hitting the wire*

Amandla Umthi Wesizwe!

Last Saturday I spent most of the day in one of the poorest parts of Cape Town; Brown’s Farm Philippi. I came away hugely encouraged and proud to be a South African. Nkosi Sikeleli iAfrica! I often hear people using the term “grass-roots“ organizations, but only now have I come to see the power and potential of a group of people who have gained a hope for themselves and are daring to reach for their dreams.

Five or so years ago Philippi was a place that was not only wracked with crime, with more than 3 out of every 4 people unemployed, but more frighteningly it was largely without hope. People could not see beyond the misery to a better life. It was a place to leave as fast as you could. A desperate place.

That has been changing. Through many initiatives and many people who have dared to hope. People like Reverend Nkoloti and his wife Lulu who started a church in a shack. There is now a large brick building, a community hall and computer lab. People like Dennis & Susan Wadley from Bridges of Hope who facilitated and built the capacity in the community to care for those impacted by Aids in so many ways. People like Babalwa Jama, a young woman, who in the last few years has come not only to believe in herself, but in the future of her community.

Babalwa observed the way in which the youth were disaffected and down. Drugs and crime are an easy choice when you don’t think you’ll live beyond the age of 25. The young lad next door becomes a reckless gangster because it least it brings some fun and excitement and “a better life” – what little there is left of it. If some gangster or criminal doesn’t get you, AIDS will. So, what the $%^& eh?

Taking her heart in her hands, she approached one of the young gang leaders in her area. Terrified, she found 8 young tsotsi’s in his shack when she arrived. After teasing her awhile, they allowed her to share her vision for a better future. One thing led to another, and soon they had started a youth group, Umthi Wesizwe (the Tree of the Nation). With no place to meet, they met in shack. Soccer, drama & dance were activities they started with. Which is when Babalwa asked me if Storm could help.

The needs weren’t excessive, yet seemed so impossible at the time.

Sometimes it just takes a few phone calls to the right people, a bit of arm twisting and the realization that the amount of money they need is not beyond you. Yes, it may mean eating out a little less often, or postponing a purchase of a non-essential or two.

Two shipping containers were secured from the council and we had them moved to the parking lot of the Ruth First Community Hall. Some paint, some waterproofing, and glass for the window, some youthful energy and they had a club house. A Jembe and some percussion items and the dance group are rocking. A few soccer and netballs, and then a soccer strip so they can join the local league and we have the beginnings of Umthi FC? Already, some youngsters moving back to Khayalitsha have started a branch there.

We’re waiting for the registration of the NPO to come through. They’re building a website. They’re on the road.

Saturday was the launch. There were representatives there from SAPS, from the Council’s Youth Development division, from the Western Cape Youth Commission, from The Business Place, from Bridges of Hope. Supportive, encouraging, positive, all of them. They even gave me a chance to say a few words. But is was the youth themselves that impressed me. The poetry was powerful, the dance infectious, the drama straight out of “Generations” – covering subjects like peer pressure, teenage pregnancy, rape, AIDS, crime. And yet beneath and behind it was hope. Some of the youngsters spoke of their dreams – one to be a choreographer, another a sound engineer, and so on. Parents, friends and members of the community applauded, whistled, cried with laughter, roared with delight.

 

With the grace of God these guys are doing it for themselves, yet they so desperately need resources, encouragement and role models. If you do nothing else, come out Philippi one day to see for yourself.

I’m humbled, yet proud to part of it.
May the Tree of Africa grow strong.

I wish more Mondays were racedays!

Thought I'd better blog about it while I'm still a bit high and get it out of my system.

After doing tens of thousands of rands of damage to 2 of their cars on the first Fantastic Racing customer event we ran in 2006, Storm agreed to sign up for another 3 events this year.  Today was the last one.  Kerryn-Leigh, our marketing manager, did not have to apply much pressure to my rubber arm to sign up.  After all, I'm unlikely to be offered the chance again soon.

This is not me here in the yellow peril, but it is the car I drove.  These are Reynard 98's, with a V6 Dodge engines (that are specially governed so that they are safe for novices) that pull 450 BHP/per tonne.

I'm told they're at something like 20% of the power they would be ungoverned?  Well, 20% was just fine for me!  Flying down the back straight at Killarney where you've barely got to 5th gear and you're needing to brake and a sneaky little cross wind catches you unawares, I'm not sure giving me more power would have been wise.

 
There were a few boy racers among us (no names mentioned! ;) which resulted in a number of black flags for breaking the track rules and generally irritating the marshalls, but all in all I think everyone had a great afternoon.

If you're looking for something a little different to a booze cruise to entertain a few of your top clients, you can't go wrong for thrill here.

The guys from Fantastic Racing are very professional.  From safety briefing, to marshaling, to  looking after your every food and beverage need, they've got a slick operation running.

In the end, the black flags took some of the more reckless out of the running and Bruce, our resident bean counter, took the Best Driver Award - not exactly your epitome of a risk averse accountant is our Bruce!  Here he is checking out the cars before we'd even been briefed:

YT was awarded the Most Consistent Driver award (not sure if that was consistently average, or consistently bad?) which means I got to spray champagne over the crowd (all 20 of them).  I really must teach Bruce how to open a shaken champagne bottle without it going off in his face... :)

And Deon of course thought it was hysterically funny that they were fixing my car with duct tape seconds before I left the pit lane.

First he breaks laptops... now it's racecars!  What next?

Monday was a little crazy.  Tuesday is going to be very tame.

Venture Capital anyone?

If you're looking for VC of between say R1m and R15m, are based in SA, have an 'exportable' idea in the Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT) field and the ability to build a sound business out of the idea, let me know and I'll point you in the direction of a solid VC fund with a big name behind it looking for the next big thing out of Africa. (and no it is neither Mr Shuttleworth nor Mr Lingham)

Might be an idea to read Guy Kawasaki's blog posts on 10 lies Entrepreneurs tell VC's and vice versa before you do! ;)

Now that was a nice short post from your favourite blogger was it not Tim?  Bet you can't resist calling to find out who the VC fund is.  Except now that I've written that... you won't!  Yes, yes, I know, confirming your take that I'm a dubious Christian and all that! <wicked chuckle>

And now I need to find another laptop, having apparently destroyed the hand-me-down that replaced the one that died of exhaustion a month or so ago.... <sigh>  Hey?!  I'll evaluate a laptop! :>> any takers ?

Not quite amAzed, but impressed.

Two weeks back I mentioned I'd been approached to blog about a GPS you can load onto your cell phone, the amAze GPS.  I suggested they let me have a unit to play with before I did so.  Here are my impressions.

Conclusion.

For those who don't want to wade through the detail, I'll start at the end shall I?  I was not blown away by this GPS system, but once I'd got the hang of how to operate it, used it a few times and I sat back to consider the value for money, I had to admit it is.  Value for money that is. 

It finds what you're looking for (if you're not vague) and it takes you there. To within metres.  At a fraction of the price.  (OK, so it did fail me once in Jozi, but I was warned by my host that not even her husband's Garmin can find their street in Bryanston!)  Just don't run out of phone battery while blindly following the GPS!  Quiet panic.

How it all works.

The software is free and the little bluetooth GPS unit is R500.00.  So where is the catch you may ask?  As I understand it from David Lehman of Phoneit GPS, the plan is to link location based advertising to the system, in the form of banner ads (going to be a challenge on a small screen!) and an opening screen sponsor will fund the system.  The ads will appear during times when information is called (via GPRS/HSDPA) from the back end server during an address search for example, and they will last 10 seconds. They could be both visual and verbal with the capability to click and view the profile of the advertiser and even navigate to their web site.  They do not intend targetting the ads at specific LSM or interest groupings.

The software works on a range of phones.  If your phone has an onboard GPS (like the Nokia N95), you're away at no cost, if not, it will work with almost any Bluetooth GPS unit – Phoneit GPS have apparently used Holux, On course, Global Top, QStarz and a few others.  

You won't be able to buy an ad-free version per se, but you can create a closed user group where they will white label the product and allow a specific group to receive only the white label sponsors message to his specific user group.  Now there's a corporate gift with an ROI! ;)  A closed user group rate is related to the number of users and would be negotiated based on the customization required – standard sponsor rate for opening screen as example is R1.50 per active user per month.

The experience.

Setup was easy.  As long as you were reasonably specific about the suburb you were heading for (specifying "Cape Town" just did not cut it!), it was not too difficult to find a location.  There is a postal code field which helps a lot! The voice prompt was not irritating and gave due warning of changes of course.  It did not interrupt phone calls, but overrode whatever other app I was using at the time.  Prompts were generally timely and unambiguous.  Deviating from the planned route caused furious recalculations which took far too long over GPRS (a good minute before it was directing me again, which had me missing turns in Jozi!). 3G/HSDPA a must. 

Oops.

I thought the unit had been remotely disabled when the evaluation week was up, but was told I'd be the first person to have bust one or had one fail.  Sheepishly, I discovered I'd unwittingly disabled bluetooth on my phone! <smacks forehead> 

Oh dear.

One irritation that hit me early on was the weird AC plug on the power adapter.  Fortunately I have one of the neat little gadgets which converts just about any known international plug format to the familiar one we know here in SA.  The CD did not have much on it from a usefulness point of view except a demo that needed bluetooth (which my laptop does not - long story - don't ask!).  The 'manual' is all of 3.5 pages long - the English portion that is. The website is hosted overseas and response times are not great.

Set up.

You have 2 options for getting going; a web based form to complete, download software and install via PC/phone; the other is kicked off by SMS'ing a key word to a +44 number.  I resorted to the SMS route and have to say it was painless and it was a matter minutes before I had the app installed and was playing with it.

Navigating - the app.

Large icons.  Fairly simple choices. 
"Search" - which allows you to enter an address (drop downs seem to be limited to names it learns from you), keywords or even a weather forecast request.
"Calculate route" - allows you to specify start and end and get an abbreviated route description and even a demo 'drive through' of the route.  The demo could move a little faster...
"Map" - which allows you to see either a street map view, an aerial photo view or a mix of both.  You can zoom in to "house" level or out to country level.
"Favourites" - which allows you to save locations for future use.  You're limited to 10 locations though, which could be a bit frustrating.
"Tools" - allows you to adjust various settings like language and metrics,  scan for bluetooth GPS units in range, and the like.

"Help" - Some basic user instructions for the above choices.

Hidden costs.

Marc Forrest warned me that it might "chow bandwidth".  I monitored my billing online and could see nothing that made me worried.  I tried switching between "arrows" mode (where the display only gives you the next turning / route choice) and "map" mode (where you can see the compass icon marking your position moving through the map) and it was noticeable that "map" mode cost me more; and here we're talking R2.00 for a trip instead of R0.20.  Bear in mind this was using GPRS and not 3G/HSDPA.  ('Your mileage may vary' as they say!)

Navigating - the route.

With a bunch of noisy kids in the car, it was necessary to use the   hands-free.  Without the kids, leaving the phone (in my case a Nokia E65) in the dash and following the leading lady was just fine.  Once you'd identified your destination using a street number, keyword and if possible a postal code, it was a simple matter to tell it to take you there and wait for the prompts.  The routes tended to not always be enitrely logical when I was in familialr territory, but having set the app for "fastest" and not "shortest" route it is not surprising.  Deviating from route usually initiated much furious route recalculations, including "make a U-turn at the first available opportunity".

If I was specific, it was accurate to within 20 metres.

Will I buy this?

I have to say that until I had to drive somewhere I had never been before, I had no real need of it.  But when it came to finding Linen Drawer, the guys in Paarl who are donating linen to one of our CSI projects, or the way to Little Tuscany guest house in Jozi, it was a boon.  I could see a company handing this out to Sales reps and field techs particularly if there was some way of securely loading site info into a drop-down.  I'm sure the Garmin's and Tom-tom's of the world (and here I need to say I have never used them) have fancier features etc, but this found where I needed to go and got me there.  At R500.00, I may well buy one and leave it the cubby hole for one of those "lost" days.

The ultimate test?

The good people at Phoneit GPS have agreed to donate the unit I have here to the Hout Bay Volunteer Ambulance Unit who tell me their biggest challenge is always their way to the patient without getting lost.  So I'll be touching base with the dedicated paramedics in a month or so to see what difference it has made to their lives and those of their patients.

I'm going to be quite sorry to hand over this little sucker, especially as a great idea for a location-based service I'd love in my car daily has just hit me and I am compelled to pursue it... ;)

that's me. looking for myself.