SA Rocks

I will be attending a very interesting debate on Wednesday. It is being held and hosted by Epiphany.

Let me quickly jump back for a second. I have recently joined Zoopy.com as the GM of Gauteng and have spent the last week or so in Cape Town. Along the way I met some fantastic people, one of whom is Max Kaizen.

Max is a contributor here on SA Rocks and we have been threatening to bump in to one another for a while now. Eventually, Tuesday night we managed to get in touch with one another at Asoka in Kloof, CT.

Firstly let me just say what an absolutely fantastic venue Asoka is. Great jazz, cool people, mixed crowd, good cocktails and good company made the evening top notch.

But back to the Unexpected Business Case.

Max and I got talking about SA, as it happens fairly often with me. Then she mentioned a debate that is taking place in JHB on Wednesday and I couldn’t refuse the chance to attend.

Here’s the press release:

The UNEXPECTED business case affecting SA’s best and brightest
-a provocative public debate - why staying may be smart strategy
at the South African Business Schools Expo,

Sandton Sun, Johannesburg
Wednesday, 3 September 17h00 – 19h00

JOHANNESBURG – Amongst the financial doom & gloom, xenophobia, political incompetence and exit strategies traded over dinner; a question must be asked:
“Is there a business case for using South Africa as a platform in a global economy?”

Think tank engineers, Epiphany in collaboration with Huddlemind, executive education specialists, will be facilitating a dynamic debate at the South African Business School Expo to interrogate the perception that South Africans have to go elsewhere in the world to “make it big”.

Respected industry leaders: Branko Brkic (Editor, Maverick), Mike Stopforth (CEO, Cerebra), Paul Jacobson (New Media lawyer, Jacobson Attorneys) and Joshin Raghubar (Aspen Global Leadership fellow/ CEO, iKineo) present their opinion on the flight of human capital out of South Africa; and how the changes in technology, media, global economics and local politics have opened up gaps that the swift and smart can take advantage of now.

This is not a lecture by talking heads. Epiphany is tackling the question in a fresh way, through provocative public debate with powerful thought leaders – not only from the expert panel – but the audience too. Among them, social media powerhouse Nic Haralambous (editor, SA Rocks) will be on the floor to offer rich perspectives on opportunities most of us miss in our misery. The group session will be facilitated by David Donde (journalist, GQ and presenter 567/702).

Are there practical strategies to leveraging world-scale success from the bottom of Africa? There are companies and industries booming despite the downturn.
What are they doing that may be a little unusual?

This session is highly recommended if you’re considering a great trek of your own, or rapidly losing some of your company’s best and brightest.

Tickets are R250 (including admission to the Expo) available online (click here) at www.epiphany.usgeni.us
or contact Max Kaizen 082 832 6434 or max@usgeni.us

And for a bit more on each of the participating personalities:

Branko Brkic
Described as the guardian of the higher mind, Branko is the owner of Business Century, publisher and editor of business magazines Maverick and Empire.

David Donde
David will be facilitating the session for Epiphany. He is a talkshow host on 702/Cape Talk and journalist at GQ on cars and lifestyle. He is a founder of Origin Coffee Roasting (singularly the best artisan roasted coffee in the country). Recognised as a global expert on the matter, David does talks on coffee; but also on branding, fair trade economics and the collapse of the middle market. He voices his strident opinion out in the web at daviddonde.com

Paul Jacobson
Paul is a new media lawyer working in Johannesburg. He has a general commercial legal practice, Jacobson Attorneys and focusses on new media and the law. He is currently a member of the Advisory Council on The Open Knowledge Definition Project, Sub-Committee 71L (Document description and processing languages) and is the legal advisor to a number of non-profit organisations. Paul speaks at universities and conferences globally about new media and the law and writes about these issues (and others) on his blog.

Joshin Raghubar
Joshin serves as a director of the Cape Information Technology Initiative (CITi). Chairman of the Bandwidth Barn which is Africa’s leading non-profit business incubator and accelerator for technology businesses. He has also recently joined the board of the South African Chamber of Commerce in America. Has has recently become a Global Leadership Fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network (African Leadership Initiative). Somewhere between all of this, he is also CEO of marketing and communications firm iKineo.

Mike Stopforth
Mike is perhaps one of the most quoted people on social media in South Africa, helped set up Afrigator, is the brains behind Cerebra, and co-founded the 27Dinners. He’s an acclaimed public speaker, columnist and tells the likes of Toyota, Standard Bank, Rand Merchant Bank, Samsung Mobile, ABSA, Converse and Calvin Klein what they should be doing online. For kicks he is an associate of the Institute of Technology Strategy and Innovation (ITSI), the Center for Complexity Studies

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