Last year (or was it the year before?) I was fortunate to attend the IMC Conference in Cape Town followed by an informative Heavy Chef session. I’d recommend the IMC Conference to anyone wanting to expand their understanding of integrated marketing and learn what we as Web AddiCT(s); often take for granted. The @IMCConference hits Cape Town again this year on 5 & 6 June 2012. This time around I wont be able to attend, you’ll find me in Seattle learning from and connecting with the bright minds at SMX Advanced, but the good folks at Living Your Brand have allowed me to give one of you a free ticket to attend the IMC Confernce valued at over R5000.
The IMC Conference will host some of the top marketing minds in the country, showcasing the new trends of the various communication disciplines available. From this delegates will be able to select the tools that will best suit their marketing communication needs.
The first IMC Conference was held in 2010 in Cape Town. The event was a huge success hosting speakers such as Chris Moerdyk (Bizcommunity), Walter Pike (PIKE), Ben Wagner (Native) and attracted close to 200 marketing delegates from across the country.
After the success of IMC Conference 2010, a big demand came from Johannesburg which led to hosting the first Johannesburg event in 2011. Speakers at this conference were Heidi Brauer (Group Marketing British Airways), Nikki Cockcroft (Woolworths) and Nazeer Suliman (Microsoft), just to mention a few. This event saw 300 marketing delegates attending.
For 2012, the IMC Conference will be heading to both cities.
You do not have to like or retweet anything to win a ticket to IMC Conference 2012 in Cape Town.
All you need to do is head over to the IMC Conference site and have a look at the great line-up of speakers and workshops then head back to this post and tell us, by commenting below, who you are looking forward to hearing present if and when you win this ticket.
An example comment which would qualify you into the random draw would be: “I’d really like to hear [Name Surname]‘s views on at the IMC Conference in Cape Town” The winner will be randomly selected on 21 May 2012. Win or lose don’t forget to subscribe to the conference mailing list to ensure your finger remains on the pulse.
Attending conferences in your budget? Book your tickets here.
Take WordPress, the e-commerce plugin WooCommerce, some themes from Obox, shopping comparison, credit card processing and a courier service and you have the all-in-one ‘How To Setup your own South African ecommerce website’ named QikCommerce - without the time and capital investment usually involved with a new online shopping venture. This is for the business owners who wants to move beyond the realm of free Woza Online brochure websites (launched in 2008 as Google Sites and rebranded as Woza Online) and switch to one of the best internet tools (WordPress) currently available.
We could debate wether WordPress is a CMS or not but the writing is on the wall with the communities quick uptake of the many ecommerce plugins currently available. Here is a breakdown of the QikCommerce offering in their own words.
QikCommerce lets you create an online shop in minutes. We make the complicated stuff like payment, delivery and online marketing simple so you can focus on what’s important: setting up your online shop. Make use of our delivery network to make sure your product is shipped quickly and directly to your customers. All your payments are handled through our PayU partners. No high collateral, no expensive technology required. It’s all set up for you. Your shop gets the benefit of our existing marketing network. SEO, SEM, banners, page rankings and pay per clicks… leave it up to us. We make and keep it simple.
In the past we’ve covered customer relationship management utilizing SMS and what Clickatell like to call personalised priority messaging so follow the links if you need to know more about that. What Your Web AddiCT believes QIkCommerce could do with is a little bit of SMS loving. You might be wondering why QikCommerce would need SMS in the wwworld of push notifications, always-on internet connections and a host of social media channels at our disposal to get the message across. My reasoning is simple: We almost always check an SMS notification whenever and wherever receive it so we could immediately know when our parcel, ordered from a QikCommerce powered store, is being shipped. Being interrupted by a (pleasant) SMS could aso serve as a marketing tool. You’re at dinner with someone special and *beep beep*… “Awesome, the item I bought your at Shop XYZ will arrive tomorrow” Big smiles all around and you’ve just told someone about the store your shop online at.
So how would this be possible? Web AddiCT sponsors, Clickatell, have recently released an updated Connect API which gives developers the ability to:
All from within their own application. This could be rolled into the QikCommerce signup process and because QikCommerce hooks into WooCommerce their already is an SMS plugin that does the job. This makes sense to me. How about you? If none of what I’ve just written needs explaining or if you have other ideas involving SMS head on over to the Connect API Forum else comment below.
This video by Chatterbox Digital covers social media stats in South Africa in 2012. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Google+ and of course MXit are all mentioned. Enjoy the weekend everyone. By the way ChatterBox Digital, your Joomla setup has been compromised, your website has been hacked. You are advertising Hotels in Italy (in Russian). Just in case you wondering why you aren’t attracting any search engine traffic. 
Recently Google replaced its android market and launched a new all rounder platform for apps, books, music and movies called Google Play. All the users of Android 2.2 and its above version notices software update within few days time, although other than name rest changes are minimal. Knowing this fact Google enters into the market and by combining Apple’s iCloud which is known for its online storage space and Amazon’s plan for selling eBooks online developed a new platform ‘Google Play’.
The main thing behind replacing android market with Google Play is android’s strong market place growth. In last few years, android made significant progress in apps and games. But, Google Play will be replacing the android market on the new devices only. However, in coming days it will be rolled out for the older versions of android devices. The logo, layout and UI are same for now and the changes are expected in next update.
Google hopes that people currently using android devices will definitely notice about offering of Google with their new and updated apps. Additionally, Google have to offer more apps and services than what android offered to their customer. This will helps in increase in their profit, sale and good market place. It also gives chance to other companies like Warner music group to sale their products online. For advertisement Google already announced a promotional “Seven Days to Play” scheme where users can play games, download music and read eBooks in a discounted price. Google Play is Google’s first major attempt to gather all its services and products under one roof. Google expect a good review because of their strong brand name, seamless purchasing and a compelling offering. It is expected that in future, Google Play will drive more revenue than android. The intentions of Google are clear, to help their user with more and more multimedia tools. It’s a one stop shop for multimedia users.
According to Alexa the Pinterest website is already ranked in the Top 25 in South Africa. I have seen no mention by any agency that their clients are actively engaging with the Pinterest community as yet. I am not just talking about simply creating an account and pinning a few things to a few boards, anyone can do that. I am talking about utilizing Pinterest for crowdsourcing of some type to achieve a business objective. If you know of any Pinterst campaigns originating from South Africa please let us know by commenting below or getting in touch via the various social media channels.
36Boutiques Pin to Win.
36Boutiques is South Africa’s premier online fashion store for Women. They are currently running a simple little contest on Pinterest where their followers are able to win a pair of Melissa wedges. Follow 36Boutique on Pinterest. Find the pair of shoes, repin & you could win. Easy does it.
There has to be more campaigns out there originating from South Africa. Add your Pinterest campaign here by posting a comment and sharing it with the rest of us…
Africa’s biggest social network intent on expanding its social development programmes to affect large scale social change across the continent
Marlon Parker, founder of Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) and, avid social change and e-democracy campaigner, has joined Mxit to head up its social impact vehicle, called Mxit Reach.
Mxit Reach has, over the years, developed numerous platforms that help young South Africans learn, interact and cope with the challenges that they face in everyday life.
Although Parker worked closely with Mxit to develop some of these programmes, his appointment to head of Mxit Reach will allow the platform to substantially improve how it allows NGO’s and social entrepreneurs opt in to the system.
Parker is globally recognised for his work in developing mobile and pc based programmes that assists governments, NGOs and communities help people live better lives.
“All my life, I’ve wanted to be part of an organisation that has access to the type of technology and broad split of community that will allow us to affect the biggest change. Mxit has over 50 million users across the continent and beyond, and with over 10 million active users in South Africa alone, it provides a unique opportunity to extend the good work that we are doing,” says Parker.
“Every time I speak at an international conference, there is talk about how other countries can help Africa. I think that Mxit Reach has the potential to allow Africa to help Africa, which is really exciting.”
Mxit Reach already offers a number of social impact tools. One such programme is a portal, on Mxit, where young adults receive counselling for drug and substance abuse, physical or mental abuse, dept management, depression and general counselling. This platform was built and managed by Marlon and the team at RLabs in the past.
Other initiatives that fall within Mxit Reach are a South African curriculum based learning platforms that provides maths and science learners with CSIR-approved tutors, subject material and quizzes; a smart citizen platform that simplifies youth rights and promotes their responsibility in creating the future of South Africa, a platform that helps people in Indonesia find safe hospitals, meeting points and help during natural disasters and a number of research based projects that highlight the concerns of young adults in South Africa.
The list of governments, organisations and NGOs that Mxit already works with is impressive. These include the National Planning Commission, the World Health Organisation, UN, Unicef, Harvard University, the Department of Basic Education, Department of Energy, the US Presidency and many more. Parker plans to increase these to include many more globally recognised organisations and governments.
“We are very lucky and humbled to have him join our team. For some of us, the potential to have a positive impact on our community is the reason we get out of bed. Mxit Reach is truly a platform built by Africans, for Africa, and Marlon is the best man in the world to take it to the next level.” says Alan Knott-Craig, Mxit CEO.
With over 50 million users, Mxit is the biggest social network in Africa.
“This is a proud moment for me as Marlon Parker used to be my lecturer and has had a substantial impact on the way I do things. He will now be able to deduct 50 million from his ’2 billion 1 lifetime’ goal
While Linux is running our phones, friend requests, tweets, financial trades, ATMs and more, most of us don’t know how it’s actually built. This short video takes you inside the process by which the largest collaborative development project in the history of computing is organized. Based on the annual report “Who Writes Linux,” this is a powerful and inspiring story of how Linux has become a community-driven phenomenon.
Before Web AddiCT went Mac it used to be all Linux. The first 2 years of posts published here was composed on a Linux machine.
Consider the following companies: Siemens, Motorola, Palm, Nokia, Windows Mobile and now RIM. What do they have in common?
The most notable similarity shared by most of them (if not all of them) is that, during the last decade (2000 to 2010) they all once enjoyed great success at the summit of the mobile phone food chain. Unfortunately that success brought with it an unwanted burden of keeping up with a fast changing industry. Disappointingly for most of them, the same success quickly deteriorated into something that no one could have imagined — literally falling off a cliff.
Enter the Cliff effect. According to Tomi Ahonen (the guy who coined the term) , “… The cliff effect is the sudden comprehensive collapse of a business..”.
Tomi Ahonen argues that in contrast with other industries, this phenomenon simply does not apply. He further illustrates it with an example from the motorcar industry.
“… If you have a bad model car, and your sales suffers because of it, you will not lose all your loyal customers in a year or two, because many of your customers have last year’s model and are happy with it, and will not even come to your car dealership until two years from now to consider the replacement model, by which time you have had plenty of time to fix the problems with your current car model.
In mobile phones we do not have that luxury. The pace is so fast. And note that the rate of the collapse due to The Cliff is actually accelerating. This also suggests the replacement cycle and The Cliff are related.
The average replacement cycle for mobile phones in year 2000 was 21 months. By year 2006 it was down to 18 months. Today it is 16 months (all handsets). For smartphones it is even faster, at 11.5 months…”
In essence, the cliff effect is a result of a number of factors, but the main ones are:
For a much more comprehensive analysis of the Cliff Effect, Click here.
It’s an indisputable, very well established fact — Mobile app development is the hottest thing right now. Given the ever growing successes of platforms such as IOS and Android, which have seen the creation of new economies, it’s not that hard to believe the many analysts bold predictions of mobility’s future.
For once, the future of mobile in (South) Africa truly appears as bright as analysts predictions claim — it seems they are about to be vindicated. That’s because, this week, The University of the Western Cape in conjunction with Gijima and it’s partners, have launched a brand new initiative called CodeJam (Not to be confused with Google CodeJam which by the way also starts very soon).
According to Gijima, CodeJam “… will bring Students from all disciplines to solve real world problems…”.
What is Code Jam?
Code_Jam is an initiative to empower young people to write/create mobile apps, but it’s also a competition. Students will be trained on IOS programming, user interface design and user experience design, etc … which will then culminate in the best apps developed receiving awards.
How codeJam will work:
Phase 1: Idea Inception and Evaluation
Students are encouraged to register and log their ideas. More importantly, students do not have prior programming knowledge. By simply having an app idea, they can team up with another student developer, or vice versa. The app idea will then go through an inspection and evaluation checkpoint conducted by fellow peers and a panel.
Phase 2: App Design
Once the idea has successfully passed the evaluation stage, it will then further be enhanced thence proceed to the design phase, where student will design the UI and UX for the app. Thereafter, a combination of peer reviews and panel voting will decide the finalists for Phase 3.
During Phase 3: Implementation
Successful App designs that will make to the final phase, which will then be implemented/coded , and will subsequently be demo’ed / presented to a live audience. This will culminate in with audience along side judges deciding the eventual winning apps.
Final thoughts: I believe this is a great initiative and definitely a first of It’s kind. Also, the success of this particular initiative will induce or drive many more similar projects. We will probably see organisations looking to inspire and empower communities following this model using other platforms such as Android and WP7.
South African Pinterest Campaigns
Gijima and UWC launch “Code_Jam 2012″
Felicia: I HAVE A NEW MXIT NOW SINCE I CANT USE MY FIRTS ON... 
Gcaroro:Send Post to SMS Subscribers Send post via SMS?... Gcaroro: hi,i just want to know how to set this setting... 
michael: how can i run 2go on my pc?somebody should hlp me ... 
Irfaan Imamdin: I'd love to get insight into how Jason Xenopoulos ... 
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