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Content, conversation, community – Social media is about people

News from the conference room: this is a series of blog posts in which blogging experts briefly review key Tech4Africa 2010 talks and panels from Day 1 and 2.

Day 2

Social media is about being genuine. The buzz of “social media” has created a pool of people calling themselves social media gurus, experts, mavens, you name it. This frenzy and popularity, still largely in the IT bubble (and where it spills over) creates a layered conversation of buzz words that ultimately alienates people. Since social media is all about relationship and human connectivity, you need to be genuine so that people have something to connect with. Otherwise, you won’t attract many new clients or retain old ones.

Vibrant discussion in the Tech4Africa session crowdsourced the following best practices for companies wanting to be in the social media space (with thanks to Andy Hadfield on stage):

1) Listen first.
2) Don’t have shit products.
3) Focus on – Content. Collaboration. Community.
4) You can’t win every battle. Shake off the failures and learn from them.
5) Understand content, conversations, campaigns.
6) Understand your customers. Some want to buy. Some want to complain.
Some want to engage.

People have, rather obviously, been communicating since the beginning of time. We have given it a new name because we’ve gotten excited about how technology crosses old boundaries and allows us to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime (provided they’re in the same online community that is).
The only new thing about communication is the technology involved.

Social media is about relationship, about people, about community. Online communities using social media to engage are just doing what humans have been doing for years – forming bonds with one another. The technology itself is almost irrelevant. It’s about how we talk to each other. “Social media just allows people to do what they would have done in the stone age if they had the Internet” (@afairweather).

For brands trying to work in this space they need to constantly remind themselves that social media is about people and about building relationship. That means portraying themselves as a human, not as a marketing brand.

Tips for how to behave online that came from the discussions:

* Be who you are.
* You don’t need to invent conversations – make a good product, put it out there and the buzz will happen if people like it.
* Live your brand.
* Don’t make the mistake of using marketing concepts to think about issues that are actually about people.

Rather than feeling forced onto platforms like Twitter and Facebook because “we should be there”, brands should be focusing on good quality content that creates conversation, and that results in a shared sense of community.

Samantha Fleming
http://afrosocialmedia.wordpress.com/
@afrosocialmedia

The Red Flag is Up, Stop the Race

News from the conference room: this is a series of blog posts in which blogging experts briefly review key Tech4Africa 2010 talks and panels from Day 1 and 2.

Day 2

Many, if not most, large brands, especially non-consumer brands, should stay the hell away from Twitter and Facebook. In fact, says corporate digital guru Andy Hadfield, even commodity consumer brands like banks and cellphone companies should consider _not_ ‘joining the conversation’ on Facebook or Twitter. Because it’s not really a conversation. Conversations are between a person and a person, not between a person and an abstract organisational construct.

We’re clearly in a trough of disillusionment, those many of us in the social media industry who spent the past few years being very excited about the immense possibilities and unknowable future impact. We’re now stepping back, aghast at the monster we have created that is racing off in lots of directions: many pointless, some actively harmful to the online community we have a loyalty to.

Today, World+Dog is doing social media. It’s not that hard to set up social media sites, and the business of providing ‘social media solutions’ has exploded. R15k to set up a Facebook page for some sucker^h^h^h^h innovative and authentic company.

Those who’ve been doing it for a long time are putting up red flags. How about NOT doing it, they say?

Having a Facebook page is a panacea for nothing, commented Alistair Fairweather from M&G.

The bottom line is that people don’t love brands. They may love the product that a brand produces. They may simply use a brand’s product because the brand hasn’t pissed them off enough yet to move to a competitor.

The nub of the matter for the panel, after half an hour of fairly intense discussion and even argumentative tub-thumping, is that there is a fundamental contradiction that cannot be resolved as long as the marketing department is the start and the end of corporates involvement in social media. Mostly, so-called conversations online have little bearing on the product, on the customer support, on the supply chain, on the real world.

Basically, most of the top social media people in SA are honest, realistic, and well-intentioned. They are struggling to look a customer in the eye, knowing that the company makes a crap product and delivers half-baked service, but that wants to be ‘authentic and engaged’ online.

Social media is about conversations that people honestly care about. No care, no conversation. No honesty, no conversation.

Is this the SA social media industry putting the brakes on the hype, looking to inject some realism before too many brands do too many ill-considered, expensive and futile online campaigns? Before brand managers get so burned that it wreaks major damage the industry that is trying to sell them the snake oil?

Let’s hope so.

Roger Hislop
www.sentientbeing.co.za
@d0dja

Advice for entrepreneurs

News from the conference room: this is a series of blog posts in which blogging experts briefly review key Tech4Africa 2010 talks and panels from Day 1 and 2.

Day 2

Marcel Klaassen, from FNB, in his opening remarks of Day 2, gave participants at Tech4Africa four crucial pieces of advice for new entrepreneurs in South Africa:

1) “Smurf it up” – Focus on your passion! Because of the way the world has flattened, you can do what you’re passionate about. You’ll probably find an audience for it, and you’ll probably be able to monetise it.

2) Appreciate business fundamentals but don’t be restricted by them. Embrace the business model, but keep it simple.

3) Be patient. Inevitably you are the curve. Not just ahead of the curve, you are creating a completely new curve. Decide where you are in the cycle. Are you the bus? Or are you the person helping people onto the bus?

4) Quote from Adrian Gore (Founder of Discovery). Being an entrepreneur is like jumping out of an aeroplane with a box of silkworms instead of a parachute, and praying that they are overachieving silkworms!

Samantha Fleming
http://afrosocialmedia.wordpress.com/
@afrosocialmedia

Location Scaling and Herding Cats

News from the conference room: this is a series of blog posts in which blogging experts briefly review key Tech4Africa 2010 talks and panels from Day 1 and 2.

Day 1

Joe Stump (SimpleGeo) on scaling a business and handling developers.

The masses of data created in web 2.0 has started following Moore’s Law (according to Sergy Brin) and with this increase in data as well as real time tracking it the overload of information becomes a supply and demand problem. The more data you have, the less the data is worth.

There is a big drive for location based information, however the value of this information decreases drastically over distance and time. The relevance of this information depends on: What the information is; Who it is about and What information is Virtually nearby or relevent. With the large adoption of services like FourSquare and MyTown it becomes evident that this gaming style of applications providing relevant location based information are becoming very popular. [As a side fact, more people visit MyTown per day than the total number of people who have accessed FourSquare since its inception.] At the end of the day users are looking for relevant information that can enhance their current experience.

Moving onto online scaling, Joe stressed the necessity of automation with the cloud as well as separating data into partitions from the beginning being a must. An important question that needs to be answered is whether to scale Up or Out. Out is normally better when you are on a budget and expand by getting lots of basic storage; whereas Up would be investing in high-end servers that are generally very costly. The specific language that you use is more based on the application and are not really a factor when scaling.

Another crutial point is having set standards and conventions from the beginning is critical for continuity throughout the business. It lowers the barriers of entry for new team members and makes the different components work together more smoothly, as well as helping if you want to publicize code at a later date. (This became an issue at Digg) Providing this continuity was best done through regular communication between the teams and Joe is an advocate for the SCRUM model to ensure constant communication. Testing was also a must, with different components being tested automatically and peer reviewed before being uploaded. He also believes in a “Swiss Cheese” style of coding which leaves holes in the code to be filled up later.

Dealing with developers can often be a tricky task – mostly due to their passion and personality type. As the core generators of online services they need to be carefully lead through expansion and given enough freedom to work their magic.

Roger Norton
www.rogernorton.net
@rogernort

Boiling the Ocean

News from the conference room: this is a series of blog posts in which blogging experts briefly review key Tech4Africa 2010 talks and panels from Day 1 and 2.

Day 1

During his talk “Boiling The Ocean: how a VoIP mobile business is changing the shape of the Mobile Industry” on how Internet Solutions has progressed since he was asked to start it up and take on the main Mobile Providers, Justin Spratt delved into just a few of the obstacles that he had to overcome in making that happen.

It all came about from them wanting to scratch the itch of mobile costs being too high in SA. With variable costs being around 5c per minute and charges around R2 they saw a clear gap to fill. Deciding to do this through VOIP over an enterprises existing WiFi network, they were able to come up with a very viable solution. In order to do this their requirements were to start with extremely talented people, strive for technical excellence (“Nobody does it better than us” – JS) and making sure that the leadership was given a long enough leash to be able to adapt quickly and effectively.

When it came to building the business, creating the core technology was easy. Their first version vastly outperformed the mobile operators. One of the biggest issues was the diversity of Mobile OS. With Blackberry not opening their API and Nokia having 3 OS versions – each not upgradable, this was no easy feat. [On a side not he made a prediction that Blackberry will be in serious decline in the next few years… This is because the customer is not the center of their development. Also that Android will soon overtake the iPhone due to its openness.] With Microsoft being years behind the game they have chosen to focus on writing software for Android, iPhone and Blackberry only.

When looking at moving the main routing through a central place they originally looked in India but soon moved to Israel because of the language barrier.

Deciding to run on a model where companies only pay for what they use and IS covers the setup cost they have managed to bring their prices down, starting at 50c per minute.

As Take-Aways Justin left us with 3 words: Usability, Adapt and Love. For him these were the most important ingredients in their success. Creating the customer at the center of their development was absolutely critical as well as being adaptable as situations and roll-outs differ. Love was needed to be inherent in the product and that “People want to see caring in your eyes”…

For more details, find Justin Spratt’s presentation slides here.

Roger Norton
www.rogernorton.net
@rogernort

Leila C. Janah inspires delegates to change the world

News from the conference room: this is a series of blog posts in which blogging experts briefly review key Tech4Africa 2010 talks and panels from Day 1 and 2.

Day 1

The keynote speaker for the first day of Tech4Africa 2010 was Leila Chirayath Janah from Samasource, a woman that every one of us should aspire to be like. She gave up a life in America to come to Africa to teach.

Out of this she founded Samasource, which allows people living in poverty to cross the digital divide. Leila surprised the audience with some astounding stats on education and literacy levels in Africa, which are higher than we all think. The real problem is lack of work, unemployment drives young people to join terrorist organisations in droves because it is the only way to earn money to feed their families.

Local trade and crafts does not make an impact on the poor either. Products made by poor people are often only bought by locals or a few tourists, making a maximum of $1 a day for the sellers.

Conversely, most corporations do not make products that are affordable for the majority of the 3rd world citizens. In Leila’s words, ‘we must engage the bottom of the pyramid if we are to eradicate poverty‘.

Samasource’s mission is to connect poor people to work via the internet, it builds tools to allow their customers to work with them without outsourcing to a large company.

According to Leila, “the Internet is not just an information superhighway, its a work superhighway”, we can use the tools and connectivity the internet provides to make a real difference to global unemployment.

Samasource’s key value proposition is the ‘virtual assembly lines’, where companies give work on a per task basis. This allows people to work from local centers and internet cafes, eliminating the need to travel long distances to big cities to find work.

The system, and Leila herself, is inspiring and taught every delegate at Tech4Africa today that we can use the internet to make a difference and we don’t have to be rich or famous to do it. We can only hope that local initiatives like Heather Ford’s ‘GeekRetreat’ can follow in Leila’s footsteps and we, as South African Geeks, can begin to bridge the gap between the connected and the rest.

Heidi Schneigansz
http://snowgoose.co.za
@snowgoosesa

Tech4Africa 2010 begins: The Fifth Estate, WiFi and VOIP

News from the conference room: this is a series of blog posts in which blogging experts briefly review key Tech4Africa 2010 talks and panels from Day 1 and 2.

Day 1

Tech4Africa 2010, the most anticipated event on the South African tech calendar, officially kicked off this morning. The brainchild of Gareth Knight, the event aims to bring the global giants and South African minds together to discuss the possibilities of human enabled technology and communications.

With international speakers like Clay Shirky, Leila Chirayath Janah and Dustin Diaz, supported by local minds like Alistair Fairweather, Rob Stokes and Barbara Mallinson (and too many more to mention), the conference promises to be, well, rad.

The proceedings were kicked off by Internet Solutions CEO; Derek Wilcocks. He spoke about cloud computing and the impact that the internet is having on our society today, describing the internet as The Fifth Estate. According to Wilcocks, the internet is a ‘power block in society, a force that can determine our society and communications’. He spoke of global corporations who are using the internet and social media to open communication channels, perform market research, develop brand advocates and increase customer service efficiency, but cautioned us that as powerful as the internet is, employees with the most cohesive face to face networks are up to 23% more productive than their digitally networked counterparts.

Wilcocks reminds us that non verbal communication dominates our lives as we live in an increasingly digital world, but ideally, real words smiles and handshakes should complement, expand and enrich our digital lives.

The second speaker in the Business Stream was Justin Spratt, who spoke on ‘Circumventing Monopolies with VOIP and Wireless’. Justin is the SA geek space’s favorite Australian, who heads up the WIFI and VOIP division at Internet Solutions.

According to Spratt, approximately 70% of phone calls originate from within buildings, so by implementing VOIP networks on fixed and mobile phones, we can save up to 30% of telephony costs, no mean feat on a continent where the consumer and business are being choked by high costs and low availability.

With his customary style, Spratt told us that “With all due respect to King Jobs, the mobile operating system currently sucks”.
Spratt predicted that by the end of 2011, BlackBerry sales will be in decline, due to the fact that the customer is not at the centre of their development and mobile architecture like Android will overtake iPhone and BlackBerry due to the open nature of the Google platform. IS are only developing their VOIP service for mobile software that they deem has a future, namely Symbian, Android and iPhone (only because you simply can’t ignore the iPhone).

IS aims to install their WIFI hotspots in every major centre, airport and corporate so they can ‘get into our spaces and save us money’ by automatically picking up that you are in the hotspot and routing you onto the network.

Spratt concluded that the key learnings from the IS VOIP project were not groundbreaking technologies but good usability, the ability to adapt and passion for your team, your project and your product.

Heidi Schneigansz
http://snowgoose.co.za
@snowgoosesa