Web techies are lazy when it comes to considering the business aspects of their latest Web 2.0 ideas. They spend even less time developing creative revenue models when they see that web businesses with little real revenue can be valued at $15-billion. When Adwords, Google’s paid search-engine advertising program, launched at the beginning of 2003, […]
2007
Posted inMedia
Editor’s choice
After the previous post on reporters’ mistakes, Tash Joseph dared me to file a post about slip-ups I have made in the editor’s chair. Editors making mistakes? Never. OK, this is an expensive blunder I made during my first month as Grocott’s editor. I could hear the presses whirring. I could smell the ink. As […]
Posted inLifestyle
Three Cool Things
Yes, these things are Cool Enough to warrant Capital Letters: 1. Siyajika (We Are Turning) Underprivileged rural communities are taught how to germinate and nurture indigenous trees. They then trade these small trees (saplings?) for life-enhancing products such as building equipment, vegetable tunnels and water storage tanks to sustain them while they develop their business. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
A redistributive presidency: Some incomplete thoughts on political leadership
The After 8 Debate raised an important question for me: What are the qualities of leadership? The debate provided important perspectives, especially that leadership is both complex and contextual. What qualities should the president of South Africa have to implement a programme of redistribution? As I argued in an earlier article, that programme is needed […]
Posted inLifestyle
Where do you start?
It feels a bit awkward doing your first posting, but hopefully someone will find it useful or at least thought provoking. I think on reflection that a key role for all parents, who by default play the major leadership role for their children, is to create an exploratory mindset in their children. I grew up […]
Posted inLifestyle
Five questions and the first law of flatulence
Why can’t nose hairs just be sexy? They’re such a pain to trim. Growing a moustache is a style choice. The same goes for growing a beard. And there are lots of chicks who are into that scrubby bastard look. But the moment you have stuff growing out of your nose (or ears), it isn’t […]
Posted inLifestyle
Rapped over the knuckles
I would like to rectify a slight blunder on my part. It would seem that I have totally got the wrong end of the stick when it comes to what exactly the “D-ToX Sundays” sessions, formerly at Berlin in Melville, is all about (it’s now at Roka Bar in Milpark). This was pointed out to […]
Posted inGeneral
FET: Failed Education and Thinking
By Chayse Kriel I have been at school for 11 years now and am entering my final year as a matric pupil at Glenwood High School, one of Durban’s best high schools, steeped in tradition and known for its high standards. I have been fortunate enough to have been given a sound upbringing at home, […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Our tragic reality on the eve of Polokwane
The most unfortunate reality at this moment is that our collective fate and future is in the hands of just over 4 000 ANC delegates to next week’s Polokwane conference when the party is facing its worst internal crisis yet. Therefore, the key question we should all be asking is just how this conference can reach […]
Posted inLifestyle
Led Zeppelin, Evel Knievel and the search for the missing elderly
When I was growing up, elderly men — that was, anyone over 40 — wore suits, didn’t swear and bored you to death prattling on about Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Dean Martin. Did you see the geniuses coming out of the Led Zeppelin reunion concert at the O2 Stadium in London? They looked like […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
BAC when we were bulletproof
“It’s only a perception that crime is out of hand,” I was told when I agreed to accept a directorship as communication director on Business against Crime — Gauteng in 1998. “Your job is to change that perception.” I had been headhunted from the Chamber of Mines by this august Section 21 company. BAC had […]
Posted inLifestyle
Raising a generation of substance abusers
Last week Friday, my company held its year-end function. You can imagine how important such an occasion is. Free booze and food and, of course, the whole dress-up-to-a-theme thing and the bad decisions regularly made by aesthetically pleasing females meant that I missed the slaughtering of a bovine creature feature on Friday at my cousin’s […]