SA Rocks

I am really chuffed to be a part of a fantastic (and very smart) initiative by the International Marketing Council (IMC).

The basic idea, as I like to understand it, is that 11 international bloggers who are all prominent in their respective fields will all be heading for SA for a ten day whirlwind tour of our magnificent country. You can see more about the project over at We Blog the World. So the ten day tour will invariably allow the readers of the 11 international blogs to be exposed to the wonders of SA. Therefore invoking a desire to find out more, experience SA, travel to the country or simply read more SA stuff. Great move by the IMC I think. It’s social marketing. Brilliant.

I have been invited to take part in the tour.

Don’t fool yourself thinking that I will be on a joy-ride for ten days. Big Mistake.

Bizcommunity have proudly offered my a column for the ten days where I will be writing about the trip and publishing video and photo content through the ten days. I will also be double posting the trip on my two blogs, nicharalambous.com and SA Rocks. If that isn’t enough I will also be posting to the Zoopy blog sporadically, the We blog the world (WBW) flickr group and the Zoopy profile/landing page for the event. I am going to be one blogged out blogger by the end of this week.

But it will most definitely be worth it. The IMC have put together an incredible trip for all of the attending bloggers.

Here are a few snippets of the trip, where we’ll be and what we’ll be doing:

A heli flight over the peninsula

and then we head off to JHB for various events, viewings and museum trips

I am incredibly excited to be taking part as many of the things on the itinerary are things that I have been wanting to do in SA for ages but have never had the chance.

Expect some great content.

Head over to Matt’s blog and see who else is taking part. Leave comments or contact me if there are specific questions you would like to see the visiting bloggers answer while they are here in SA!

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I have just completed the SA Blogosphere Census called SPEAK UP! presented by 24.com, Afrigator and Amatomu.

Interesting concept this census is. I was asked for my input before the census went live. I think that there are some interesting questions that are sure to yield some VERY interesting results at the end of it all.

There are some questions that worry me and I am sure will worry others such as the finances, users, pageviews and that sort of information. I was reluctant to give away some of the information but at the end of the day, I’m not pulling in a million people a day on the site and everyone knows it, so who cares!?

So, do yourself and the rest of us a favour and let’s end the debate about blogs, how many, how big, how much etc etc, head over to the PushPlay sponsored SPEAK UP! census and get started now!

I’d like to also suggest that you blog about the census and tag people who you think should take the census and blog about it too!

So I am tagging Mike, Matt, Tertia, Cherryflava, Charl and Chris.

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What a fresh idea. A bakeoff. I love it. Going back to the days when I was 7 and had to get my mom to bake me something to take to class to sell and raise money. Old school, new rules as the saying goes.

The event is called the World Wide Bloggers Bake Off and here’s the lowdown:

It seems to me that the event is held by Breadline Africa. That’s the first thing.

The next thing is the intention:

Join the many bloggers, everyday internet users and other concerned people around the world who have made a pledge to help end hunger in Africa by signing up to participate in the Breadline Africa Worldwide Blogger Bake Off.

How it all works:

Quite simply; bake bread, give dough. You can sign up for the campaign, make a donation, upload your bread recipes and document your culinary adventures in the media centre to spread the word. Bloggers can go even further by downloading our widget and tagging five other bloggers to do the same.

Every donation goes towards our $1 million target, and the honour of having a container kitchen in Africa named after you is the first prize, along with an Amazon voucher of $500. The winners with the most votes for each recipe category will receive $250 in Amazon vouchers each.

It really appears to be a simple and fun way to actually make a difference. None of this signing of petitions or ranting. Simply donate, bake off, submit a recipe or visit the site and spread the love.

The Widget

I have placed the Widget in my sidebar to the right as you can see. Click on the donations button there and donate in the name of SA Rocks. What better way to try and help your fellow Africans?

If you are a blogger and want to get involved here’s why you should use the widget:

The Worldwide Blogger Bake Off widget is more than just a decorative badge for your website or blog. It is specially designed to function as a gateway for bloggers and fundraisers, referring traffic through to the Worldwide Blogger Bake Off site.

The sleek and sexy widget displays how much you and your friends have managed to generate for the alleviation of poverty in Africa, as well as the overall donation total.

Lastly and most importantly, the widget acts as a billboard for the campaign; spreading the wholesome Breadline Africa message far and wide. Wear it with pride.

So let’s do it. Oh, and thanks to Rob Stokes from Quirk for alerting me to the event.

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Twitter is a magical tool as I found out this weekend. I was talking about something or another and then another random point came up and then BAM! Marcel had created an SA Rocks Widget. It’s that easy.

He claims it only took him 5 minutes using a webtool called WidgetBox. I’m not so sure but either way it has been done.

You can now place an SA Rocks widget in your blog.

Simply visit the SA Rocks Widget link at WidgetBox, get the code, put it in your blog somewhere and help spread the good news.

The widget is also available for other services like Facebook, blogger, Typepad and MySpace so choose your preference and pop in the code.

Here’s what it looks like:

Marcel graciously offered to create the widget and is also in the process of working on a Facebook Application for SA Rocks. I am very grateful and once again astounded by the online community.

Thanks Marcel!

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I attended the Digital Citizen Indaba and the Highway Africa 2008 conference. One of the highlights and surprises of the Highway Africa conference for me was meeting Khaya Dlanga, a video blogger and blogger from South Africa.

I have blogged about Khaya’s work before and truly believe that he is one of the few successful local Vloggers who has managed to pull of a YouTube channel with some punch behind it.

Here’s Khaya at the HA conference:

And here is Khaya after winning the award:

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Darren Gorton had a brilliant idea. He wanted to rally bloggers to write a book, altogether, all at once and all online. Some of us agreed. Here’s the list so far:

• Eve Dmochowska [read more about Eve here]
• Duncan Drennan [read more about Duncan here]
• Paul Jacobson [read more about Paul here]
• Melissa Attree [read more about Melissa here]
• Nic Haralambous [read more about Nic here]
• Saul Kropman [read more about Saul here]
• Justin Hartman [read more about Justin here]

I think the idea is a great one with loads of potential. I also believe that one of the things that needs to happen is user involvement. This is imperative to the success of the book. We need people to read and interact with this book (if I am getting this all right).

My part according to Darren is thus:

I thought, based on your writing and projects, that you would be perfect to write about contributing positively to the country’s development and growth in a tough, negative social climate, and the importance of each individual’s contribution. If you think that needs adjustment in any way, let me know, but it’s the main topic that fits into the overall theme and should complement the other topics.

So I want to know what you think I should write. Obviously not verbatin, but give me an idea, a thought, a topic or anything that you think is relevant. I want to know about the importance of the individuals contribution to a negative climate of a positive country. Give me your feedback.

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Then pitch me your idea.

I am looking for someone to take control of the theme for SA Rocks for a week. I’ll need you to motivate why you want to blog on SA Rocks. What posts you might have in mind, lined up or want to plan and a promise that you can bash out 5 posts in 5 days! (Yes, it’s a tough job) Even if you don’t think you can get to 5 posts in 5 days and only have 3 in mind, let me know!

All posts will be viewed and approved by me before posting just to ensure that they are in line with the outlooks and opinions of this blog.

I have a few themed weeks lined up in my mind and I am working on them, but they take time and I feel that I should maybe open up SA Rocks a bit more to other thoughts, ideas, interests and writers.

You don’t have to be a blogger you just have to have a passion for SA, writing and an area of interest that might work on SA Rocks!

Use the “Contact” section in the navigation bar above to send through your ideas.

After a brief chat with a friend, I’ve decided to add in some incentive. If you are the chosen blogger for the week I’ll throw in a block advert for the week that you write for SA Rocks. If there is more than one guest blogger, the one with the most reads collectively will get a months worth of ad space on SA Rocks!

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It has become my life, my lifestyle, my choice, my mindset and my default.

This has taken control of me and I am more than excited to say that I am accepting of it and embrace it.

Everyday I wake up and choose to live the way that I do. I choose to hope, to be idealistic and to fight for what I believe. This blog has become all-consuming. It’s what I dream about, it’s what I talk about, it’s what I think about and what I live. Everyday.

A year and a bit ago I thought I was starting a blog. I was wrong. I was changing a life, mine. I was taking a feeling, a belief, a love and a patriotism and owning it in my mind.

I cannot tell you the countless arguments that I have gotten in to with regard to this very blog. In fact it’s becoming hard to defend this blog to people who don’t want to listen or know that there are alternatives to hatred, anger, sadness, fear and disappointments. But there are alternatives.

The basic premise for this post is simple, a blog is a diary and it’s time that I start creating things to write about instead of sourcing things to write about. It’s time to start acting on some “Positive Action”.

If you have any ideas about how you interpret Positive Action or if you can think about suggestions you might have for me then fire away, I am all ears. Let’s make it happen. Bring Positive Action to the fore.

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The 2008 South African Blog Awards are upon us. Today voting begins, or is it nominations?

Either way, get over to the SA Blog Awards site now and vote for SA Rocks in the following categories:

South African Weblog of the Year

The Best of the Best from South Africa

Best New Blog

Best blog which was started during the year of 2007

Best SA Podcast

Best independently produced video or audio podcast in SA

– This one is for the SA RocksCast from Last year!!

Best Group Blog

Best blog with more than one contributor

– Let’s reward the wonderful SA Rocks contributors for their great efforts over the past year!

Best Post on a South African Blog

The one post which stood out in 2007

- This one is for South Africa: Murder Most Foul.

Feel free to nominate SA Rocks for any category that you deem appropriate!

Then for my suggestions for some other categories – DISCLAIMER – These are just suggestions, people that I think have done a good job, it is NOT personal, racist or motivated by anything other than their blogs.

Best SA Blog about Design – Marc Forrester, adii
Best Post on a South African Blog – Llewellyn Kriel
Best Overseas South African Blog – Cooksister
Best Green blog – urbansprout
Best SA Blog about Food and Wine – Cooksister
Best Post about the SA Blog Awards – Vincent Maher, how to un-murder Jon Cherry – This one is absolutely hilarious.

If you have any other thoughts or suggestions then please leave a comment. Otherwise get voting and get your grannies, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends, fathers, mothers, neighbours and anyone else you know to vote SA Rocks to the top!!

Goodluck to all who are participating in the awards and congratulations to the SA Blog Awards 2008 team. You’ve all done a sterling job this year.

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Sort of.

I really did enjoy the Muso when it was up and running. I love the SA music scene and especially the underground, emo vibe that we have going in this country. It’s incredible and the Muso recognised this and blogged it.

Alas Yesterday I discovered that the Muso is no more. Apparently there might be one or two blog posts on sporadic occasions but nothing concrete or regular at all. A sad day for music freaks and blogging geeks alike.

A short but necessary post. Peace out Muso.

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