My face is purple, Gerry’s is dark pink, we both have issues with muscle pain and are just getting to bed now. Why? The Boks are back in town.
We spent most of today in the company of some of the nicest guys in the country. They also happen to be world champions in the game of rugby. The Springboks spent today winding their way through the streets of Cape Town, greeted by tumultous applause from every corner of the Mother City. Tens of thousands of people lined the route from the city centre to Newlands, where the big green Bok Bus finally came to a stop to unload our unbeatable team. People were hanging out of office windows, climbing trees, attaching themselves to lampposts and … screaming. The screaming didn’t stop. From the grand parade to the depths of Newlands stadium, fans turned the volume up full blast.
It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be in the middle of it all. We were on the second bus on the way to Newlands and on the field itself once we arrived - surrounded by endless hordes of who-cares-if-it’s-a-workday Bok supporters. Not to mention some of the most incredible sportsmen our country has ever produced.
Cape Town really laid out a spread for the guys. Bob Skinstad said in an interview with us that Cape Town’s been the most responsive city in their countrywide tour. Obviously, I thought.
Enjoy the videos!
Springbok Victory Parade in Cape Town
Bryan Habana gets tackled for the Cup (shocking at first - then hilarious)
Springboks interviewed at Newlands (on the field!)
He’s a genuinely nice guy. Down to earth, in touch with technology and just as excited as the rest of us to take South Africa to the next internet frontier!
Urban Trash, the home-bred comic strip from the pen and mind of Jeremy Nell, announced today that they’re turning all Rocky Horror on us. Jeremy’s creating a new character for his strip and to make it more interactive for his readers, he’s launched a competition to guess just who or what the new persona will turn out to be.
According to Jeremy, the new character’s already been created. And only 6 people on earth (including him and possibly 5 of his multiple personalities :)) know the new cartoon individual’s identity. We’ve prodded and bribed the guy (with beer, even) to get even the tiniest of hints, but he’s not telling.
So it’s over to you to GUESS. The only way to enter is by commenting on the competition blog post, here. To make things more interesting, we’re sponsoring a Nintendo Wii Sports Pack, with Wii console, remote and Wii Sports game.
Good luck. And if Jeremy strikes up a conversation with you in the blog comments, make sure you ask who’s speaking before you reply
We’ll be uploading videos of all the presentations tomorrow. Some great viewing coming up.
Already looking forward to next year’s Camp. Glen, where/when do we sign up?
If you still haven’t clicked on one of the links above, here’s a teaser - the Skyrove wifi hotspot in a tree, with Rafiq, Henk and Stelio nicely at home:
Glen took us through a live podcasting session, using Audacity - an open source audio editor. Seated with a microphone/headset combo, it was clear that this is where Glen’s in full control. His knowledge on podcasting, from audio comments to music to intros/outros, oozes out of every tip he shares.
And more than this, it’s pretty fun to watch. Glen gets into DJ mode, which he takes pretty seriously (he has the rich kind of voice that gives him the right to do so). He then takes us through the process of creating an entire podcast on Audacity, step-by-step. Glen comments that it shouldn’t take longer than 30-40 minutes to create a perfectly listenable cast, instead of ‘needing to take days to do it’.
Derek ‘The Bandit’ Richardson, who’s sitting at our table, laughs and says ‘that would be ME’. The Bandit is a really nice guy in person and produces an extremely professional series of podcasts at Sound Republic.
Ten minutes later and Glen’s playing a fully-produced podcast, all done in front of our eyes and sounding like a totally competent mainstream piece of media.
Llew Claasen from KeyJam.net (a web training academy) had some theories upfront. And some serious theories later on.
Between balancing loops, reinforcing loops and limits-to-growth-systems, not to mention Metcalfe’s Law. A little above my head to be honest, but he had an example of these theories. He compared Facebook and SAReunited. Facebook is free. SAReunited needed you to pay to send messages - so no one sent messages. When Facebook came along, it allowed the same functionality and apparently ‘wiped out’ SAReunited in the space of a year. SAReunited’s mistake was to charge for ’subsidy-side’ costs on the ‘money-side’ for the user.
Facebook’s attempt at a winning formula has been to run a ‘marketplace’ and offer ‘gifts’ for purchase. But Llew says that the value of the network is not greater than other online classfieds destinations, so it’s missing the point. The intent of the user going to Facebook is to socialise with friends, not to sell their car. Not yet, anywhere.
But when the network’s value increases to match ebay, Craigslist or Bid or Buy, then at that point, Facebook’s revenue can clearly grow off the base of the ‘money side of the platform’.
His last slide was brilliant. It was called ‘Go Boks’ and included a ‘Facebok’ logo … I thought that was clever
Elvira van Noort, from Holland originally, showed great enthusiasm for technology in Africa. She’s was a co-ordinator at the Digital Citizen Indaba this year and will be giving a new media angle to next year’s Grahamstown Arts Festival. She also took us through Africa News, an African-specific news portal with great breadth and reach, and will soon be starting her own business.
She’s looking for video editors to help grow that side of the business, so if you’re keen don’t hold back. Give her a shout!
Jeremy Nell, of Urban Trash and Ditwits fame, took hold of the microphone gangster-style and tried to come up with a definition for blogging in South Africa. He doesn’t have one, but guesses that it’s something about ‘complaining about using your own nick to submit on Muti’ or ‘talk about spending R30 000 on a boob job’. He’s not far wrong
Jeremy’s a straight-shooting kinda guy and makes for a fresh new style at PodCamp. Instead of trying to impress and get 500 links to his blog in a day, he just gets on with it. He calls himself a cartoonist and only writes blogs to fill the rest of the space on the page underneath his cartoons. But from reading any of his posts, he’s clearly got a lot to say (with brilliant wit) and, like any good cartoonist, he’s utterly and unashamedly self-deprecating.
But he gets serious for a second and talks about the benefits of combining blog posts with his comments. RSS feeds take his comics to users who subscribe and allow fans (or critics) to have their say. The more interaction, the better. And by the way, he’s unofficially trademarked ‘comic blog’ and ‘comic blogging’ - so no stealing! By this stage in his presentation, I’m having to stop to laugh inbetween typing. Jeremy could easily do stand-up. Something like a 21st century deadpan Basily Fawlty mixed with Conan O’Brien. Cooler, younger, smarter. But who else could end a presentation by telling his one offended reader that ‘their mother is kak in bed’?!
Last but not least, he mentioned a brand new Urban Trash character that he’ll be bringing to life soon, with a related competition being announced on Tuesday. We’re getting involved to some extent too, so watch this space next week.
Dave’s grabbed the microphone and is shooting around the room, all fired up to share his thoughts on the Attention Economy.
What’s that? Basically it’s about attaching value to eyeballs. It’s about idea snacking and chipping away at a huge piece of marble to find the David!
Generally, Dave is proposing that people don’t care anymore. They want value in the moment right now. Gone are the days of leaving work early to watch Dallas. Ideas need to stick - and for them to stick, they need to be simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional stories.
Value in products has moved from the 20th century concept of ‘unique selling proposition (USP)’ to ‘by interacting with’. Essentially, Dave’s talking about social currency. His example of how social currency works is a great one: if someone shares a joke with you, IF it adds value to you by making you laugh, you pass it on. The more it gets passed on, the more the value grows incrementally at each pass-along, eventually resulting in that joke (or product) having substantially more social currency.
The future acccording to Dave? Creating an environment where people choose to care. Selling more, for less. The long tail and all that. Nice one, Dave.
Also part of Mr D’s talk: Creative Commons. Read more on their site, but in a nutshell: a license that you apply to work that defines what rights you’re reserving and how you’d like people to use your content. Madonna has just scared the record label industry by completely buying into the concept of free sharing. She’s happy for fans anywhere to download and distrute any of her material as often as they like, and chosen instead to focus her profitability on the resulting increased interest in her work, and thereby greater attendance at her performances (where she begins to make money on ticket sales) and merchandise. Smart lady.
Still live blogging from PodCamp Cape Town 2007 - and it’s going brilliantly. It’s like an extra-long, super-concentrated 27 Dinner, with a room filled with some of the sharpest, most creative and most excited minds in the industry.
Brad Shrimpton from Apple IMC gave us a peak at the wonderful white (as in colour, not in race) world of iPods and all things Apple. His hands-on demo of Apple’s Garage Band application made for a fascinating 15 minutes. The simplicity with which this application manages recording and uploading of podcasts is remarkable. The educational possibilities being made possible via podcasting are staggering. He also mentioned the launch of the new Leopard platform - coming this week, so watch the press.
De Waal Steyn from Die Burger’s multimedia newsroom aired some home truths about the development of online media serving in South Africa and the challenges behind producing, editing, uploading, marketing, managing and monetizing online video content. He believes that we live in a 2meg economy, where users prefer snippets of info to long-loading epic video productions. Many good questions raised. But more importantly, De Waal mentioned his enthusiasm at the industry coming together at events like PodCamp to examine our common challenges and together create a stronger industry in the future. Bravo.
Speaking of the need to monetize, Rowan Polovin from MyVideo looked at the current state of the online video environment in South Africa and outlined a few revenue models and advertising options. He listed MyVideo, Zoopy, Die Burger and The Times as some of the major channels of local video delivery and suggested that the future of video in this country looks brighter than ever.
