Episode 12: Reprobates and bloggers

30 March 2009

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With the South African Blog Awards coming to a conclusion this Friday we decided to take a look at the South African blogosphere to see what was really happening. We take a look at the persona of a blogger and try understand what makes them put the details of their lives online.

We speak to Nic Haralambous of SA Rocks, Seth Rotherham of 2Oceansvibe, Exmi from Expensive Mistakes Cheap Thrills, Shaun Oakes of Shaun Oakes.com, PhillyGirl of Glad To Be A Girl which was recently voted the best African blog in the Bloggies, Jason Bagley from the Incredible Connection blog and finally Se7en from Se7en.org. We round up that line up with a summary of the blogosphere by Justin Hartman, head of blog aggregator Afrigator.

We ask what they blog about, why they blog and discuss whether blogging has changed their professional lives. This probing view into the South African blogosphere will help you better understand the mindset of the often misunderstood blogger.

We also speak to Fred Roed of World Wide Creative in our Agency of the Week segment as well as get Mike Stopforth to give us his tips on Social Media. Our top ten this week is read by Dee Chetty, an SA Blog Awards finalist and focuses on ten of his favourite pick up lines. As always we are joined by Kerry-Anne Gilowey for the news roundup.

Whether you think Bloggers are anti-social reprobates or the future of media this episode will help you decide your stance.

Guests:

Fred Roed (World Wide Creative):

Co-founder of World Wide Creative, Fred spends his time on the road meeting with website clients, presenting branding workshops to clients, and spending lots of company money at Vida e Caffe. Fred is the client relationship guy, the creative guy and the marketing strategy guy. Fred is handsome, witty, charming, intelligent, dashing and knowledgeable.

Justin Hartman:

Justin's day job and passion involves running Afrigatot, a startup which he co-founded in April 2007 and later sold a stake to MIH Africa.

Prior to moving to Cape Town to work on Afrigator full time he was the Digital Innovation Manager of Avusa’s (formerly Johncom) online and mobile excellence unit known as the iLab where I managed a small team of dedicated and enthusiastic Web 2.0 gurus.

Mike Stopforth:

Mike is an entrepreneur, writer and speaker who helps companies extract value from Web 2.0 trends and technologies to create smarter, more profitable businesses.

He heads up Cerebra, South Africa's leading social media company (the sister company of Brandsh Media), which enjoys relationships with local and global brands - Toyota, Standard Bank, Rand Merchant Bank, Samsung Mobile, ABSA, Converse, ASCO (Calvin Klein), Zurich and more. These companies have used Cerebra to connect more meaningfully with their consumers outside the corporate firewall, and harness the full potential of employees behind it.

Bloggers:

Shaun Oakes:

Shaun Oakes is a writer, a poet, a scholar and a gentleman. He writes about various and diverse topics, ranging from current affairs to the bits of lint he finds in his belly button. He also enjoys writing and speaking in the 3rd person. Although it may seem as if someone else has written this, the fact remains that it’s actually Shaun. Learn everything there is to know about Shaun Oakes, with this easy-to-use random fact generator. It’s so useful, some of his closest friends, family and various illegitimate children occasionally make use of it too.

Dee Chetty:

D Chetty is a 26yr old South African living in Cape Town who considers himself to be highly opinionated about everything. He tends to write quite a few tech articles on his blog, but you can find a battery of cartoons, political posts, business trends and travel posts.

Se7en:

As a mom of se7en little hoods I get asked a LOT of questions: so this is where I plan to present the answers. Indeed I would like to answer all questions with: “Check out the answer on my blog…” just so I don’t have to keep repeating myself… over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Seth Rotherham:

Seth is in his late 20’s and lives on the Cape Town Atlantic Seaboard. In his quest to live by the 2oceansvibe slogan, ‘Work is a sideline, live the holiday’, Seth makes the most of the city of Cape Town - enjoying the best there is on offer, from sea and sand to restaurants and nightclubs, insisting on only the best service wherever he goes.

With a particular weakness for the finer things in life (including his ‘angels’), Seth spends his days (and nights) playing nicely with Cape Town’s fun loving locals and visitors.

Jason Bagley:

The founder and owner of Beanbag Media, a social media, mobile and blogging agency based out of Cape Town. He also has a few ties with World Wide Creative, which keeps me busy from time to time.

Nic Haralambous:

Nic is a qualified journalist from Rhodes Universities School Of Journalism. He is an entrepreneur, a geek, business man, brother, son, boyfriend and a friend to some.

His blog is a platform for him to talk about what he does on a personal level and what is happening in the world of media around himself and every day life in the world.

PhillyGirl:

Originally from Cape Town, but have been living in Joburg for the past 5 years (since May 2004). She lives with her boyf Varen and two darling bunnies, Coal and Lily. She likes to do one big annual overseas trip a year. For the rest ... start reading.