SA Rocks

Yes, WE won the award (Best Group Blog) because there are a fair amount of contributors to this site. Many of whom are once-off, some who stayed for a very long time and some who helped me in the very beginning to build SA Rocks over a period of time.

As Dave (best business blog) posted on his blog: “Over 4000 blogs were nominated in this year’s awards, and over 25 000 people voted”.

I’ve been blogging for ±4 years now and it’s great to win a blog award no matter how “Shrouded” in controversy they are, seem to be or really aren’t.

I personally want to thank Chris Rawlinson and Huddlemind for putting together an absolutely sterling event that was well attended, fully stoked with Corona, Carlsberg, Stormhoek, Butlers Pizza and many more goodies. Chris – you did a fantastic job mate. Also massive thanks go out to Miguel dos Santos for all of the crazy and tough work that he did this year. Good things.

I loved the venue too, Chevelle was phenomenal and a club that I will most definitely be heading back to when I’m in CT. That’s located at 84 Harrington Rd in CT. Get there. Wicked.

Thanks to everyone for all the congratulatory responses, sms’s, emails, tweets and phonecalls. It’s great to receive recognition in any form for something that you are passionate about and contribute much time to.

And finally to everyone and anyone who took the time to support SA Rocks in this years SABA’s by nominating and voting for this blog, thank you. The growth of the supporters of this blog keep me motivated.

Oh – And to Seth Rotherham, spot on mate, you deserve every award you won. I am on my to your side of the world, live the holiday.

All images in this post are courtesy of Brandon Golding!

And Finally a video from the very hard-working Glen Verran:

Popularity: 10% [?]

I’m still not convinced by the validity of the Podcast in the local market. Yet Saul and Jarred continue to try and prove me wrong. They’ve been doing a relatively good job of it lately and even went as far as to invite me on to the latest episode of the Digital Edge.

You can download it or listen to it live by heading over to the Digital Edge website.

From the site:

We speak to Nic Haralambous of SA Rocks, Seth Rotherham of 2Oceansvibe, Exmi from Expensive Mistakes Cheap Thrills, Shaun Oakes of Shaun Oakes.com, Jason Bagley from the Incredible Connection blog and finally Se7en from Se7en.org. We round up that line up with a summary of the blogosphere by Justin Hartman, head of blog aggregator Afrigator.

Nothing particularly groundbreaking came out of the bloggers interviews: We are all egotistical, we all like to win stuff, we all brag, blah blah blah. It’s riveting blogger “Days of our living lives online” sorta stuff.

Definitely worth listening to. Do it.

And thanks to Saul and Jarred for having me on the show. Always a good boost to the ego hey?!

Originally published on nh [dot] com

Popularity: 9% [?]

I am very pleased to announce that SA Rocks has been nominated for Three SA Blog Awards this year. I’m not going to harp on about this but felt it deserved a blog post to mention and ask for readers to head over to the SA Blog Awards site and vote for SA Rocks.

If you click on the image below you will be taken to the voting page and SA Rocks will be highlighted already in the following categories:

South African Blog of the Year

Best Blog about Politics

Best Group Blog

Your support and votes would be very much appreciated!

There are some fantastic blogs nominated this year and a whole host of categories so be sure to look through and vote for your favourites.

Popularity: 13% [?]

It’s always been pretty tough to represent locally when it comes to international awards online. The market is much larger than ours when you look abroad, many are dismissive of what we have to offer and some have simply yet to discover the jems that emerge from Africa.

However one blogger is breaking that mould. Glad to be a girl has taken home the Best African Weblog award at the Ninth Annual Weblog Awards. I think this is a fantastic achievement for the blog and for South African bloggers alike.

What a fantastic achievement and my congratulations go out to Philly Girl. Catch her on twitter too.

Popularity: 9% [?]

The SA Blog Awards nomination period is almost coming to a close. Now don’t get ahead of yourself and become all SA Blog Awarded out, cause that would suck.

There is still another round of voting that needs to take place. The second round is more simple, you simply click and vote for the nominee that you think should win the various awards that are up.

But for now what you need to do is follow this link and vote for SA Rocks as the SA Blog of the Year.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Our first proper day of excursions kicked off today with a helicopter tour of Cape Town. What an absolutely stunning city CT is. I wont go in to that too much because this post is purely going to show you all the bloggers on the tour with me and the links to their respective projects or blogs.

Virtual Africa is the brains behind this amazing photograph. They will be supplying the tour with more panoramic shots as we progress through the trip.

For now you click on the image below to visit the full panoramic view or click here.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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.

Popularity: 5% [?]

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.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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.

Popularity: 7% [?]