Over 4000 blogs were nominated in this year’s awards, and over 25 000 people voted.

I also scored some free goodies with the award, including:

• A subscription to the Sunday Times  (I still love reading the newspaper in print as a special treat, so this is a super prize for me);

•  A subscription to Encyclomedia (a PR match-making tool that helps local businesses get press releases out to the right journalists);

• A Quirk E-Marketing text-book (I’ve got one already so will give it to someone in need);

• 12 SA Blog Awards branded Kika-sacks (I’ll use one of them next time I hit the beach and give the rest away with reckless abandon); and

•  ”Black Bottle” whisky (I don’t drink alcohol, but will keep it for cooking).

As much as I enjoying getting free stuff, by far the most enjoyable part of the experience has been all the congratulatory messages I’ve received on Twitter, Facebook, Email and SMS. Thanks everyone

This award and the whole experience of winning it is very encouraging for me as a blogger.

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Kelele, an annual African bloggers’ conference, was announced yesterday at BarCamp Africa at the GooglePlex in San Francisco. This exciting event will be held in a different African city each year and run by an organising committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Daudi Were is producing the event, along with an organizing committee of bloggers from all over Africa. This includes Ndesanjo Macha, Erik Hersman, Nii Simmonds, Mshairi, Sami Ben Gharbia, and me.

Why Kelele?

Kelele is the Kiswahili word for noise. We are organising a gathering of African bloggers in the tradition of historical African societies where everyone has a voice.

The specific theme of Kelele ’09 Nairobi is Beat Your Drum – which connects the traditional Africa method of getting your message across vast distances – the talking drums – to the 21st century and the tools we use today, blogs and the Internet.

Sponsorship

We are working to make Kelele a world-class conference, but in order to do this we will need Sponsorship to cover costs such as delegate’s flights, venue, AV and bandwidth.

We’d like to invite all organizations with an interest in blogging, Africa and citizen media to become a sponsor of the inaugural African Bloggers Conference: Kelele!

There are a variety of ways that you can become involved as a sponsor for Kelele – your contribution doesn’t only need to be financial in nature. If you’d like to find out more about the sponsorship opportunities, please email daudi.were@gmail.com

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My mentor and friend, Graham Knox, owner of Stormhoek Wines, has put together a remarkable wine marketing course for UCT Graduate School of Business, called Dirty Hands – A Practical Approach to Wine Marketing. It aims to teach you how to be a success in the world’s second most competitive industry.

It is a distinctive offering in the wine marketing education space, because it actually takes delegates through the process of wine creation, while at the same time learning how each step is a selling point. At the end of the course, you will not only have created and bottled your own wine, but you will be able to sell it too!

“What excites me about this programme”, says Elaine Rumboll, Director of Exec Ed. at UCT GSB, “is the awareness that if a marketer is to understand the value proposition of wine from its making to its distribution that there will develop alongside of this stories and emotional connections which will help marketers in their distribution. To my knowledge, this approach is ground breaking and not on offer in any of the other wine marketing material I have viewed globally”.

The course runs from 24th-26th June 2008, and costs R7200.

I see that Wine Country is offering a free spot on the course, click the pic, or this link to see how you can get your place sponsored.

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I’m up against Mike Stopforth (with his design called “Fit-Shan“) in the first round. The design I submitted was done my my talented illustrator friend, Ryno Van Niekerk. It’s called “The Amazing Marketing Machine“.

The story that goes with the design is as follows:

A mashup of potent technological innovations, The Amazing Marketing Machine will help any marketer be more intelligent, more playful, more out-of-this world! But if you didn’t know that you might just think it was a pile of junk. Ironic huh?

If you dig it, please go and vote it up on Springleap HERE (note, you need to register). Some lucky people might even get the opportunity to wear this awesome design if we win.

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We’ve just launched a new Huddlemind Learning project, Huddlemind.net

It’s a network for people who want to improve their skills and ability in digital media. We will specifically focus on topics such as social-media, e-marketing and mobile marketing.

Through it we hope to directly connect members with other leading thinkers and doers in business education and digital marketing.
It is also a space to explore questions and issues of importance around business education, teaching methodologies, and learning technologies – especially as they relate to developing skills and leadership in digital media and marketing.

I think this network and movement is important to anyone in leadership and management today who is experiencing challenges in communicating new concepts to overworked or distracted employees.

Please check it out and let me know your feedback!

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It is planned to be the first of many blogs that UCT GSB will launch around topical subjects for business executives this year. It’s built on a simple Wordpress MU, using a slightly customized Kubrick theme, which will facilitate easy rollout of subsequent blogs.

With their new multi-user blogging platform, the Business School intends to bring the experience and insights of some of South Africa’s leading business academics to an audience that would not ordinarily be to exposed to them.

The blogs are also part of a broader social-media strategy which will include  participation in various interactive online channels, blogger incentive programmes and sponsorship of key sites and projects.

Often the most successful new-media campaigns flourish with the apparent disconnect between a young medium, and the perception of a staid industry. For example, Stormhoek, topped the wine marketing world by breaking ranks from the typically elitist wine media channels, and embracing the new world of online social-media. The GSB hopes to enahnce the marketing of Executive Education in a similar way.

Congrats to the brilliant Ms. Kaizen, who has been working with the UCT GSB team to get this project off the ground.

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The 2008 South African Blog Awards is scheduled for its annual process of nominating and voting in February and March. The awards team would like to publicly present this year’s process to all interested parties on Wednesday 23 January at 17h30 on the outside deck of Cafe Neo in Mouille Point, Cape Town.

Anyone with an interest in how this year’s awards will work is more than welcome to attend. Please note that this is your opportunity to voice your input about the awards process. We’re doing this in order to finalise the system in a public forum.

If you cannot make the presentation and feel strongly about the awards format, please arrange for representation to be there to express your opinion.

 I’ve accepted the invitation from Jon and the volunteer organizing committee to be the “Independent Awards liaison”. In other words, if you have any issues with the way the awards are being handled then post your comments on my blog and I will take it up with the committee.

I’m not otherwise involved in organizing the awards, so please spare your vitriol. Also, by accepting this responsibility I’m not in the running for any awards (and neither are any of the organizing committee people).

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Warning: The following material is some form of self-promotion, please stop reading if you’re not interested in what I’m up to. I’d recommend reading it only if there’s a possibility we can work together this year:)

On Thursday I’m facilitating a think tank with Dr. Marjolijn Dijterhuys, 13 MBA students from the University of Amsterdam and 6 accomplished South African ICT entreneurs. There’s going to be lots of learning on all sides as we seek to uncover innovative opportunities for European business in South Africa, and South African business in Europe.

On Friday I’m off to Joburg for some planning around the iCommons summit in Japan in July, and to celebrate Heather’s birthday!

I’m running part of a course at UCT this year for over 1000 commerce students! It’s going to be based on the Attention Economics course I ran for the second year business science students last year.

I’ll be continuing my work with UCT Graduate School of Business – guest lecturing on the MBA and various other Executive Education programmes, as well as running Nomadic Marketing in April and September this year.

I’m also really excited to launch two new ventures this year with my partners: Huddlemind Labs (where we’ll be doing stuff to help people apply innovative business strategies – mainly consulting, publishing and events); and the new version of Muti (which is going to take the core concept and make it more useful for businesses and other niche communities). I’ll make the respective announcements and introduce my partners on these projects when we launch – which should be this month.

Besides that, I’m still managing a few corporate software development jobs. With my client’s permission I’ll share these with you if they’re going to be made public. I’m always looking for good web developers and designers to work with.
I’m also available as a speaker if you’re holding a conference, or a facilitator if you’re doing a workshop.

Please drop me a mail if you think we can work together, intern at any of the businesses, or can provide any related services. Info at daveduarte.co.za

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Heather made a very exciting announcement at the event:

There is going to be a free culture house built in Cape Town. Imagine a place you can pop into for coffee, and be exposed to the latest multi-media and open content, create and remix using the latest tech and open software, learn about and organise free-culture events, or just meet other enthusiasts to work on new projects. It’s going to be the first of many around the world.

Ian Gilfillan is also running a bid to host Wikimania 2008 in Cape Town

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I’m not going to have time for it unless I make time for it.

So what’s my 3 main motivators for blogging:

1. Each new post can introduce me to a new person or people through emails and comments
2. Each new post can add momentum to ideas that I support
3. Each new post reminds the people who already subscribe to this blog by RSS that I still exist:)

Anyway, this is my long-winded way of announcing that I’m back in the game and will be blogging more regularly going forward.

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