TechLeadership through free education

Ok, so I’m a TechLeader now according to the cool gang at the Mail & Guardian Online. But I think it’s best to get some things out in the open before I continue on my leading ways.

I know squat about technology. (Ok, that’s not entirely true, but I work on a 2005 model Toshiba laptop and ignore phone calls on an ordinary Samsung D820 phone)

I spend my days researching everything about the internet, on the internet and even relative to the internet. I guess that makes me a student of web marketing and what I have to offer, is opinion.

Most of my expertise is focused on the wine marketing industry, hardly an industry that is creating a buzz on the internet in South Africa (post Stormhoek frenzy of course).

I don’t go out of my way to drive to Cape Town to attend these Geek dinners, whether on the 27th of any given month, or any other date for that matter. I guess that makes me sort of geek-ish, which I’m quite content with.

Then finally, my biggest gripe with the internet marketing-, social media-, TechLeading fraternity is that it still seems to be educating the educated. This in itself is not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but what is the use of building up this vast array of expertise only to brag about it among ourselves? Where are our potential clients, especially the SME’s that make up more than 300 000 businesses in South Africa?

It goes without saying that SME’s have little resources, tighter budgets and a far inferior knowledge of technology and how to apply it to their marketing efforts. This includes most, if not all the wine estates that I have the privilege to work with. So how do we reach them? Online? I’m not sure about you guys, but the math doesn’t add up.

I’d like to know how many business men and women attend these internet marketing workshops held randomly at exorbitant cost. I know the cost of speakers, venues, refreshments and such need to be covered, but this is irrelevant in my opinion.

We need to have them attend free of charge and we’ll have to find another revenue model to cover the expenses. What is it about the freemium era that we need to charge our potential clients to learn about the global market if it is within their rights to have this information for free? Or does this only pertain to the internet?

I guess it’s time to come to a conclusion with this post. I watched a TED presentation from Al Gore last night, and while I’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth an inconvenient number of times already, there’s always at least one thing I can take from his presentations.

Al mentioned that there are three categories involved in environmental challenges: Local, regional and global.

He says that most of our thinking around environmental challenges is focused locally: Water pollution, air pollution, hazardous waste dumps, but that the climate crisis is a rare but global conflict and that we as citizens need to reorganize our approach.

We as social media / internet marketers too have to reorganize our response. Our responses are localised. We try to make an honest buck here and there by trying to incorporate technologies that our clients are not ready for or has no clue about.

We’re trying to enforce international trends upon an infrastructure that is vastly inferior to our overseas counterparts and serves little use to the (minor) connected elite.

We need a national internet marketing regiment to facilitate and enforce the implementation of cost effective bandwidth for the entire country. We need to break the stem of backward thinkers, governments and monopolies that refuse to assist in this matter.

We need to reroute our efforts and form an alliance to solve the national crisis that prohibits our clients from accessing broadband internet and subsequently paralyzes our efforts in educating them about the global market.

We have work to do.