Mandy de Waal

Who are you, really?

2009-12-27T13:57:38+02:00

There’s a scene from Little Miss Sunshine that has stayed with me for the longest time. If you’ve seen the movie you’ll remember it instantly. Miss Sunshine is of course the film about a family on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and the scene in question is between Dwayne and Frank who are musing on the meaning of life.

Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.

Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is?

Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.

Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh... he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that.

Before I knew better, like Dwayne I thought that life was curative. That the smarter and older you got the less pain or problems you would experience. I thought that self awareness would bring progression and healing to the point of Nirvana. Of course life has an amazing sense of humour, and evolution isn’t curative. That’s a childish fantasy we are sold or begin to believe in thanks (in part) to the Disneyfication of fair tales. The more self actualized you become the better the quality of the struggle you experience. Of course you still experience a whack of mediocre type challenges to ensure you’ve been paying attention in class, but for the most part self evolution is about finding your truth - a journey that never ends.

Apart from writing that one incredible book 'that almost no one reads' Marcel Proust created an interesting questionnaire in his teens that serves as a personality confessional. Proust returned to the questionnaire frequently during various periods in his life and with good purpose.

The original manuscript of Proust’s answers entitled “by Marcel Proust himself” was auctioned in 2003 for €102,000. Then those questions, marginally modified, are used in every issue of Vanity Fair to get into the minds of modern day ‘luminaries’ like Alec Baldwin, Emma Thompson, John Cusack and David Mamet. My favourite Proustesque interviews of all time are with Norman Mailer and Umberto Eco.

I’ve done the Proust Questionnaire at various stages during my life and found that the degree of thought and self revelation in the exercise intriguing. It’s a bit like having an intelligent confessional diary, that’s stripped of early angst and self pity. Small wonder that Proust returned to his questions again and again and again.

Although self awareness isn’t a safeguard against misery or a guarantee of happiness, Socrates’ guiding value has significant merit. As the non traditional Latin inscribed on a plaque above the Oracle’s door in the Matrix film trinity advocates: “temet nosce” ("know yourself"). Growing self knowledge, fostering self insight, and developing self esteem is a worthwhile journey that can lead you to truth.

My adaptation of the Proust questionnaire for you to answer if you dare:

What is your favorite virtue?

What is the principal aspect of you personality?

What are your favorite qualities in a man?

What are your favorite qualities in a woman?

What is your chief characteristic?

What you admire most in your friends?

What do you appreciate most about your friends?

What is your main fault?

What is your favourite occupation?

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

What would be your idea of absolute misery?

If not yourself, who would you be?

Where would you like to live?

What is your favourite colour and flower?

Who is your favourite author?

Who is your favourite poet?

Who is your favourite fictional heroine?

Who is your favourite fictional hero?

Who is your hero in real life?

Which historical character do you most dislike?

Which historical hero do you most like?

What do you hate most in the world?

What talent would you like to be gifted with?

How would you wish to die?

What would your tomb stone read?

What is your present state of mind?

What fault do you have that you tolerate the most?

When do you lie?

Who or what do you hate?

What is your greatest achievement?

What’s your most treasured possession?

Your motto?

How happy are you?

2009-11-30T12:49:54+02:00

Isn't it high time the South African government understood how to enhance our gross national happiness?

South Africa is one of the unhappiest nations on this earth. We're not as miserable as Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia or Angola, but we come in at a lowly 118 out of 143 nations measured in the Happy Planet Index. A survey conducted by the New Economics Foundation, the Happy Planet Index reveals "the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered".

The Happy Planet Index is similar to Bhutan's concept of Gross National Happiness, which puts the well-being of people and the planet first when making economic policy. It is a pioneering way of measuring national 'success', which was introduced in 1972 by the then King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck.

The drive behind this unique way of looking at economic development was Buddhist spiritual values, and it remains Bhutan's central focus for matters related to economic growth and development. This approach is a radical departure from most other countries that make productivity and economic growth the driving force of their vision and strategic planning.

Replacing productivity with happiness
There are four pillars when it comes to the Gross National Happiness model, and Bhutan has learned that 'happiness' is driven by sustainable development, the preservation and promotion of cultural values, good governance, and the conservation of nature. If those four aspects are in check then the rulers of Bhutan know they are on the right track to enhancing national happiness.

Little wonder then that Bhutan does well in the 'happiness' survey, and currently ranks as the 17th happiest country in the world. The 10 top happiest places in the world, according to the index and listed in descending order, are Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guatemala, Vietnam, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Brazil and Honduras. Other happy hotspots include Nicaragua, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Argentina and Indonesia.

Sad state: South Africa comes in at a lowly 118 out of 143 nations measured in the Happy Planet Index.

What's interesting about Costa Rica is that apart from having the highest 'happiness' score, it has the second-highest average life expectancy in the world, second only to Canada. Then notice how many of the happiest countries are situated in Latin America, or are islands?

Money can't buy contentment
By contrast, how happy are developed nations? It appears that wealth can't buy happiness. Rich developed nations fall in the middle ground, according to the index. The highest placed is the Netherlands at 43, with the United Kingdom coming in at a midline medium, scoring 74 out of 143. Like South Africa, the United States isn't fairing too well and is in the bottom percentile, taking up position 114.

Unfortunately, misery seems to be a sub-Saharan epidemic. The report says the “bottom 10 Happy Planet Index scores were all suffered by sub-Saharan African countries, with Zimbabwe bottom of the table, with a Happy Planet Index score of 16.6 out of 100.”

In summary, the report says: “The countries that are meant to represent successful development are some of the worst-performing in terms of sustainable well-being.”

Happiness doesn't cost the earth
Launched in July 2006 as a radical departure from the world's obsession with GDP, the index identifies “health and a positive experience of life as universal human goals, and the natural resources that our human systems depend upon as fundamental inputs. A successful society is one that can support good lives that don't cost the Earth,” the report reads.

This thinking behind the Happy Planet Index and Bhutan's Gross National Happiness concept is starting to resonate with the rest of the world. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is looking at new ways of measuring progress that will focus on human well-being. In March this year, the UK's All Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics met for the first time to look at well-being as a national meter, national goal and complementary measure to GDP. Well-being and happiness projects have been launched in Belgium, Italy, Canada and Australia.

Back home, a tsunami of stories on greed, corruption and self-interest flood the South African media, while our leadership is enraged in debates about nationalisation and other mechanisms to enable crony capitalism, entitlement and quick access to high paying government work. This debate, often reframed with racial metaphors, attendant name-calling and mudslinging that further obfuscate the real issues at hand.

Before the next round of service delivery riots begin, perhaps our leaders can leave the cursing and corruption aside for long enough to ponder on the concept of happiness. Perhaps they could learn from what other nations are doing to build national well-being, and start becoming obsessed with improving South Africa's gross national happiness, instead of wealth, privilege and power.

The Eskom Power Crisis

2009-11-13T14:05:51+02:00

Eskom's management mess comes as no surprise, given the state of the operation, regulatory rot and the leadership crisis at other parastatals.

The leadership crisis that's shaken Eskom is symptomatic of the deep rot that lives within that organisation, and most parastatals that have enjoyed the privilege of government regulation.

That Eskom's management has reached an impasse is just a metaphor for the organisation's catch-22, and the struggle the utility is experiencing as it tries to climb out of the deep, dark pit it has dug for itself.

To get an idea of just how much trouble Eskom is in, let's rewind to Bobby Godsell's appointment as chairman in mid-2008. It didn't take too long for Godsell to go on record at an industry function and declare that this country's power utility was run no better than a 'spaza shop'.

Public utilities all over the world struggle to develop or maintain a business model that funds current operations, the replacement of plant and future growth, Godsell said at the industry function hosted by EE Publishers earlier this year.

“The problem with cashbook accounting is that it provides neither for yesterday, nor for tomorrow,” said Godsell, explaining that Eskom couldn't effect meaningful long-term funding or planning, and even had to battle for short-term revenue.“We screwed up!” Godsell said at the same event. “We at Eskom need to follow the example of the new US president and simply say we screwed up.”

Dire consequences

The screw up is that the public utility that supplies 90% of SA's power hasn't invested in infrastructure and has sold electricity at sub-economic prices. South Africans have benefitted from cheap electricity, as has industry. And then there are legacy deals that the mining industry has with Eskom that offer energy at ridiculous low or subsidised prices. By doing this, Eskom has effectively run a financially unfeasible operation and disallowed the accumulation of any wealth for capital investment.

At the same time, Eskom has mismanaged coal supplies, plunged the country into wide-scale blackouts, disrupted the mining industry for the first time since the Anglo-Boer War and shut out meaningful competition.

This regulation and control of the power industry has been done hand in hand with government, and is akin to the ineffective and damning manner that the telecommunications industry was regulated. Just as government interference in the telecommunications sector hurt and hampered SA's economic well-being, so too the over-regulation of the power industry is damaging our country's economy, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The leadership debacle is yet another symptom of an organisation that has gifted SA a power mess, bungled load-shedding, mismanaged coal stockpiling, seriously affected the mining industry, costing our country billions.

From a regional perspective, Eskom has been no better than a bully boy that has enjoyed the fruits of a cartel-like structure. The result of this regulation is the energy catch-22 SA finds itself in. This while management is afforded bonuses and housing loans, and allowed to squabble and deconstruct in full public and global view ahead of 2010.

Oncoming train?

Fortunately there is light at the end of the tunnel. Eskom's price applications to the National Energy Regulator and the South Africa Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff mean consumers will start paying more cost-reflective prices for electricity.

Entities that buy power from renewable energy generators will have to do so at a higher cost. This could lead to a more realistic power economy and stimulate the creation of independent power plants.

However, Eskom and government will have its hands full managing the impact of competition, and the effect rising prices will have on the poor. Strongly differentiated tariffs will need to be used to ensure the poor aren't further marginalised.

More positive is the news that independent power producers are organising to take the utility on in an effort to level the playing fields. The newly formed South African Independent Power Producers Association now offers independents a coherent singular voice to lobby government, the regulator and Eskom.

Eskom says it is resolving the capital expansion problem and will spend R385 billion in nominal terms on capacity expansion during the next five years. It says the financing of Eskom's capital expansion plan will come from three main sources: a shareholder loan, external debt and revenue.

Government has made a significant contribution through a R60 billion loan, which means the plan will largely be financed by the South African taxpayer who will also be burdened by increasing energy prices.

As a national utility that supplies the bulk of SA's power, Eskom's brand and reputation is intimately tied to that of SA's. If Eskom ‘screws up’, South Africa is significantly affected.

It's time for the board to maturely realise a greater good and understand the ineffable harm its egotistical power struggles are causing this country.

The future is fraught but what is sure is that like the telecoms industry, competition is desperately needed in the energy industry. Eskom's grip on our regional power economy must end, independent power plants must be enabled and the management crisis must be effectively resolved.

*Have you seen our client's new blog?

2009-10-26T21:27:04+02:00

*AKA: The Buzz Saw Slices into (rhymes with anecdotal but has only two syllables) Media... "Mmmmeeeeeeeooooooooowww!"

Ah. Just imagine THE SCENE: A chi chi office some where in the shadow of Table Mountain.

THE PLAYERS: Account executives scratching their heads about how to rationalise the big budget the client is paying for their services.

PR1: "Um. Laaaaik. Sheesh. Um."

PR2: "Cough. Cough."

PR3: "Why don't we just make them a blag site?"

PR1: "Nooit. Like a dinkum, full on interactive blag? Man, that's like revolutionary!"

PR2: "Holy shit PR3... a blag launch release could mean at least 20 billable hours."

PR3: "And we could charge them for creating and maintaining the blag at Wordpress.com."

PR1: "Nooit. You're a friggin' genius. We can now call ourselves us social networking media blagging experts and afford that holiday in Plett."

THE PUNCHLINE: The release. Below. Hold the presses folks...

PRESS RELEASE - BLOG SUSTAINS OUT OF HOME ADVERTISING CONVERSATION

Cape Town, 26 October 2009: Advertising professionals need to be on top of their game by being kept strategically informed on the likes of trends, tips and global campaigns in out of home advertising. xxxxxxxxxxx South Africa have done this with their interactive blog, www.oohsa.co.za , that not only inspires creative professionals by showcasing their latest work but gives insights to consumer responses to many of the 500 types of out of home advertising methods used in South Africa.

Consumers spend over half of their days away from their homes according to OCS, the recent out of home consumer survey, thus entrenching the importance of out of home advertising, especially when it comes to getting it right first time.

“Much has been written about out of home advertising but the industry is dynamic and is constantly evolving,” said Ms Isigntheretainercheques Client, Managing Director, xxxxxxxxxxx South Africa, “Social media is a platform that everyone is using as a communication stream and this is by far the best source of current information that everyone can rely on. Our out of home advertising blog is an area where knowledge and learnings (sic) can be shared between marketing professionals.”

xxxxxxxxxxx South Africa is the leader in OOH in the country and has uniquely developed tools that add insight and value to the OOH industry. OOH includes billboards, digital networks, commuter media, brand activation, point of sale and sampling amongst others. It excludes TV, radio, print, online and cinema.

- ends -

For more information contact: PR1, PR2 or or PR 3 at rhymes with anecdotal but has only two syllables)Media.

Notes to Editors [MdW comment. Wow guys. You gotta love that optimisim. You really think a newspaper editor will read this far?]. xxxxxxxxxxx is the world’s largest out-of-home communications agency, with offices in 21 countries. As a division of Xxxx Group PLC, the world’s leading marketing communications group, xxxxxxxxxxx is at the vanguard of cutting edge developments in out-of-home (OOH) such as digital, interactivity and experiential. In South Africa, xxxxxxxxxxx’s mission is to grow OOH to 10% market share of total advertising spend in the next 5 years (currently sitting at 4.6%). At present, the company has approximately 20% of South Africa’s OOH spend under its management, positioning xxxxxxxxxxx as an influential leader in this fast growing category. By helping clients understand what consumers are thinking and how they are spending their time, and by enabling them to communicate with consumers at the right moments and in the best way, xxxxxxxxxxx leads the way in enhancing the effectiveness of campaigns and increasing the media value that advertisers achieve. Furthermore, xxxxxxxxxxx has developed PRISM Benchmark, Forecast and Creative, a proprietary set of tools that ensures that xxxxxxxxxxx delivers the best price against tracked market movements gaining further advantage for their clients, whilst allowing them the opportunity of seeing their “Creative Design” in situ, pre-campaign. No one in this sector offers greater accountability than xxxxxxxxxxx.

Ms Isigntheretainercheques Client – Managing Director: Ms I. Client has unsurpassed experience and expertise in the marketing, advertising and media industries in South Africa. In 2003 she founded xxxxxxxxxxx – South Africa’s Out of Home communications agency – which she later sold to Xxxx, who own xxxxxxxxxxxe. Following xxxxxxxxxxx’s conversion to xxxxxxxxxxx South Africa, Isigntheretainercheques maintained her helm as the Managing Director. Prior to this, she was a founding partner in Big Name Agency (South Africa’s most successful strategy agency). Isigntheretainercheques’ other achievements include running the XYZ Media School in Cape Town, the role of Media Director of Another Big Name Agency South Africa, and the Head of Strategy for Biggest Name Agency Cape Town. Ms Client has continuously shown exceptional abilities as a leader in the OOH sector of the media industry and as one of South Africa’s top businesswomen, receiving numerous awards, which have further entrenched her prominence in the media/advertising trade.

A year of writing

2009-10-04T11:37:21+02:00

As expected Jarred Cinman pulled no punches during his talk at the 24.com's bloggers workshop. Speaking about "the fetishising of reality" Cinman's talk in part explored the epidemic of narcissism that's been fueled by social media. Also great to meet Saul Kropman and Vincent Maher for the first time. Kropman's talk on podcasting was very useful and basically gave bloggers all the information they needed to set up for podcasts on the fly. Kropman swears by Audacity and The Levelator. I've saved my presentation on SlideShare and it is free for download for anyone who's interested:

"My Year Of Writing" Media24 Blog Workshop

View more presentations from mandydewaal.

The secret to joyful living

2009-09-16T08:52:14+02:00

I don’t get people who say they don’t want to get hurt. Who close themselves off to pain. Who do this because they maintain the only way to live a life that is scary and dangerous is to find safety in shelter and protection from risk. Who live an avoidance that amounts to a small, harbored existence.

To hell with that! Johnny Cash is singing right now and he knew. Although he was a Christian he understood a lot about life and suffering, more so when he was singing Nine Inch Nails:

“I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real.”

Lately I have been obsessed with Nietzsche who said: "The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously." Imagine that. Joy. Bliss. Easily found out there in the darkness, on the edge, strewn abundantly across a pioneering path. That happiness lives breathing deeply in discovery. That you meet it again and again in great adventure where there is no full stop because you never see the end. In heroic gnosis where one wades ever fully into perpetual experience to encounter deepening truths.

My friend and fellow writer Alasdair Cameron can’t sleep so he’s been reading “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”. This is a book of remarkable essays written by Richard Dawkins. Al tells me of one called “The Joy of Living Dangerously: Sanderson of Oundle.” In this essay Dawkins tells us to forget about the exams and the league tables. He says that real education is about: “the power of knowledge and the thrill of discovery.”

In this essay Frederick William Sanderson (1857-1922) who intuitively knew how the best life was lived is quoted by Dawkins as saying:

"I agree with Nietzsche that 'The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously.' A joyful life is an active life - it is not a dull, static state of so-called happiness. Full of the burning fire of enthusiasm, anarchic, revolutionary, energetic, daemonic, Dionysian, filled to overflowing with the terrific urge to create - such is the life of the man who risks safety and happiness for the sake of growth and happiness."

Sanderson’s own words are a living and liberating tribute to a headmaster who demanded that laboratories be left unlocked so the boys at Oundle School could explore unfettered and unsupervised. During Sanderson’s time the school library was never locked. One of the school boys – now a man – speaks about being discovered in that library in the dead of the night by his headmaster.

Instead of booming admonishment Sanderson sat down next to him and nudged him deeper into adventure: “He began to talk to me of discovery and the values of discovery, the incessant reaching out of men towards knowledge and power, the significance of this desire to know and make and what we in the school were doing in that process. We talked, he talked for nearly an hour in that still nocturnal room. It was one of the greatest, most formative hours in my life...”

As I read Dawkin’s essay and marvel at Sanderson, Johnny Cash is singing:

“Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt”

This song, Sanderson and Dawkin’s essay is a reminder of how little we know about life. How the most dangerous people are the most certain. Those who would have us believe or have faith in how the story should unravel or end. That the most foolish people are those who keep themselves in the dark for fear of pain or suffering or experiencing disappointment. This despite the startling truth that all of life’s inevitable miseries will find us all, no matter where we seek to hide.

It makes me certain that great men and women are those who live fearlessly knowing that their hearts will be broken countless times as they wade deeper and deeper into delicious discovery. That the greatest people are those who know this secret and inspire others to live its indisputable truth. The libertarians who encourage bright young minds to recklessly ransack the world’s wisdom and burn their fingers on the blistering heat of experience.

For who can sincerely and authentically offer another protection from hurt? It is coming to get us all regardless of whether we hide or live fully with courage and curiosity, craving the great adventure.

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Let’s run into truth, wisdom and experience and live like heroes before we’re dead.

Free for all brawl

2009-09-14T11:59:52+02:00

When Chris Anderson launched his book Free – The Past and Future of a Radical Price, it sparked a 'clash of the titans'. The world's top intellects thrashed out the 'freeconomics' debate in what was little more than a civilised brawl. A lot was at stake given that the debate centred on the Internet and its influence on economics as we know it.

The Wired editor and author of New York Times bestseller The Long Tail believes giving consumers something free can be a great moneymaking business model. In Free, he supports this by advising that anything digital is on a direct glide path to being free.

“In many instances, businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them,” says Anderson, who adds: “Google offers nearly a hundred products... almost all of them are free of charge. Really free – no trick. It does it the way any modern digital company should: by handing out a lot of things to make money on a few.”

Not so simple
Malcolm Gladwell didn't agree and delivered a very public blow in his book review for The New Yorker:

“There are four strands of argument here: a technological claim (digital infrastructure is effectively free), a psychological claim (consumers love free), a procedural claim (free means never having to make a judgment), and a commercial claim (the market created by the technological free and the psychological free can make you a lot of money). The only problem is that in the middle of laying out what he sees as the new business model of the digital age, Anderson is forced to admit that one of his main case studies, YouTube, 'has so far failed to make any money for Google'.

“Why is that? Because of the very principles of free that Anderson so energetically celebrates. When you let people upload and download as many videos as they want, lots of them will take you up on the offer. That's the magic of free psychology: an estimated seventy-five billion videos will be served up by YouTube this year. Although the magic of free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is “close enough to free to round down”, “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number. A recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube's bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars. In the case of YouTube, the effects of technological free and psychological free work against each other.”

The spat played out in the media, with Anderson striking back at Gladwell through his blog at Wired Magazine and on The Charlie Rose Show. Here Anderson flat out said that Gladwell didn't understand Google's business model:

“Malcolm would say it's all a Ponzi scheme, it's all a bubble, and that sooner or later, bandwidth bills are going to come in and all these companies are going to go bust.

“Malcolm doesn't understand that Google doesn't buy bandwidth retail. They have wholesale, they're buying dark fibre. They have server farms the size of printing plants. They're massive... They're losing a lot less money than people think and I suspect they'll break even with YouTube this year.

“So, not only is it not a bubble, but I think that as the advertising industry learns to take the video ads that work so well on television and fine slice them so they're super granular, the way the video is on YouTube, that we're going to see an economic engine that's powerful.”

Taking sides
Seth Godin added his weight to Anderson's camp with a blog called “Malcolm is wrong”, saying that "like all dying industries, the old perfect businesses will whine, criticise, demonise and, most of all, lobby for relief. It won't work. The big reason is simple: In a world of free, everyone can play.”

So who's wrong and who's right?

The Times Online declared Gladwell the overall winner, but said Gladwell's review was more of a demolition job. The media then astutely stated that both men are journalists, successful authors and are vying for the same audience. Gladwell and Anderson are the storytellers for our time, and have captured the popular and business imagination to make them the world's leading theorists.

Regardless of Gladwell's attack and apparent subjugation of Anderson, Free is worth the read, and not only because you can get Free for free in various formats (iTunes audio, Kindle and Google Books) or by going to Anderson's blog The Long Tail.

Buckland's second act

2009-09-10T09:37:35+02:00

Matthew Buckland commands envy and respect. Envy because he's created a remarkable career for himself, captured the limelight, and been a driving force behind some of South Africa's more spectacular Web stories. More often he's respected because of a steady stream of successes, and the contribution he's made to the local industry during the past 15 years.

And the hard work is paying off. The former Mail & Guardian poster boy has stepped onto a global platform at Naspers, with the kind of mandate any member of the local digerati would have given their right arm for.

As the head of 20FourLabs, a division he founded, Buckland has his greatest opportunity in what will also be his biggest challenge to date. Buckland will be pressed to deliver if his career at Naspers will flourish. Not shy about bringing down the axe on non-performing human resource, Naspers has a ruthless reputation for culling staff when they get in the way of profitability and shareholder returns.
Fresh-faced

I caught up with Buckland as he edged towards his 200th day in his 'new' job. The first thing we chatted about was 20FourLabs, which has amalgamated of some of 24.com's top talent into an inventive, entrepreneurial hub, as well as bringing in fresh new talent.

“We recognised that as a major player in the Web industry, we needed to be more agile and nimbler when it came to developing Web applications and Web sites. Big organisations tend to generate quite a bit of bureaucracy that is often a necessary evil, but limits a business' ability to innovate and be experimental. However, in this market, you see a lot of innovation coming from start-ups. At 20FourLabs, we want to capture some of that mindset and culture.”

Not adverse to risk, Naspers' investment strategy in emerging markets like China is yielding strong results, with the likes of Tencent contributing R1.2 billion to the group's earnings for 2009. However, recent discussions with Internet division head Antonie Roux shows that the pipeline for growth by acquisition or investment has been badly affected by the recession. Although share prices have dropped, good companies are sweating out the storm. In view of this, an internal hub that can spark start-ups, seed inventions and inject innovation into the wider group makes great sense if it delivers to mandate.
Fear factor

“Innovation is all about not having a fear to experiment and not having a fear to fail,” says Buckland. “From a business perspective, you need an environment where the cost of failure is low. If the cost of failure is high, this stifles innovation. If the cost of failure is low, then you have much more experimental activity. The focus we use is to create Web applications where the process is not over-complicated. We're using open source resources; we don't over plan, and build iteratively. We're not afraid of plugging into another Web site's API, and don't shy away from aggregating content from other sites,” says Buckland.

Since creating 20FourLabs, Buckland's biggest lesson has been the benefit of simplicity, and understanding the different phases that products go through. “Fewer people are more effective in the emergent phases of products, so we start off with a small team to incubate. Only when we see traction do we take the decision to build the start-up into a much bigger business. The philosophy here is less is more.”

The team of 30 people, which includes the 'wunderkids' from Naspers' Blueworld Communities acquisition, has been mandated to ignite the start-up flair and entrepreneurial culture within the bigger media group. The lab is also busy building apps and extensions for existing Naspers offerings.

“The Web is levelling the playing field, and it's cheaper and easier than ever to create your own business and to create your own media online,” says Buckland. “What this means is that the Web – more than any other industry – is an entrepreneurial medium. Here you often find smaller and nimbler start-ups beating slower corporations because they lack agility.”

A key focus for the lab will be mobile, given the reach of this medium. “We're looking at local and international products and start-ups, and our focus is on social projects, because these enable us to build audience in a viral manner. We're working on aggregation and user generation content projects, as well as multi-media projects, because this is the next phase of the local Web, which has, up until now, been an under-performing area,” adds Buckland.
Flirting for fun

What has Buckland delivered in the past four months?

One of the lab's first start-ups is a mobile flirting and dating site called Flirtaroo.mobi. “Flirting and dating sites are social networks where there is a settled business model, and users actually want payment mechanisms to keep the quality of the social network up. The business model is a 'freemium' model, with micro payments that are SMS-based. What's interesting about the offering is that it is locative.” Buckland says on Flirtaroo.mobi, people can find friends within a certain location. “The offering includes messaging, profiling and will be cross-platform. It was launched for mobile but a Web version is imminent.”

iPhone apps and a Nokia widget has been built for News24, while an Android App was launched for News24, Sport24 and other related content sites. Then 24.com blogs were relaunched, getting a much-needed upgrade. “24.com's blogs had become dated and were very basic. They needed a complete overhaul. We introduced LetterDash.com with templating for users, more intuitive navigation, and features where users can promote their blog. In the pipeline, a more sophisticated dashboard and the ability to combine social networking with blogging. The aim here is to add a social networking layer onto LetterDash, and develop relationships between bloggers and their readers. We have made some revenue off the platform, but it hasn't been significant. We'll only aggressively pursue a business model once we're happy with usability and audience numbers. When we do look at monetising blogs, this will include giving users a cut.”

Buckland says the biggest project they've tackled is an aggregator-cum-social network called “The Hub”.

“This is essentially a social network wrapped around a content site, which is currently in development. Content publications have natural networks around them, but traditionally do a bad job of formalising those networks. For example, Facebook and I have a sophisticated relationship because it knows all about me, but if I go to CNN.com they don't know who I am, and when or why I was there. The idea is to build a social network around content sites that capture and formalise that network, allowing us to provide a richer experience with targeted content and services, but also to allow users to connect with each other. Our initial focus will be to create a better experience for the user who will be able to broadcast and interact with other users more meaningfully. The second will be to monetise the relationship with these communities.”

Other projects include j2me apps, a new mobile portal, revamping 24.com's mobile offerings, a local Twitter aggregator, a niche social network maker, and a personalised homepage offering.

Given Naspers' online and mobile focus in key emerging markets, this creates a much bigger platform for Buckland to step up to the plate. Creating an innovation hub at Naspers was his first clever move. Delivering quickly and smartly, his second.

Originally commissioned by ITWeb.

The Copyright Wars

2009-08-31T10:04:45+02:00

"We, as a society, can't kill this new form of creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using the technologies we give them to remix the culture around them. We can only drive that remix underground." – Laurence Lessig

You’ve got to love Lawrence Lessig. Academic, activist and founding member of Creative Commons, Lessig’s book - “Remix. Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy” – speaks to how copyright law and lawyers are killing professional and amateur art. It’s about how antiquated legalese that has no appreciation of social networks, is threatening to destroy the cultural wave driven by the digital tsunami.

Lessig calls for copyright law to be updated given the birth and rise of the remix culture. In remix culture music, movies, photographs and other arts form the spark for creativity, collaboration, integration and sharing. A term coined by copyright activists ‘remix culture’ is the concept used to describe a community that encourages derivative work. According to Lessig remix drives growth, his mantra being that the assimilation and transformation of thoughts and ideas drive progress and wealth creation in societies.

The proof of this lives in China’s massive economy. A thriving example of remix culture in action, the Chinese government has aggressively promoted the ideology of ‘harmony’ in recent years. This in stark contrast to Japan, a country that is staunchly nationalist and insular. Leveraging an old Confucius teaching, valuing harmony speaks to a respect and acceptance of other’s differences, and the promotion of diversity. Professor Sun Shijin from Fudan University Mentality Research Centre explains this notion of ‘harmony’ by saying: “Chinese culture is soft and resilient, we absorb and digest what is good from other countries and yet we synthesize it with Chinese fundamentals…. Harmony is how we enhance ourselves by synthesizing one another’s differences.”

Magdalena Wong, CEO of Added Value, China says the reason why China is more successful than Korea or Japan is because the Chinese are very receptive to the outside world. The marketing insight specialist maintains that because of this sense of ‘harmony’ the Chinese are not protectionist. They feel that many products, services and ideas from the West are better than those found in China. As a nation they try to get what is good from other countries, and better it. Wong says China has a culture of ‘copy and learn’. “If you are not good at something, you throw it away,” says Wong. “We have a copy mentality. We don’t see taking ideas and bettering them as fake. We just see it as copying and improving. We don’t feel a shame in copying, or feel that we are not creating or innovating.”

China holds many lessons for the West, and a copying or remix culture is just one of them. This as the West declares war on younger generations because they sample or take, remake and share. Western capitalism has created a ‘read-only’ culture where media monoliths sell in a one way stream to an audience they think are passive consumers. The digital revolution has turned this on its head and spawned a new bread of creative consumer activists that download and manipulate, giving birth to viral sensations.

Lessig contends that the lawyers and the artists can make peace in a hybrid economy, the likes of which is being pioneered by Youtube. However this means that lawyers may make less money from huge corporations that threaten teenagers who mash up the latest manga sensation or post a picture of Harry Potter on their Web site. The fact that lawyers will be earning less - I’m sure that’s something we’ll all learn to live with.

Remix
Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy
By Lawrence Lessig
Publication: October 2008
Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-1408113479
Download a free PDF of this book

Fearless & peerless

2009-08-14T11:09:18+02:00

One of the most relevant, credible and real voices in South Africa today. The FM's Barney Mthombothi:

"What's lacking in our public discourse is any attempt to explain how power, or the exercise of it, has changed so many of the activists who went into government hoping to use power to better the lot of their people. Instead, power has in fact alienated them from that constituency. How can they continue to speak on behalf of the poor even as they run away from them to live behind boomed gates in the suburbs?"