Nicisms

The end of the year, as always, brings with it end of the year blog posts.

I think that this year my blog post is going to be short, sweet and to the point.

I loved 2009.

It’s been a crazy, upside-down and incredibly fruitful year.

The quickshots

I bought a Townhouse.
I bought a new car (Honda Civic, 1.8 Exi)
I changed jobs to possibly one of the best places I could hope to be working at with thanks to Vincent Maher.

Some of the achievements

I was selected as one GQ’s top 30 men in media.
I was selected as one of Mail & Guardian’s top 300 South Africans to take to lunch.
Appeared on an SABC TV Show talking about the youth and politics before the 2009 elections.
Interviewed on 702 about the zahell debacle or the “zahellgate” if you will.

The madness

I was involved in a freak plane crash and managed to assist in helping some people stay alive. That was probably, in hindsight, one of the more dramatic, thought-provoking and gut-wrenching moments of my life as well as one of the proudest, for myself and the friends I was with.

Out of that day I also gained some new and true friends.

Here’s a list of some of my favourite things that emerged out of 2009

Favourite Game
Guitar Hero 5

Favourite album
aKing – Against All Odds

Definitive album of 2009
Jay-Z – Blueprint 3

Favourite Song
David Ford – State of the nation

Favourite TV Series
The Big Bang Theory
The Take (still new but looks promising)

Favourite Movie
The Hangover
District 9 (local smash)

Favourite take out
Steers

Favourite restaurant
Bombay Bicycle Club (Cape Town)
Fork (Cape Town)

Favourite Airline
Kulula.com

Favourite Day of the week
Sunday

Favourite thing about Jozi
Thunder storms that attack with vengeance and rage.

Favourite Web Application/Service
Basecamp

Favourite mobile application
Ubertwitter (I think it would seem a bit bias to say The Grid).

Favourite website
The Best Article Every Day

Favourite Blog/Lifestream
Blacknotes

Favourite webisode
Jake and Amir

Favourite online comic
Cyanide and Happiness

Favourite Tech Blog
ReadWriteWeb

Favourite Twitter follower
@Donpackett – Hilarity at every turn.

Favourite Twitter stream
Shitmydadsays

Favourite hobbies
Poker
Golf

It is a bit dramatic to say that after this year the world will never be the same. I think what I actually mean is that my world will never be the same. Which invariably is the whole world if I want to be a bit narcissistic.

I have learned that you cannot have everything right now. Time is constant and change is inevitable and sometimes you need to crouch, touch, pause and only then engage. You cannot constantly engage.

This year saw the end of manic blogging from me and the increase of twitter activity and listening. I’ve begun to listen more than I speak which I am sure is a welcome change.

Next year is going to be about consolidation, establishing a platform and working off of that platform in my personal life and in my career.

The killer concept next year is going to be mobile. There is no doubt about that in my mind. We are going to see some amazing mobile developments emerging out of Africa (I say Africa because the first world still believes that mobile = iPhone).

Enjoy the holiday because I know I will.

2010 is going to hit us with a bang (not the big bang I hope). My prediction for early 2010 is that we truly have no idea how massive the 2010 World Cup is going to be and South Africans are going to overwhelmed.

Just a short post to say that I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth. That’s not possible, they haven’t really believed that since, um, sometime ago I think, like a few centuries or so.

I have a new theme, it’s clean and simple, no ads. I’ll still be making some changes. I figured that I don’t get enough reads right now to worry about editing a live theme so you might just have to deal with that for a few days.

This year is going to be pretty intense. Let’s get it on. 009, shaken and stirred.

At the end of last year I wrote a blog post of To Do’s for 2008.

It has been absolutely incredible year for me. It hasn’t been an easy year or one filled with much certainty other than that of my own gut feel and decisions. Those I have learned to never doubt. Ever.

Here is the list:

1. Play more golf – at least once a month, the goal is twice a month.
1.2 Get a golf membership at a club – I’ve chosen JCC.

2. Skydive

3. Bungee Jump

4. Get my deep see diving license (or is it an open water license?).

5. Travel to an African country – This I have never done before. Embarrassing, I know.

6. Organise a boys weekend away over a long weekend – This can involve golf or not, it’s really up to you and circumstance.

7. Have more fun in general – Yes work is hard and yes I love my sleep. But this is not an excuse not to have fun. I want to go dancing, go clubbing, have sundowners, cocktails, dinner parties and more. All with Jen, my friends and people who I appreciate.

8. Organise a dinner party and cook the meal myself.

9. Go for cooking lessons – My preferance is Thai food and Wok cooking.

10. Learn how to make sushi.

11. Cook dinner at home, myself, for family and friends at least once a week.

12. Learn how to relax – In other words, get offline more often.

13. Make use of weekends more effectively – This involves going away for weekends, getting out of the house, not sleeping in late for no reason.

14. Invest my money – I am on the road to that one already.

15. Buy my first property.

16. Learn how to code php.

17. Go fishing.

18. Reconnect with one friend who I’ve lost touch with.

19. Go overseas – Preferably to somewhere I’ve never been. I hear Thailand is beautiful.

20. Start another blog – I have already put this one in motion with a friend of mine. More on this in the new year I think.

What I did:

1. Play more golf – at least once a month, the goal is twice a month.

5. Travel to an African country – This I have never done before. Embarrassing, I know.

6. Organise a boys weekend away over a long weekend – This can involve golf or not, it’s really up to you and circumstance.

7. Have more fun in general – Yes work is hard and yes I love my sleep. But this is not an excuse not to have fun. I want to go dancing, go clubbing, have sundowners, cocktails, dinner parties and more. All with Jen, my friends and people who I appreciate.

8. Organise a dinner party and cook the meal myself.

11. Cook dinner at home, myself, for family and friends at least once a week.

12. Learn how to relax – In other words, get offline more often.

13. Make use of weekends more effectively – This involves going away for weekends, getting out of the house, not sleeping in late for no reason.

14. Invest my money – I am on the road to that one already.

15. Buy my first property.

20. Start another blog – I have already put this one in motion with a friend of mine. More on this in the new year I think.

The Explanations

1. I managed to successfully play more golf than I ever have. I’ve been playing for ± ten years. This year was the first out of all of those that I took it more seriously. I played over 50 rounds of gold this year and managed to take my scores down from 100 – 104 (yes, I know, VERY bad) to a consistent 91 – 92.

5. I am heading to Kenya on the 26th. Fantastic.

6. We went away for a long weekend to the Vaal. Stayed with my brother and 7 best mates. Played two rounds of golf, braaied and had an absolute riot. Golf scores were crap! Thank to the Brandy.

7. This year was definitely the year of balance, enjoyment and lessons. Matt and Vince taught me some very good lessons while I worked with them. If you can’t get your work done between 9 and 5 then you are either not planning your day well enough or your priorities are all screwed up. I learned, with the help of my girlfriend that being offline can often help your online profile and life.

8. This was done in conjunction with various other parties on varying scales. But I most definitely reacquainted myself with my love for food, wine and great conversation.

11. Surprisingly this was one of the more difficult consistent goals to achieve. We all know how busy life can be, but this has to have been one of the most rewarding things I did all year.

12. A quote: “If you take your laptop with you to Kenya you can go alone.” Needless to say the laptop is staying at home.

13. Taking up a job with a Cape Town head office has been a surprisingly pleasant experience. I’ve learned that hopping on a plane, heading off to Cape Town, DBN or wherever involves nothing more than a maximum of two hours in a plane. That’s it. It’s done.

14. The investment of money is probably the thing I am most proud of myself for doing. My mother (wise lady that one) pushed me to plug away much of my monthly earnings in to an RMB money market account. This was undoubtedly the best thing that I have done for myself, ever. It leads me to point 15.

15. Buy my first property – I’ve been holding off blogging about this for various reasons. It’s always tricky announcing something this large in ones life for reasons that you can understand if you apply yourself. Nothing more to say other than I am moving in on February 1st 2009. This will become my project for 2009.

20. Number 20 was completed with the launch of Nudjit. Thanks to Justin and Gregor for helping to make this one a reality. I also launched another blog with a little HELP, Why Vote that will yield much more action in the coming months.

So Long 2008

All in all, out of the 20 goals I set for myself I achieved 11 of them almost down to the word. The nine that I did not manage to get around to matter not. Why? Because I can assure that the nine I did not achieve were almost certainly replaced with an infinite amount of lessons and smaller victories for me personally and professionally this year.

Oh yes – something that wasn’t formally on my list but will be on every list of to do’s that I put together, my newest addition:

Photo courtesy of Renee.

It’s fast moving towards the final day of 2008. What a year it has been. I usually (much like many bloggers) put together an end-of-year post that sums up a few things and pulls together events all nicely. I am going to be composing one of those articles but this isn’t it.

This post is a collection of answers from some of the top people, movers and shakers and industry leaders in the online market. I asked them two questions:

1. What was the single most defining moment in the South African online industry in 2008?

And

2. If you were to make one prediction for 2009 what would it be? And don’t tell me that mobile is the next big thing!

So let’s dive straight in to the answers:

Fred Roed, CEO of digital marketing agency, World Wide Creative.

1. Barack Obama winning the election. This meant that digital agencies such as World Wide Creative could justify their presentations demo-ing how messages are accelerated online. We could say ‘See! Look how he did it!’

2. Hype around Mobile and Social Media will be removed from the industry, meaning that digital will go mainstream. Following the international norm, marketing agencies will increasingly use online as the major destination point for all the other channels to feed into.

Vincent Maher, Portfolio Manager for Social Networking at Vodacom SA

1. For me the defining aspect of the whole year is that there didn’t seem to be a defining moment. There we a few things that happened but none of them were defining in the classic sense. In many ways this is a sign of maturity in the industry and an indication of resilience to smaller influences.

2. The breadth and reach of social networking is going to increase through services like Google FriendConnect and Facebook Connect and this will also reveal several vulnerabilities in the form of viruses and spam across these networks. Location-based services are going to become more accessible on the API level for developers to incorporate and, importantly, the global financial meltdown is going to cull a lot of the flimsy Web 2 operations and make the industry a little more intersting.

Andy Hadfield, The Internet & Social Media Guy, FNB

1. The credit crisis. The credit crisis is probably going to precipitate Bubble 2.0 – which is excellent news. Unlike last time, there have been precious few IPO’s, which means while many web startups may go down – they won’t take public shareholders with them. And any bubble burst presents a great opportunity for web companies that offer REAL value to rise to the fore. Oh, and Twitter. But it seems 3 million really active users still counts for value in someone’s book

2. The battle to own the social profile will increase. FaceBook vs MySpace vs Google Friend Connect vs Et Al are going to muddy the waters for the first 6 – 8 months of the year. Hopefully, coming out of that will be value driven profiling services which allow you to centrally store your social profile, pick it up whenever you want and hop all over the web. Let’s face it: storing a picture, bio and web links is not a value driven social profile. These companies are going to have push the boundaries a little to force consumers to make a call on where their social data and social networking time investment will sit…

Heather Ford – Web social entrepreneur

1. Quality Vacation Club suing blogger Donn Edwards
(http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/) for defamation. I think it’s
important because, while the same comments have come from the
mainstream media, QVC has chosen to sue the blogger. It will be
interesting to see how this turns out – at the crux, I think, is
whether ‘fair comment’ on a blog is being seen by South African courts
as equal in importance to ‘fair comment’.

2. My prediction is that we’re going to see greater diversity in the
South African blogging community next year – people linking to those
outside of their social circles, invitations to bloggers’ social
gatherings like the 27 dinner, and more training and connections
(here’s hoping!)

Duncan McLeod, technology editor, Financial Mail, and editor of www.FMTech.co.za

1. Definitely Altech’s victory against communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri which now allows just about anyone to build a communications network in competition with incumbent operators such as Telkom, Neotel and the mobile phone providers.

2. Bandwidth caps will soar — people will get at least triple the bandwidth for the same price — as Seacom comes online. This will lead to strong growth in online business in SA in 2009.

Charl Norman is the co founder and chief operations manager (COO) for Blueworld Communities. BWCOM owns numerous niche social networks based in South Africa.

1. Blueworld Communities (www.bwcom.co.za) being acquired by Naspers – this paved the way for other acquisitions in our local space – Zoopy and Afrigator soon followed with investment from Vodacom and MIH/Naspers. This created investor confidence in our small local market and enabled other startups to more confidently seek investment.

2. The economic crisis will slow down venture capital investments and startups unable to figure out their revenue model will have their funding reviewed or forced to merge with other similar lower tier startups.

Users will own their online identity (e.g. profiles) with tools like Google and Facebook connect. Users will carry this identity along with them around the web forcing online communities like social networks to embrace data portability technology.

Social media will also become more mainstream as tools like Twitter will be adopted by the general public and not just geeks. Good companies will have concrete social media strategies as part of their overall marketing strategy.

Catherine Luchoff is joint partner and founding member of MANGO-OMC

1. There isn’t one particular moment I can single out as the defining moment of 2008. Rather, I consider 2008 to be a defining year: One in which social media, crowd sourcing and micro-blogging found their footing and laid the foundation for converged campaigns that will, and have, defined the way we communicate and consume information.

2. With filter failure on the rise and information overload rife, community manager positions and descriptions such as ‘trusted filter’ will become more prominent. 2009 will also be the year in which the foundation for a holistic measurement tool, one that takes all channels into account (online, offline and mobile), will be defined.

Interesting stuff. Hopefully those who didn’t get to the questions will be able to post their responses in the comments of this post. I sent the email out to ±25 people for their comment.