, leaders and trendsetters so they are setting the standards now. However scary a prospect that is, it’s the truth.

Here’s what I managed to do in under 5 minutes using the site. It’s not a great example, but it’s clearly evident what the site is capable of. Great tool.

The Original:

The Tilt-shift:

Good day,

My name is Maria Norwood;I work with the Total Quest Services,a consulting Firm in London,
UK. We are conducting a standard process investigation involving a client who shares the same
name with you andalso the circumstances surrounding investments made by this client at HSBC
Bank Plc.The HSBC Private Banking client died intestate and nominated no next of kin to
inherit the title over the investments made with HSBC Bank Plc.The essence of this
communication with you is to request that you provide us information on three issues:

1-Are you aware of any relative/relation having the same surname, whose last known contact
address was Madrid, Spain?

2-Are you aware of any investment of considerable value made by such a person at the HSBC
Bank Plc.?

3-Can you establish beyond reasonable doubt your eligibility to assume status of next of kin
to the deceased?

It is pertinent that you inform us ASAP whether or not you are familiar with this personality
that we may put an end to this communication with you and our inquiries surrounding this
personality.You must appreciate that we are constrained from providing you with more detailed
information at this point. PLEASE RESPOND BACK TO MY PRIVATE AND DIRECT EMAIL ADDRESS;
mrs.mariawood@gmail.com as soon as possible to afford us the opportunity to close this
investigation.
Thank you for accommodating our enquiry.

Yours sincerely,

Maria Norwood
Total Quest Services
For: HSBC Private Clients.
This is a confidential message from Total Quest Services

Something smells fishy.

Hi Editor,

You won’t know me – I’m a big reader of 2Oceansvibe and was referred by a link there.

Anyway, I’m going to take a flyer here – just drop a little bait and hope for a bite…

I’m a music producer at the moment, studied at UCT and now living in Johannesburg trying to hit the big time. My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album. In the mean time, though, we decided to record a couple of live videos of him doing some covers of cool and interesting songs. Basically it’s just a way for us to get word out, create as much of a buzz as we can. We’ve had an incredible response to them so far and I thought I would share the videos with you:

www.youtube.com/user/TimothyMoloi

Now, I’m sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos. My favorite is the One Republic cover (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fiPe4U_Ow&feature=channel_page), but feel free to have a browse around and prove me wrong! All the artists on the videos are South African – hope you’re impressed!

I’m not too sure what to say from here, man. I won’t beat around the bush – obviously it would be in my best interest for you to actually cover us on your blog and for that I would be incredibly grateful, but if not, a simple personal reply would be fantastic – another viewpoint to see what we’re doing right!

Look forward to hearing from you!

Let me break down the above email in to sections/reasons why I was taken by it and responded immediately.

References

The email references 2oceansvibe, I know I have a link in Seth’s sidebar and therefore know (or feel) a little bit of legitimacy from the email’s author.

Hope and a wish

The author openly admits that he is taking a chance. He isn’t being too presumptuous and assuming that I will obviously respond and act. There are no orders coming from the email, there are hopes and requests.

Know the blog

James (the author of the email) clearly went and read SA Rocks. He knew that I liked local music, liked to help promote local artists and liked to support an underdog. So he appealed to these attributes with: “My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album.”

Play on my field

Multimedia and new media content are integral to my world, it’s how I make my living and how I interact with people. So it’s a good thing James didn’t tell me that he hated the internet and would never release any of Timothy’s music online for the world to swipe. In fact, he did the opposite. He sent me links to a YouTube video of Timothy vocalising the hell out of a song I knew “Apologize” by One Republic. He had dropped the bait in my lake and I was not only staring at it, listening to it but chewing on it as hard as I could.

Play to my Ego

The crème de la crème, my ego. James played the game perfectly by stating the following: “Now, I’m sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos.”

How could any self-indulgent blogger possibly say no to a line like that? James got my, hook, link and sinker.

End the pitch

Do not linger, do not be verbose, do not become pedestrian and cliched. Write what you want to write, get it out, close it down and end the email. Do not linger. I hate it when I have to sift through ten paragraphs of shit to get to the point of the pitch. Say what you want and leave me alone.

And here I sit blogging about James and Timothy and will be meeting with them very soon to see how I can help them in any capacity I can think of.

James, well played. And to anyone who is trying to pitch to bloggers that might be reading this, take note: A good pitch will be responded to immediately and will have the bloggers commitment from the word Go.

Being the sort of blogger that I am I was extremely excited to try out what Adgator was offering in the form of an alternative to Google Adsense. Before I continue let me just stipulate that I am going to try and be as open and forthcoming with my stats, numbers, figures and cash for the purpose of this blog post. I am not earning enough money from my blogs to warrant me being secretive. The point of this post is to help people understand Adgator and have a bit of faith in the service. I will be talking through my experiences with Adgator on SA Rocks.

So when the site launched I immediately contacted Justin and managed to have SA Rocks accredited for Adgator ads. I chose to make use of the 300 x 250 ad space but more on that further down.

Potential

Initially I decided I wanted to know how much I stood to earn and luckily on the Adgator site there is a calculator that will calculate how much money you could earn according to your monthly pageviews.

This is what I still see:

Basically when I enter the number of pageviews SA Rocks did, according to Afrigator’s analytics, from last month (16776) I am told that I should be earning over R2000 from Adgator adverts. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Using February as an example according to Adgator the stats were:

16587 advert impressions
R319.06 earned

That is a fairly large discrepancy (R1692.86). However, let us go back and check through the Adgator estimator. If you look very closely underneath the blue bar above there is this:

* Projected earnings are calculated on a 50% revenue share and are quoted in South African Rand. In calculating this figure it is assumed that Adgator serves advertising for your entire inventory and that inventory has been filled by a client. All figures are estimates only and are subject to the rate agreed upon with each advertising client.

The theory

Now there is the tricky part. For me to earn the projected amount I would need to fill out my inventory with Adgator adverts, I would need a great rate to be agreed upon with advertisers, I would need there to be enough campaigns for the inventory on the site to be filled every day and night for the entire month. Then only will all of my page impressions become advert impressions and generate me the revenue that I am projected to be earning.

The other major unsaid fact is that South African traffic is what is being bought the most by the advertisers on Adgator. This means that if you have 90% of your blog traffic coming from abroad you are in for poor times. With SA Rocks I’ve been lucky.

So a quick display of these stats in regard to the Adgater estimator shows us:

SA Rocks South African traffic according to Google: 12485 local page impressions
Projected Adgator earnings: R1498

Unfortunately this theory is still not as sound as one might hope, but as I have already said there are many variables that come in to play.

Too many variables

Let’s be honest, that is a lot of variables to earn a rand. But it is improving and will continue to do so as Justin and his small team of three grow and gather momentum. Advertisers will come to the party and begin to book out inventory months in advance.

Unfortunately that is just not the case right now and I couldn’t justify keeping the Adgator code on SA Rocks. So about a month or so ago, I took Adgator off SA Rocks. It wasn’t earning me money, some of the stats were completely out of whack (in my head) and I just wasn’t feeling justified in removing my Google Ads from the site. So I put them back.

But let us be completely honest here, unless you are generating serious traffic (at the very least over 40 000 page impressions) then you are not earning in the thousands on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis, you are earning hundreds. But if you get it up to R500 that covers your DSTV for the month and that satisfies me for the moment.

Since taking down my 300 x 250 Adgator ad code in the SA Rocks sidebar I have met with Justin Hartman, MD of Afrigator, and had a long chat with him about the revenue potential, issues surrounding the lack of earning, the way the systems works and it’s all quite intriguing.

On the up

With December, January and February being relative unstable, confusing and disconcerting from the perspective of the blogger, March is definitely beginning to look up.

I have already carried through an average of R22 per day in earnings. If this carries on for the whole month I’m looking at earning R660 in March. That’s not bad. In fact that is almost enough for me to consider moving all of my inventory over to Adgator and have 4 ad slots generating that revenue which could take me up to approximately R2500 per month just from Adgator adverts.

The payment problems

The payment problem is not only hypothetical. It’s practical. We are finishing the first week of March today and I have yet to receive a payment from Adgator. I am aware of tax issues that they had recently as Lester explains:

TAX
When we tried to run the Adgator payouts, the good people at SARS had a few questions for us. The issue was raised about whether or not we should be charging you PAYE tax since you’re earning money on Adgator. We were able to make them see that you are in fact selling us goods (your inventory) at a price (the CPM), and so there is no PAYE applicable. This was a lot harder than the two sentences above make it sound, which is where the first payment delay came in.

INVOICES
Now that we’ve settled the tax issue, SARS has requested that we get an invoice from you for the inventory you sell us. Quite frankly, this would be an administrative nightmare for both you and me, which is why we’re working on a very clever invoicing system that will let you do everything with one or two clicks. Here at the Gator Pen we’re all about simple, efficient systems.

Now with regards to invoicing on Adgator this was a major problem that has taken some serious innovative thinking on Justin’s behalf to get it right. What Justin has now done is create invoicing software for all Adgator members. This solutions has provided multiple solutions to multiple problems. One of the main problems for me was that I couldn’t choose when I received payment in terms of the amount. The minimum balance is R150 but what about my choice? Well with the new invoicing system I can choose when to send Adgator my invoices. The system will tally all of your earnings month on month and add it in to a new invoice every month. So if you delay sending through an invoice from January through April it will add all the revenue you’ve earned over that period and put it in to May’s invoice which you can then choose to submit. This is a fantastic solutions that brings us close to the Google model of holding off payments until you are happy.

Overall

On the whole I have had quite a tumultuous time with Adgator. It’s a love hate relationship that unfortunately must exist between bloggers and the people paying bloggers. I have the same relationship with Google too. I’m not satisfied that the best route forward for SA Rocks is Adgator and Google banners all over the show. I think content must be king and ads detract from the overall feel of a good, content based blog.

The hard truth is that for the majority of bloggers in SA the personal audience is too small is relatively limited and only a handful of bloggers will earn enough money to do this fulltime. The advertisers are desperate to get to us as bloggers but previously couldn’t. If you are involved in blogging only for the money best you cease and desist for the time being. If you want ads on your blogs to pay for your DSTV subscription then my advice is to have a good balance between Adgator and Google Adsense to allow you to maximise your opportunities.

I am told that right now advertisers are clambering to get on to blogs (could you send them my way?). I firmly believe that if we give it time Adgator is going to be the place to be for local bloggers to earn money. I hear whispers of people earning R450 a day from one advert.

I like to support Adgator because I can see the potential. As soon as Afrigator grows and there are more staff members selling Adgator to advertisers then bloggers will benefit greatly. But for now, keep the rands and cents ticking over while the market matures and we await our millions!

My Tumblr, nicharry, has revived my ability to post content online without too much thought, reactively and instinctively in a short space of time.

I am besotted with Tumblr.

Let me explain what the service is, in my opinion, for me. It’s a lifestream sort of a blogging platform. A stream of consciousness I think sums it up relatively well.

Tumblr has legs in the market right now for one simple reason. It’s simple to use. I have a “Share on tumblr” widget added to my browser. I click it and automatically a popup appears and allows me to share video, audio, photo, links, quotes and other types of media. The little widget handles the linkback to the source and posts to your Tumblr immediately.

I’ve also installed the Tumblr desktop app for Mac OSX which allows me to tumbl from my desktop. Simple, easy and effective.

Furthermore the type of content that I’ve come across on Tumblr is incredible. It’s alternative, different, cutting edge, pushes all the boundaries and seems to not abide by the regular rules and regulations of producing content. It’s a place where anyone and everyone can find a home.

It subscribes to a very similar model to that of Twitter. You can follow people’s Tumbles and they, in turn, follow yours. You can see everyone who you follow in your Dashboard and follow their content as it is published.

The person who got me on to Tumblr is Wes over at BlackNotes. If you have some time, head over there and read Wes’s Tumblr, you’ll be occupied for hours.

But for the moment head over to Tumblr, register, choose a theme and tumbl-on.