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I am a disappointed in some “online professionals”. The reason I am using the term with my tongue poking and prodding at my cheek is because I believe there is a fair amount of professionalism being thrown down the toilet. Mandy de Waal wrote an article for ITWeb titled “Who’s who in the Web 2.0 Zoo?“.

Some people seemingly took great offence that there where no people of colour in the article. Rafiq was invited to participate, he declined. The angle of the article was simply an interview and answer process. Certain people who are major players in the online market were asked to name three people who they would want to work with in the online arena. These people did so. Not based on racial innuendos as justifications. These were simply the people who each interviewee wished to work with on a professional level.

Unfortunately someone needed to respond, someone always need to respond, and needed to emphatically make a racial statement. This is extremely sad. Ramon Thomas took up the cause and titled his article “Who’s who in the non-white Web 2.0 South African Zoo“. The title alone immediately marginalises his audience and those involved in his article. He immediately boxes those in his article and ostracizes those who read it.

The immediate feeling that I get is that this is like affirmative action in sports teams - the Springboks to be precise. The situation that rugby players of colour have faced in the past is a lose-lose, if they are chosen they question the reasons for their selection. If they are not chosen then they wonder if it was due to their race. Lose. Lose.

If I was on Ramon’s list I’d be pretty upset. The candidates on this list are no longer the best in their profession but only the best in their racial class. Mandy’s article might have lacked some depth but she did not force the answers out of the participants, they chose out of their own free will. She also did not classify her article as black or white inspite of the black text and white background colour. Now there are more web professionals who have been dragged in to this to make a statement. They have become pawns in the game of race.

Mandy made an error in undermining hew own article when she used a pull quote that included the words “White boys club”. If this was the angle of the story then I think that this would have been an integral part of an article that would be able to ask some very important questions about the racial state of the online industry. The pull quote was irrelevant in the context of her story and in my opinion undermined the people who took part in the article.

There is an important question to be asked: where are the black professionals in the online industry?

Darren Ravens asks the question more appropriately. But I think that Darren Gorton got it right.

Personally I would like to be considered a media professional for the work that I do, not for the work that I do as a white(ish), Greek (almost), South African male.

As many people know the mobile industry is big business, especially here in SA and in the broader African market.

I’ve been making some inroads in to trying to undestand the mobile market as fully as possible recently.

I am lookingt at the mobile market as someone heavily involved in the media industry and trying to find a place for the media in the mobile market. I am not considering the mobile market from the point of view of a startup, website, portal, communication idea or gaming company. I am looking at the mobile market from the perspective of an organisation that produces weekly content that goes in to a newspaper.

There are some things that I have noticed and some problems that I have seen with the theory that mobile is going to be the next big thing very soon.

Lets begin with three quick points:

1. Communication is actually THE mobile market
2. Social Networking is the up-and-commer
3. Gaming is already making a mark - a massive one - on the market
4. The service providers are the ones making the money

And now let us go through the barriers to entry that I feel exist for media in the mobile market.

1. Newspaper content is a push market
2. Mobile users want to own their content - pull it towards themselves
3. Understanding of extensive mobile web surfing is low in higher LSM’s
4. Portals are non-exist, with the exception of service providers

The basic barriers that I have listed above make it extremely difficult for media organisations to make a valuable stand in the mobile market. Users are looking to interact with one another and content. This means they want to create the content, interact with it, send it to their friends, invite their friends to interact with eachother and their content. This is difficult as a media organisation when you are producing the content and pushing it to the market.

I am interested to know if you agree with these barriers? Do you think that media is stuck in a “push” business model? Or are they making inroads in to the “pull” of content creation, distribution and user interaction?

Mobile, for the last few years, has generally been accepted as the next big thing. But if that is the case why is there no hype, no blogging and why are many of the articles outdated? Is there no one out there who is willing to step in to the role of the punter?

I have just read through 50+ Tech feeds that I subscribe to and out of those a single article from ReadWriteWeb focused on mobile.

There is no media talk, no thoughts or opinions and no strategies emerging as a result of mobile being the next big thing and I just don’t get it.

It could be that I am looking in the wrong place, but it seems as though people are either plotting and keeping their secrets close to them or there is no one with a clue. I am interested to get in to this a but further. Let’s see where it goes.

My post about Charl Norman and Intelligence magazine seems to have raised some interesting issues.

Bloggers vs journalists, ethics and standards and a broad lack of writing integrity.

Vincent has come out and said that he is willing to organise a meeting between bloggers and mainstream media editors (or editor). What do you think?

From Vincent:

If any bloggers are interested, I would be happy to organise a session between bloggers and our editor as an ethics and legal primer. Anyone interested? Email me vincent@vincentmaher.com

I think that this is a great idea and one that can benefit various people on various levels. Email Vince and let’s get the ball rolling.