Dear diary
You guessed right, my fav colour is blue! We have a sunny warm day in Kwazulu Natal today and the waves should be lovely for the Quicksilver Pro this weekend. I suppose my mom will be running around like a "Japanese tourist" to try and cover the event. I truly hope she is not going to leave me alone for too long, I really really miss her when she goes out for the day, what with my dad being at the office as well.
My dad is into horse racing and he is a very very clever person! He can tell you who has won the July in any year! He works so hard and such long hours. I dont know how he does it. I believe sometimes he has 9 different venues around the world, from Dubai, Uk, Sweden and locally and each centre has 9 races each, that is a lot of horse racing!
For you that do not know anything about horse racing, I have picked up some of the rules and the way it works. All these horses walk around in this space called the parade ring and from what I can understand, just showing off! Then they go down to the start and into the pens, that is little boxes with gates and next thing someone shouts "and away they go"! Well, if I had to follow that routine every day, I will kick in my heels and refuse to leave my box, but it does not work that way at all! The horses also has to do their bit. I have heard my mom from time to time saying "I have paid for their feeding", mm, must be when she has had a little "flutter" on them ponies and they did not perform the way she wanted them to perform, but that is life!
Back to my dad, even though he works such long hours, as in night racing tomorrow night, he always makes time to play with me and allows me on his shoulder every night and spoil me with a lovely bite! I love him so much and as long as he enjoys his job and his lovely punters, we will always support him!
Well, with my dad's busy schedule I am now only seeing "petshop boys" tomorrow but I understand. The wait was worthwile because tomorrow I get to choose my birthday gift.
Some advise for any punters out there that would like to have a "little flutter on them ponies", play with your head and not your pocket! See you around!
I am today meeting South African Ambassador to the United Nations, Dumisani Kumalo, in New York to discuss the unfolding crisis in Zimbabwe.
I will make the case that South Africa must use its position as rotational President of the United Nation Security Council to put the prevention of conflict in Zimbabwe firmly on the UN’s agenda. As the UN noted in 2005: “no task is more fundamental to the UN than the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict.”
In particular, the following should be considered by the Security Council:
There are legitimate fears that President Mugabe is preparing a bloody intimidation campaign to ensure that he wins a run-off election. The MDC have already pleaded for international intervention before there are “dead bodies on the streets of Harare.”
In light of these developments, and mindful of events in Kenya earlier this year, it is crucial that international multi-lateral organisations such as the UN and the African Union take pro-active steps to prevent bloodshed in Zimbabwe.
As the current President of the Security Council, South Africa has a unique opportunity to influence the UN to take action. However, according to the Security Council’s programme, Zimbabwe is not even on the agenda for April – the month that South Africa holds the rotational presidency.
This is inexplicable given recent developments in Zimbabwe. I intend to ask the Ambassador what steps, if any, he is taking to ensure that the crisis in Zimbabwe will be placed on the UN Security Council’s agenda.
I will also ask the Ambassador whether he will ensure that Zimbabwe is on the agenda at the UN Summit to discuss UN support for AU peace efforts taking place on 17 April. The summit was initiated by South Africa and will be chaired by President Thabo Mbeki.
South Africa has so far not used its seat on the Security Council to advance the cause of human rights around the world. Our failure to stand up for human rights in Myanmar, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Cuba and the DRC has led UN Watch to call us “the chief human rights villain” on the Security Council.
South Africa now has the opportunity to silence critics of its foreign policy by using its position on the UN Security Council to urge UN action in Zimbabwe. Not only will this help salvage our reputation abroad but, more importantly, it may save the lives of thousands of Zimbabweans.
Dear diary
I failed to mention that in our African Grey world we generally only take to one human being at a time. My parents are very very lucky that I have taken to both, which means there is a very happy medium in this household........happy......not so sure this morning!
My dad has his daily routine which I follow with him on his shoulder. He has been so sweet and kind to me I even whistled an aria to him, I think it must be from the works of Mozart because that is the only composer my mom listens to. As soon as my dad has finished his shaving, I know it is time for me to retreat to my tree or cage.
My mom is a different story this morning. The old lady came back last night from my dad's celebrations with the neighbours at the Upperdek at Ushaka, I am surprised they received them back after their day out last Monday- suppose they were not all that bad! I know she loves me a lot but instead of keeping to "mothering" me she was "smothering" me last night! Oh my golly, I thought she is not going to give up!
Not to worry, I have my means and ways of sorting her out! This morning she made me my usual pronutro and I had one teaspoon and then "pulled up my face" and put my foot down and refused to have more. I was more interested in playing with my dad's sock and a clothes hanger my mom gave me.
I could not help to "eavesdrop" on my parents again. It seems to me the whole world is upside down. Apparantely their is a place called Zim where the poor human beings are not treated very well, they should take a note out of my parents book how to treat each other, I have no complaints! Then I overheard my parents talking about the fact that things are not too good in our own country. I know they always try and work on a 5 year plan. They mentioned 2 options, either move to Cape Town, seems to me everybody loves Cape Town or maybe Mauritius. My mom wanted to know what about me and my dad said "Barney can just fly there by himself".....not to sure about that, I hope he was only joking! In the mean time I think we just have to make the best of this lovely country! I personally love the weather.
I am signing off and will keep you posted about my Thursday-visit to 'Petshop boys'. Cross your toes and thumbs that I will be all fine.
Dear Diary
This seems like a birthday colour. The big day has arrived and I got to play with my dad's gift wraps- no gift for me yet! I overheard my parents saying that I get to choose my gifts on Thursday when I am going to see my 'foster mother' at 'petshop boys'. Well, that sounds all good, at least I will pick something that I will like!
I hope my dad is having a nice birthday but it is such a pity he has to go to work. I was spoilt rotten yesterday, even fell asleep on my dad's back.
My mom and myself were watching National Geographic the other day. I was so amazed to learn more about other bird species. My mom tried to explain to me that the racing pigeons are so terrific which means I will have to prove myself cause see, I am such a 'spoilt brat' and though I have a lovely nature, I want all the attention for myself.
To get back to the racing pigeons- there are all kinds of theories by people, in your world they are called professors that claim that pigeons find their way home by smell sense and some say the pigeon have magnets in a certain portion of the beak that connects with the magnetics of earth. Wow, I was so amazed to see the distances they are taken to and the long distance they have to fly home. There was this man in Virginia in USA that used the method of taking this pigeon's partner away from him from time to time and he also removed the female the night before the main race. The man said that will motivate the male to fly back home faster than the others and hopefully the man will win the gold! The pigeon did make it home and came 2nd out of 300 pigeons. Guess the man did not get his gold but I cannot imagine my mom and dad make me fly such a long distance and all for gold!
I on the other hand have no idea how to fly because I have this lovely comfort zone. At the moment with my malting, I look as if I have been in the ring with Mike Tyson for a few rounds! I always have this "bad habbit" of "jump flying" off my tree when I get excited seeing my loved ones. I do land on my feet but unfortunately my head hits the tiles!
My parents are celebrating my dad's birthday tonight- I hope they have a great time and remember to bring me a "birdie bag"! See you around and catch you later!
Dear diary
Today and tomorrow is a big day for me. My dad is taking off from work today and tomorrow is my birthday. I will be 2 years and 4 months. Luckily my dad and the old lady is spending some quality time with me and the other two 'feather kids'.
Just as well they are staying home. I did not mean to eavesdrop but a little "birdie" told me that they sort of got out of hand last week but I do not mind cause my dad works very very hard to bring home the bacon and the cashew nuts!
My mom and dad are very proud of me this morning. Since my arrival, I heard my mom calling my dad "piesang". Well, at first I could not understand why on earth would she do that but then I realized that in the human world it is a term of endearment! After trying to get me to say "piesang" for a year, this morning I actually did say "piesang"! My dad and mom were so happy.....well, if that makes them happy then I am happy.
I had such a luvely shower this morning and being spoiled with my mom's conditioner. She does not know how much I enjoyed that, what with the malting taking place. It is not a very pleasant experience. I am seeing my 'foster mother' that hand reared me tomorrow and hopefully my old lady will settle down and get peace of mind about my condition.
I have to sign of now, my daddy is on his way home and hopefully he has a nice treat for me such as prickley pear or something yummy! Catch you later! Bye-bye.
Dear Diary
Wow, I thought I will never get around my diary session! My mom went shopping this morning cause she had a little "flutter" on the Grand National in the UK. I had no idea what all this fuss was about when she got so excited yesterday- 40 horses jumping over them high fences and the beauty of it the old lady does not even watch them jump, she turned the telly off and just get "sudden death results" which brings me back to my birthday gift. I still wander what am I getting for my birthday?
My dad pointed to a spelling mistake of one of my diary sessions but hey I can get away with it because I am an African Grey and my mom is Afrikaans, say no more! So happy that my mom went to bed earlier last night which meant that I had a good nights rest.
Funny how I know when the old lady is going out for the day. She thinks she can pacify me with cashew nuts, luvely bowl of fruit and lots of provitas. What she does not know is that the mess she walked into when she came home from the malls, were deliberate! That will teach her to leave me on my own for so long!
At the moment I am extremely vocal, sitting on my mom's shoulder and let her have it. "Come my boy, hello poepies, whisteling happy birthday, mmm, (that is what she normally says when she is on the phone) and my famous Barney want a apple".....I hope she gets the message.
I truly hope my mom and dad are going to take me to "petshop boys" this week, that is the lovely couple that hand reared me. I am not looking too good at the moment but my mom was told I am pulling my feathers for attention, let them work that one out! I get a lot of attention but one can never get too much!
I will keep you posted about my "looks".
Dear diary
My choice of colour reflects my mood this morning. I am a little grumpy cause my mom kept me awake last night watching Mr Hollands Opus with Richard Dreyfuss. What she does not realize, even though I am a male African Grey, I am still a baby and do need my 12 hours sleep. To make matters worse, the 2 budgies that I share my territory with, irritated me so much this morning, but I sorted them out on the spot with a well deserved "stop it"!
So happy my mom is trying her best to be a lady, that is what she normally tells them and it could have been worse!
It is going to be a very very long day because my dad has just left for the office and I miss him very much during the day. So nice to hear the key in the front door at night. My mom has cleaned my cage and area. I will try my utmost not to be too messy today but hey, why not, the old lady has to do it, that is her job! I have had my pronutro porridge and I keep asking for my apple, but no, my mom is so busy cleaning up, I will just keep nagging.
I hope she will bring on them cashew nuts, yummy, they are one of my favourites.
Well, I better say good-bye cuase I want my apple now! Maybe my mood will be better once I had my siesta this afternoon.
Dear Diary
I have decided to inspire my mommy to share her experience, her thoughts and my daily behaviour with other Arican Grey lovers out there. Oh, by the way, some of you might know me, my name is Barney and I am an African Grey. You will see I pop up from time to time when I show off to my loved ones.
On Tuesday the 8th of April, I will be 2years and 4months old. I have settled in nicely into my comfort zone with my new family, oh and it is my dad's birthday as well! Cannot wait to see what my birthday gift will be this year. The gift I received last year I have not taken to- a small rubber ball. New things have to grow on me and sometimes it takes up to 6 weeks for me to really really like it.
Since the age of about 14 months, the words started tumbling out that I have stored. Being a family website there are one or two words that I would rather not repeat! Whenever I use them, my mommy keep on saying "I love you to"....I wonder why? I know she loves me, I feel the same.
I am so lucky that I have carte blanche in this household. Thank heavens I do not get locked up and covered! I have a cage, a tree and a "jungle jim". My routine every morning is as follows: When it suits me to wake my partents, I would start off with "oooooohhh euhhhhh, Barney want a apple, wakka-wakka, what did mummy do?, hello poepies, crinkle cut, how are you?, ok my boy?, hello Barney boy and off course the off limits vocab".
I am not looking too great at the moment, in spite of the fact that my mommy showers me every week and once a month I smell terrific- get a treat with my mommy's conditioner. I am curently malting but somehow I am 'preening' excessively and someone told my mom that I am bored!
I can promise her that is not the case because I am very demanding and my mom is around me 24/7. Anybody out there have any advice for my mom. I would like to reassure her that she should not fret!
Well, got to go and I know you have things to do, people to see and places to go. Will keep you posted about myself. Have a great weekend!
Hospice fete
It is that time of year again. The Hospice fete taking place at Greyville race course, date still to be determined which will be during September 2008. The Hospice are in need of the following - 2 shopping trolleys, book shelves and any item that you are willing to part with, excluding your mother-in-law.....just kidding!
Any useful item gathering dust in your garage and cupboards. The Hospice is doing such a stirling job taking care of aids and cancer patients. Let us show them that we care and be generous. We never know when we, a friend or a relative might need them one day.
Feel free to contact Maya Singh at 031-2074678 for further details. The mother city Cape Town and Joies, please inform loved ones in KZN to open their hearts- Hospice will be very grateful!
Leon Orsmond, the Disruptivator at Osmosis, is here to speak about viral strategies and straight off the bat, he's not the usual kind of speaker. He immediately asks everyone to close their laptops (voluntarily) because he appreciates direction attention and a real connection with his audience.
He's an ex creative director. He's now a guerilla marketer with a message, and on a mission to tell it the way he sees it. He's tired of LSMs, tired of advertising being a one-way monologue that insults your intelligence. He calls people 'people', not consumers.
Osmosis believes banner ads are simply ad agencies' solutions to making money on the internet. But they're hopeless, terrible and annoying.
He loves MXit. Loves mobile. Believes that 'millennials' aren't watching TV anymore and don't answer their phones for three days if they don't feel like it. Leon despises old-school, floundering media and firmly believes that the marketing and advertising industry in general is in a severe state of denial.
At this point, he hasn't even started his Powerpoint presentation yet. He mentions that it'll come on just now. No rush. He's asking users to interact with him, to answer his questions, to have some emotion about all this stuff we've been talking about for the last two days.
The bloggers are doing it. People are creating their own content. We're about to see content that no agency could conceive, says Leon. And the Powerpoint begins ...
Leon wants all mainstream media to Jump the Shark - reach a point where there is no turning back, and where the end of existence for that particular entity begins.
By the way, the presentation is black text on a yellow background. Now it's bright purple. This presentation is not made for drifting off or daydreaming. A huge word fills the screen: Futzing. This is endless passing of time surfing the net, checking Facebook, reading Twitter, receiving emails from friends and checking out links they've suggested. Leon loves futzing and wants us to do it more. Not sure that's possible for some of us, Leon :)
We live in a snack culture. We have a 3 or 4 second snack when checking an SMS. At the office, you could be watching a TV monitor with one eye, scanning your email with the other and listening to a colleague talking about their weekend. We're consuming, consuming, consuming.
We need to shoot the puppy. Make the difficult decision. Do the unthinkable. And Leon means it, as he walks through the delegates instead of just standing at the front. He really wants us to feel the essence of what he's trying to get across. It's time to disrupt the normal. We need to irrevocably change the course by rupturing with convention radically.
But how? Here are some examples:
All of this said, Mike suggests that brands should't measure social media campaigns by quantity. They'll be disappointed if you're hoping to see thousands and thousands of signups. But if you're Toyota and you start a blog that attracts someone who's chosen to only drive Toyota cars for their entire lives, then there has to be value for the brand, and the consumer. Mike describes this as a new kind of LSM. How influencial people are, and how much impact they have on their networks.
Vincent Maher, strategist at Mail and Guardian Online and development brain behind Amatomu, swans onto the stage to talk about the online strategies employed by M&G in the last year or so.
With a budget of R0, Vincent was tasked with conceptualising and rolling out a social media strategy for M&G Online as a lead up to the relaunch of the new mailandguardian.co.za website.
The first project out the door was News in Photos, which evolved out of a need to have an easy to use photo gallery for the M&G Online staff, as well as encourage citizen journalism amongst M&G readers. It's been popular: a good example was a flurry of user photos submitted and shared after the snow in Joburg last year. This project also includes a visual swarm of what photos users are looking at at any one time.
Amatomu exploded onto the SA web scene next. Funnily enough, Vincent Maher and Mike Stopforth were brainstorming together about new web projects and came up with an idea for a blog aggregator. Vincent went away and started Amatomu. Mike went away and launched Afrigator shortly afterwards. Great minds. It took two days to get this site site into Alpha. Such a power coder, Vince is.
Amatomu serves to aggegrate and make it easy to browse blogs in South Africa. Beforehand, there was no single way to see all the blogs in South Africa, and while Amatomu requires a blog to insert a piece of code to be included (which therefore means not ALL blogs are covered) this is the most reliable way of accessing the majority of blogs in SA. Run off php, hosting works out to an inexpensive R7k per month. Based on Arthur Goldstuck's figures yesterday, Vincent concludes that Amatomu is tracking 72% of all blogs in South Africa.
It's been successful because of the competitive spirit and egocentricism of the SA blogosphere. Egos? No! :)
From there, Mail and Guardian released a Facebook app to distribute M&G headlines and then worked to migrate their Blogmark service to Amagama.com - run on Wordpress MU.
Next up was an entertainment events portal called The Guide, with a built-in social network called Yiza. They also built a jobs site called Job Connection and are involved in developing a student news portal called Campus Times.
Somewhere in between, mobile versions of The Guide, Mail and Guardian and Thoughtleader then followed. What is Thoughtleader?
It's been a runaway success for M&G. It's been monetised within six months, with 70 000 unique users and 10 000 newsletter subscribers (but only 300 RSS subscribers!). Vincent draws a line in the sand and states this is proof that when comparing RSS to email, email wins hands down every time.
Think of Thoughtleader as an invite-only multiuser blog, even though the users don't actually log in to the blog. 130 contributors have been invited write articles with an intellectual and thought-provoking slant, across a variety of industries and interests. All posts submitted by authors are approved and moderated by an editor.
Thoughtleader has taken care to give as many filtering options as possible, so users can access the content they're interested in as quickly as possible, instead of M&G deciding what's most important. So users can browse by author, tags, popularity etc.
Because authors write for Thoughtleader for free, they're invited to post whenever they like, about whatever they like. And some interesting news, niche versions of Thoughtleader are on the way: Sportsleader, Businessleader, Techleader and Medialeader.
Not enough on the list here Vincent. You're slacking :)
Eric Edelstein, chairman of Traffic Synergy, is talking affiliate marketing. More specifically, "Assessing affiliate marketing and the instant global sales force it creates".
As an indication of the power of affiliate marketing, Eric starts by quoting 650 leads for a recent company in a single day, generated by Traffic Synergy's group of affiliates.
Affiliate marketing is all about performance-based results. The vendor only pays the affiliate after the sale's gone through, so there's no risk to the company advertising, just a share of the profit to the affiliate program (Traffic Synergy) which then passes this on to their affiliates.
Eric highlights the number of affiliate conferences around the world: Affiliate Summit, PubCon, SES and AdTech. Internationally, affiliate marketing is big business, with thousands of affiliates earning significant incomes. Amazon.com apparently generates 25-30% of their sales via affiliate marketing.
Affiliates are on the bleeding edge. They take the risk, they test new media, they're in charge of niche networks and were the first to take advantage of Facebook social ads. Eric suggests that, for many companies, it makes sense to let the guys who already in the communities do the work for you - you get to focus on building your business while affiliates worry about finding the most advanced technologies to get your brand/product out there in new and effective ways.
Eric moves on to talk about a range of affiliate bites - FROM Adwords benefits to companies wanting to keep their competitors out by allowing affiliates to bid on their keywords TO geotargeting international sites to reach South African visitors on sites like Facebook, Yahoo, IMDB and so on.
Quite a lavish life these super affiliates live. Eric spreads out pics of 8 seater plane parties, 36 hour poker sessions and shindigs (otherwise known as conferences) that the big boys attend.
Why do affiliates prefer networks to individual brands/programmes:
Bottom line? South African affiliate marketing is exploding. One of the Traffic Synergy success stories: a guy who left his 9-5 job to move into full-time affiliate marketing. A year and a half later, he's just bought a house in Camps Bay.
If you’re attending today’s New Media Marketing conference and are planning to Twitter from the event then I’d like to suggest that you all use Hashtags in your twitter posts.
Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.
Using hashtags will not only enable better twitter following for the event but it will also allow users who are not attending the conference the opportunity to watch the events unfold and using hashtags is really simple.
1. You’ll need to follow hashtags on Twitter so that hashtags can pick your tweets up. Visit the hashtags user and click follow.
2. When you tweet from the event add #newmedia08 to your tweet so that hashtags picks your tweet up.
When you tweet with #newmedia08 in your post it will automatically appear on the newmedia08 hashtags page which any user can follow.
Let’s try it out and see how successful hashtags could be.
