A struggle veteran was telling me that he has observed Cope has become a popular attraction for the young black professional class. Well, I don’t know anything about that as I have not attended any of their gatherings in plush homes, hotels conference rooms or hip cocktail parties and dinners. But he insisted that the […]
Business
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Googleocracy
One the world’s most revered brands, you’d think Google would employ best practice in setting up a local office. Not so. The search giant’s presence here is marked by a lack of local development, no commitment to equity and a company structure that sees revenues originated in this market shipped offshore. In this opinion: Google […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Google, the bumbling behemoth.
Google’s presence in SA is marked by controversy and confusion as its commitment to equity, skills transfer and development is questioned.
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
How credible is the cut?
For those prepared to listen, it was a mini-lecture on monetary policy. And more entertaining than lectures on monetary policy tend to be. The occasion was the press conference the Reserve Bank governor gives to explain the reasons for decisions of the committee that decides on interest rate policy. Tito Mboweni was explaining on Thursday, […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
Regional Commercial Radio — The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Regional Commercial Radio – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly A lot of South Africans will be taking to the road over the next few days and weeks. For those who don’t really feel like talking while speeding down the highway, there’s always the radio. The last year or so has given us a […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, Tech
Ten tips for travelling with a mobile office
It can be enormously confusing when you first set out to liberate yourself. Having a full-featured office that is not an office at all is a contradiction and a challenge — but also an enormously satisfying goal once it is achieved. The first few times you hit the road (or a restaurant, airline or conference) […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Dealing with www.dodgydudes.co.za
EVER heard the lament: there’s never a cop when you need one? In our, er … well, nation, it’s the second verse of the national anthem. Most of us whiteys don’t know this because we only get as far as the first verse before our tongues look like some old rope in the knot-tying event […]
Posted inBusiness
In business as in life, failure is everywhere
One of the worst things we have inherited form our British colonisers is our attitude to business failure. The man who was in my lifetime the doyenne of business journalism was Harold Fridjohn, who decided quite late in life to switch from writing about business to doing it. He became a stockbroker, and after a […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle
Global recession: are people jumping off buildings yet?
Gloom and doom, doom and gloom … Increasingly people around me in China are singing the blues because of the global crisis and resorting to vague generalisations (tautology intended) to explain their impoverished state of affairs. “A lot of companies are closing down because of the international crisis”, “many people are losing their jobs …” […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
The mobile office – from Soho to Noho
It’s difficult today to grasp that just 20 years ago most of us were stuck in the same office set-up that had ruled the business world for a century. In this first of a series of excerpts from my new book, The Mobile Office, the argument goes that even the internet was not the real […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
Mortgage sluts and America’s sales culture
One of the plays I studied in Drama and Film 201 was Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet. Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1984 and adapted in 1992 into a movie starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin, it’s a tale of a group of property salesmen frantically trying to persuade unwitting members […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, News/Politics, Sport
Are we good enough for 2010?
OF COURSE, this question has been asked hundreds, if not thousands, of times. It’s been asked about our national soccer team Bafana Bafana and the answer is clearly “No!” It’s been asked of our stadiums and the answer seems to “Yes, if …”. It’s been asked of our transport “systems”, and the answer is “Possibly”. […]