I’m not the best writer, so I’m going to struggle to express how I felt on the opening day of the World Cup, but I’ll try anyway. Cape Town honestly felt like another planet – I don’t think SA will ever experience such comradery, ‘gees’ and happiness like we did on the 11th of June 2010. It surely can’t be topped?! Streets lined with thousands of people singing, dancing and blowing vuvuzelas. Everyone was on such a buzz – me included!

I headed down to the V&A Waterfront to watch the opening ceremony and both games. The opening ceremony was a little bit of a let down, but I guess having it during the day meant you couldn’t make use of any lighting, which is one of the things that really makes them special. Not too worry though, Bafana definitely made up for it on their opening fixture against Mexico.

Bafana Bafana vs Mexico

SA almost had the perfect start to the World Cup with Tshabalala firing SA into the lead with what can only be called a spectacular goal! South Africans across the country erupted when that goal went in – I couldn’t contain the excitement!

With Mexico enjoying the lions share of the possession during the game, I knew that we would have to minimise our mistakes to hold on for the win and unfortunately a defensive lapse by our captain, Mokoena let the Mexican’s equalise. So 1-1 the game ended and out of the 4 teams in group A, Bafana are looking the strongest to go through!

Moment of the match: Our ninja goalkeeper, Khune, making that diving save minutes after we had scored. He is going to be the difference between us qualifying for the 2nd round. Mark my words!

Uruguay vs France

I knew quite a few people that went to go and watch this game live at Greenpoint Stadium. It finished a dull 0-0 draw with both sides having a couple of half chances to score. France, having qualified for the World Cup solely on luck, don’t look like posing any threat. They have a number of world class players, but can’t seem to find to play well as a team together.

Uruguay also don’t look that impressive either. One thing they will go into the record books for is picking up the first red card at the 2010 World Cup.

Moment of the match: Thierry Henry trying to claim a handball from the Uruguay defense. Pretty rich coming from him considering how his blatant handball that was the difference between France and Ireland qualifying for the World Cup!

So there you have it, my short and sweet experience of the opening day of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa!

Wednesday 5th May at 4:30pm

Voila! Cape Quarter, Greenpoint
French cuisine. Hope they make a good cup of coffee!

If you have any suggestions of other coffee hot spots, please let me know!

After stumbling across the I love coffee blog last week, I became inspired. Inspired to go around Cape Town and try as many coffee shops as possible in the quest to find the perfect cup enjoy some really good coffee.

So, every Wednesday at 4:30pm, I’ll be venturing out to sit down and enjoy a good cup of coffee at one of the many coffee spots in Cape Town. If you have 30 minutes to kill and would like to join me, I’ll pay. (Only the 1st person to arrive, sorry!) If not, no worries. I’ll bring my Macbook along anyway and catch up on some overdue blogging while sipping back on a good cup of the finest coffee Cape Town has to offer.

Wednesday 21st of April at 4:30pm

Origin Roasting, 28 Hudson Street, De Waterkant.
Quite a fitting place to start Wednesday Coffee Dates.

Wednesday 28th of April at 4:30pm

Deluxe Coffee Works, 25 Church Street, City Center.
I think they have only recently opened, so I’m well keen to try them out.

Hope to see you there!

This is also something really close to home as my sister died because of a drunk driver. The scary thing is with accidents involving alcohol, the person that is drunk most of the time walks away from the accidents, leaving the completely innocent and sober people involved either dead or critically injured.

Castle are running a “Designated Driver” promotion this December. So whenever you go out with a bunch of mates, someone needs to take one for the team and not drink so that you all get home safe! In honour of this hero, Castle will be giving free soft drinks to the designated driver at venues where they are running the promotion. At the end of the night, they’ll take a breathalyser test and if you below the limit, you’ll get entered into the competition to win free cab rides for a year!

Download this PDF to find out where the Castle’s “Designated Driver” parties are happening around South Africa.

Lastly, please add SACAB’s number to your cellphone: 08611 72222

So enjoy your holiday and drink as much as you want, just call a cab and get home safely.

Some of the things I learnt from presenting

• Know your slides – I had at over 40 slides in my presso and pretty much knew which were coming, I just got caught up at one stage where I wanted to talk about a topic, but the slide was still a number of clicks away
• Information overload – blogging is such a massive topic to talk about that I felt I probably tried to squeeze a little to much information into my 30 minute presentation
• Pace yourself – I think I did a pretty good job of “racing” through all my content, but felt I could of rather spent more time explaining certain concepts rather than trying to rush through all of it in one go.
• Be prepared – this I definitely was, but I just want to reiterate that nothing looks worse than an unprepared speaker. (Not that any of the speakers were. Just saying. :) )

It definitely was an honour to share the stage with the likes of Mike Stopforth, Melissa Attree, Scott Gray, Andy Hadfield, Vincent Maher, Pria Chetty and Jeremy Maggs.

The blogging workshop was also a lot of fun as we actually got into actual real world examples and went through some step by step examples on some of the tools used for blogging. One thing that I’m pretty proud of is that a number of the delegates came up to me afterward to say they were now inspired to start blogging!

If you are interested in my presentation, it’s over on slideshare.net/jbagley (excuse some of the mangled text – seems the upload didn’t go as planned). I also created some pretty detailed notes for the blogging workshop which I am going to work on a little more and then turn into an e-book (Stopforth’s brilliant masterplan I must add) for free download in the coming weeks. Should be fun!

So, if you looking for a speaker at your next conference, I’m definitely available!

For a free conference to bring over 400 geeks, marketers, students, designers, developers and 1 Social Media Scientist in Cape Town is pretty freaking amazing. Along with some of SA’s top speakers AKA Net Prophets speaking, a number of people where damn impressed, including me.

You were an idiot for not attending

For those of you that couldn’t be there because you have a 9 – 5 day job, and didn’t want to waste your precious day’s off, shame on you. The fact that it was free, didn’t for one second mean it was worth nothing. In fact, I would’ve paid around R3000 – R4000 to attend a conference with the quality of speakers and organisation of this conference. Not only that, the knowledge that you could of gained, would of put you one step closer to breaking free of your cubicle farm shackles.

What I got out of Net Prophet

With the quality of the talks at Net Prophet, everyone was bound to find value in almost every slide that was displayed up on that massive projector screen. These were my observations.

The MC: Rob Gilmour did a great job of MC’ing the event. I noticed that after each speaker, he commented on a small aspect of their presentation as well as added some extra value to the conference (Rocky Mountain News for example).

The organisers, venue & sponsors: The quality of the venue and PA system added to a thoroughly well organised event that was held at the Old Mutual Business School. From registration, to tea and coffee breaks, everything went off without a hitch. Sure, there wasn’t enough food for everyone at lunch, but with it being free and all, no one could complain that you could walk 20 meters to the cafeteria and buy lunch yourself.

Henk Kleynhans, Mike Stopforth, Dave Duarte & Andrew Smith: delivered the more engaging, funny and interactive talks of the day. I said to Henk that I felt his talk had a certain TED quality to it, while Andrew’s presentation was one of those cut-through-the-bull-sh*t-here-are-the-facts type of talks. Hilarious and thought provoking. Dave is the consummate professional, having spoken at more conferences than I have Twitter followers and there is always value in whatever double D has to say. Ol’ Mike on the other hand, is in another league in my opinion. The way he manages to make you feel as if he is talking directly to you, offering great insight into who he is as well as how he thinks. His personal case studies and business ventures are something to aspire to and he definitely is someone I draw huge inspiration from. (Oh ya, and Mike, *those* “titles”, you just make them up. Although in my case, scientists seem to blow things up a lot more than a guru or expert would! :) )

Arthur Goldstuck, Herman Heunis & Hannes van Rensburg: Although they are not the most engaging of speakers and were very methodical at times, the amount of knowledge, stats, figures and business ideas these speakers have, is mind boggling. It was more of an honour to hear them speak if nothing else. Arthur’s stats on broadband and mobile penetration in SA and the World, insight into MXit’s numbers, how they operate and how close it came to going belly under from Herman, and reaffirming my thoughts that SMS is the past, present and future of the mobile web economy from Hannes, was what I took from their various talks. Amazing value in their talks, if you just sat and listened, like most did.

Peter Flynn: was paid an exorbitant amount of money by an anonymous sponsor to show a slide of my name and tweet I put out a couple of days ago, as well as making me stand to tell me it sparked a interesting discussion in their office. The 20 odd new followers is a daily record for me. :)

and last, but definitely not least, Charl Norman: If you had to choose one presentation for its value in content alone, Charl’s was worth at least $10 a minute while he was on stage. He took everyone through the tools, tips and tricks he uses to run his blog network. He gave it to us straight with his quick talking, no nonsense approach. He cut through the crap and gave people exactly what they wanted – the exact tools and ways to market and manage a blog in order to make some serious money from it. Although I never wrote anything down from his talk as I pretty much talk the same language as Charl, every single person had a pen writing down frantically everything in the slides as if they had just been give the answers to their high school science test happening tomorrow. Charl proves that people love hearing how to make money!

Wrapping it all up

Finally, for those that helped the hashtag #netprophet reach Twitter’s trending topics for most of the day, friends and followers online that bumped into me and said “hi”, the organisers and sponsors, RSAWeb, White Wall Web and Innovation Fund, big kudos to you. Once again proving Silicon Cape is the business.

Kudo’s also to these fine folk for attending Net Prophet (Click and follow them on Twitter): @marlonparker, @kerry_anne, @MarcPerel, @obox, @geniusboywonder, @Amyburgh, @mattyza, @mattinsa, @tessneale, @danbaileyuk.

The Umbrellas

You see, at a picnic people bring umbrellas. So when you decide to put up your umbrella, people behind you cant really see the stage.

So, put this together with some free flowing booze and add the sun and you have a cocktail just ready to get peoples’ blood boiling. Watch the video below of some of the confrontations I managed to record during K-Day!

Not able to watch this video? Catch it on Youtube.

I hate random, because my chances are really really really low. But there’s NO way that I can pass this up :(

Jason, what if I told you I’d write a FULL writeup on the event and link it back to your blog? Or hell, I’ll even author it for your blog? The word ‘desperate’ may be going through your mind… well, you’re right.

My girl broke up with me a week ago. She told me that she slept with a guy this weekend. Turns out that he’s also a mate. No, “ex-mate”.

My world is a bloody mess atm and well, I have done all the self-help reading I can. They all say the same thing – distraction. This concert would be the most epic distraction. I have mates going, but due to my girl moving out – I’ve had to pay double rent this month and am really $$ buggered.

To say that I’d appreciate the tickets (hell, ONE would do) would be the understatment of the year!! In fact, I only want one! If I win your comp. you can give the other ticket to another blogger :)

I really felt sorry for the guy and really wanted to give him the prize directly, but I thought I’d let the competition run its course and see…

Comment no. 7 goes to Chris Mills, who has decided to give his good buddy Chris Combrink one of the VIP tickets!

So to all those people that commented about giving Chris C a ticket – he got one fair and square!

Enjoy Rocking the Daisies Chris M & Chris C and please take some pics and blog about the event!

The prize:
2 tickets to Rocking the Daisies, which includes Backstage passes, VIP access and access to the Digicape blogging station.

How to enter:
Post a comment on this post. It’s that easy! Make sure you leave a valid email address that you check often, so you won’t miss your prize!

I’ll draw a random number from the amount of entries received by Wednesday 1st of October at 5pm (that’s tomorrow!) and I’ll forward on your tickets!

Good Luck!

What is Heritage Day?

Via Wikipedia:

Heritage Day, September 24, is a Public Holiday on which South Africans across the spectrum are encouraged to celebrate their cultural heritage and the diversity of their beliefs and traditions, in the wider context of a nation that belongs to all its people.

So go and celebrate being a South African and light a braai 4 heritage with your friends and family on the 24th of September!