The Pump House Reconstruction

Someone described our new office construction / renovation / painting / etc as "organised chaos". I think they were being too polite. Drop the adjective. Here's the proof (the pic is our future boardroom). We're moving in on Saturday and hopefully open for business on Monday. Hmmm.

Milked any purple cows lately?

Milked any purple cows lately? Have you seen any purple cows in your neighbourhood? Or what about in your company?

If you have read the latest book by Seth Godin you'd know what I was talking about. In his book, aptly called "Purple Cow", Seth describes a country side in France with perfect green hills and perfect black and white cows. Picturesque indeed - for the first hour of sight-seeing. But after a while they're all the same, and nothing really leaps out at you. Unless of course you suddenly spot a purple cow grazing on a hilltop. Your eyes would bulge; you’d stop the car and out would come the digital camera.

So what’s this got to do with business? Actually, a lot. Purple cows are the extraordinary products and services that your company should be producing. What you would actually want your potential customers and clients to do, is to stop their cars, get out, take photos and then because it was so remarkable they would tell their friends. Why? Because that’s how people buy products and services these days. They ask their trusted friends and colleagues what to buy and where to get it.

The people they ask are “early adopters” and they are the influential group of people your company needs to convince about the merits of your “purple cows”. Arguably these early adopters are a smaller target to convert, but the catch is they’re not easily convinced. They have seen it all. They adapt easily, and they adopt new things faster. But once converted – they become sneezers! They ‘sneeze’ their ‘infection’ onto whoever seeks their advice. These advice seekers represent a large chunk of the population (that large chunk that will turn your winning product or service into a real wealth creator).

You're either a Purple Cow or you're not. You're either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.

Fireworkx 2.0

It's the end of an era. For almost 6 years Fireworkx has been operating from top floor offices at 35 Wale Street in central Cape Town. In a week and a bit we will have moved out and the great unpack will be consuming us.

The famous heritage building called The Pump House at Albion Spring in Newlands will become our new home. Not only is this a physical move, it's a subtle move too, into a new phase of Fireworkx' life. I can feel a new buzz in the air already. It's like the teenager turning 18 - not much physical change to be seen, but a whole new stance and presence is experienced.

Get ready for Fireworkx 2.0

The river behind our new offices

This is a pic taken on my Nokia 6600 of the river (ok, canal) that flows past our new offices at the Pump House at Albion Spring in Newlands / Rondebosch.

I first snapped the pic and uploaded it using PicoStation's software on my phone and then Moblogged it to my experimental Moblog on PicoStation.com - I'm stunned - it all worked first time and was so easy. Did I mention free too? Nokia should licence this software and install it as default on their Series 6 phones.

I can see a time when every mobile phone user becomes a micro-journalist and the news networks will have a massively distributed news and image gathering network of ordinary citizens. From all accounts the BBC was using this with the recent bombings in London. Dozens of mobile phone images and video clips were taken and sent to the BBC for broadcasting.

The First (Real) Post

This is the first real post (as apposed to the ‘last post’). I'm typing this and now you're reading it. I guess that's about as much reason for blogging as I can imagine. I mean, really, what's with this blogging thing? If you don’t have blog it’s like, ‘What? No blog?’ And they look at you as if you don’t have ears or legs or something.

Suddenly everyone on the planet has come out of the closet and fancies themselves as some famous well-read journo / author / writer type. Personally I think it's a craze. It’ll pass. Last century when the whole ‘internet’ thing happened, everybody was rushing around learning H-T-M-L and ‘building a web-page’ with pictures (awful) of their newly-acquired baby / puppy / motorbike. That’s so 90’s now. And besides it was hard work – all those tags you had to learn and Javascript menus you had to maintain. And what’s more you had to think - ‘this content goes here, that content goes there’. Now with blogs – well – you don’t have to - (think, that is). You can just plonk the text on the page, un-structured, un-formatted, un-everything. And people come in droves to read it. And you’re famous (well, sort-of).

It’s so easy now. Type. Copy. Paste. Blog. Read. I can see it coming: “You know, in my day, when the internet started… blah blah … we had to… blah blah… now you kids have it easy…”

Hmmm, blogging. Now there's a thing.

Never thought the Net would come to this. Millions of wanna-be editors and publishers all scrambling to carve their initials on virtual tree-trunks.