If you haven’t heard of fring, you’re probably a tad behind the mobile IM / VoIP wave. I discovered it a while back, looking for an application that worked on an S60 phone and enabled me to communicate with all my MSN, Skype and Google Talk contacts. If it did Twitter as well, bonus. It […]
Andy Hadfield
Andy Hadfield is a digital native (can’t remember life without the Internet) and is fascinated with the impact it is having on our lives and businesses. An entertaining and compelling personality, Andy speaks with authority and insight about the new shape of life, work and play in the digital world.
Importantly though, he’s not a “techie”! Andy understands the hard realities of business, and delivers pragmatic, realistic lessons from the future, which every business will find valuable. His intensive front-line experience underpins these viewpoints.
He has played in every corner of the digital industry, launching his first startup at age 19 - getALife (gAL) was a social network before the word was even invented. The site was a political and community mouthpiece for South African students between 1997 and 2005 and was covered on every major media platform, including Time Magazine. It also has the dubious honour of being sued by Robert Mugabe.
He then spent the next 7 years honing his strategic skills across a range of industries, including finance, professional services, construction and media. With The Virtual Works, this included building the digital platform that underpins “The Deloitte Way”, a real time strategic assessment, staff engagement and reward programme. He was also involved in creating Africa’s first monetised niche social network (www.designmind.co.za) which drives communication and collaboration across the construction industry.
At First National Bank, Andy helped develop a team to manage digital strategy across the consumer banking segment. This included projects such as corporate crowdsourcing, the bank's first official FaceBook presence, a major overhaul of www.fnb.co.za and a world-class “Amazon-style” online sales system for financial products.
Since 2010, he founded and operates www.OneBigWidget.com, a boutique strategic consultancy and stable of pioneering digital projects. You can find him on www.andyhadfield.com or tweeting his love for cricket, wine and the new style of business on www.twitter.com/andyhadfield.
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The five rules for building an online community
I found a piece by Guy Kawasaki which really got me thinking. It perfectly illustrates the disjunct we find between the allure of social networks (and my new obsession — niche business networks) and the practice of implementing them. Many companies think that building a virtual community is as simple as throwing up a cool […]
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Why are South African businesses scared of Social Networking?
It struck me today what an uphill battle we’re facing in the new media / web 2.0 / social networking industry. These shiny new communication and engagement tools are an unknown and feared art. What’s more frightening to a business than the phrase “perpetual beta”? Let’s examine some of the reasons why… Bandwidth It’s a […]
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Gunfights and Twitter – an African perspective
Isn’t South Africa just the most fun? We live in a land that is marked by one of the most incredible digital divides. Forget Third World South America, or Middle Africa. That’s different -– technology just never got off its feet and it’ll take many years, plenty discarded US laptops and OLPC’s from heaven before […]