Oh wow, summer’s seriously kicking my butt – 34 degrees today and that’s no exaggeration! It doesn’t look like it’s getting much cooler any time soon either, just take a look at this weather report:
Must admit, I’m not looking forward to all the meetings I have lined up this week, here’s to hoping there will be aircon!
Sun tan lotion if you’re outdoors folks!
For those of you who live in Cape Town, you’ll probably be breathing a sigh of relief now that the sun has gone down! My thermometer read 36 degrees this afternoon and weirdly enough it actually felt hotter! It’s not going be be as hot at the beginning of this week, but it looks like it’s going to be towards the weekend, so get that pool clean!
Woweeee, so how hot was last week? I’m really struggling in the heat, even when I’m sitting on the couch, let alone business meetings in offices that don’t have aircon – it’s somewhat cruel of the powers above!
So the good news is that the weather’s going to get a little cooler, but the bad news is by not much..
Don’t get me wrong, summer in Cape Town is awesome, it’s just the continual heat that is exhausting.
This heat wave has been absolutely killing me! I’ve always been a winter person, but over the past couple of years I’ve started to enjoy summer more, well, that was until this week. I’m not too good with really hot weather, my brain slows down, I get irritable and I’m just not nearly as productive as I usually am, that’s why I’m sitting here past 23h00 writing blog posts because I can sit outside and actually concentrate!
I was hoping that we’d experience a thunder storm with evening in Cape Town, but alas, it seems like that’s not going to be the case and it also seems like the weather’s not going to change any time soon either, it’s going to be hot this weekend:
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t rather have an entire weekend of rain, but I wouldn’t mind a thunder storm or a slight drizzle, for my own sanity, but also for my bonsai’s! I find that the bonsai’s grow so much better with rain water rather than tap water.
So this weekend’s all about getting up early and doing things, being close to a pool in the afternoons and being sure to have sunscreen around at all times!
A few hours ago, Wimpy announced on Twitter that between 7am and 8am tomorrow that they’ll be serving breakfast for free. I’m not kidding, this screenshot taken from the Wimpy website:
This is only valid in South Africa, you’re entitled to one streaky bacon breakfast and you have to sit down, no takeaways.
Moving along onto the topic I’m obviously interested in and that’s how they went about marketing this – Sure, they updated their website and they sent a tweet out, but what I did pick up on was that they tweeted at influential people on Twitter. I see that they tweeted to Gareth Cliff and DJ Fresh (5FM DJ’s) the following, “Biting your nails for the big day? Free Wimpy Streaky Bacon Breakfast tomorrow morning 7-8am, sit down only.” – Clever way of doing it, a tactic that you might want to add to your social media guidelines if you’re in the business.
So, if you’re getting up early tomorrow and you feel like some bacon, pop on over to Wimpy and enjoy it!
My only question is, is the coffee free too? ;)
After Sunday afternoon’s stress, Monday started on an exhausted note, but a meeting and some tight deadlines worked just as well as a few strong coffee’s, and before I knew it I was racing through the day and on my way home. Last night was busy for some reason, I arrived home and just had lists of things to get through. I was sitting outside on my Mac researching some new SEO tactics that I want to test – completely lost track of the time and it was passed 2am! Today was busy too, I’m fairly hands on with a new staff member that is going to take over quite a bit of the work I have been doing up until now so it’s important for me to put the hours in to ensure that he feels comfortable, motivated and most important, passionate.
I had another salsa class this evening, good grief it was hot, wow! We learnt a really easy move, which wasn’t the best, but it was great to be back again, moving to the salsa beats and meeting new people. If you missed it, I’ve gone back to salsa, you can read about that here.
Looks like the weather’s not really going to change much, so prepare yourself for many more hot days:
Oh, and I have to end on this, dare I say that what Matt says below is something I’ve been preaching for years and years – ranking means nothing compared to converting! Sure, ranking highly normally results in more traffic (depending on the search term’s estimate traffic of course), but there’s no point getting thousands of hits to a site if they’re not converting. Take a watch:
Nicely said Matt!
Consumer Electronics Association (CES) took part this weekend. CES is a trade association that promotes growth in the consumer technology industry, so much growth that the number said was 186 billion dollars! CES 2012 took place this weekend and from what I’ve seen and read, it was a cracker.
Some new technology trends were announced that the event, they covered:
Some cool trends in the mix, I can’t wait for the technologies to hit South Africa, especially the smart applications – I want my kettle to turn on via my iPhone in the morning ;)
So if you’re living in Cape Town then you’ll know how hot it’s been the past week or so, excluding a day with some rain. The good news, to those who love the heat, is that the heat isn’t going anywhere and we’re in for a week of beach weather of note!
Just take a look at this forecast:
I must admit, I get the feeling that proper summer is only starting now!
I’ve gone on about my goals for 2012 quite a bit, I guess it’s more for me than anyone else, keep my eyes on the goals and all. One of the goals was more balance and I’m working really hard to achieve this. This weekend was a good one as I did just that.
On Friday evening a group of us went out to Home Bar in Harfield Village for dinner and drinks. It’s the first time I had the Home Burger as I usually go for the espitada or a steak, but I can confidently say that the burger was delicious and I wasn’t the only one who had it and agreed. Drinks flowed, great conversation happened and I was still home and in bed just after midnight.
Saturday evening saw us at Zapata Restaurant once again, great margherita’s as usual and even better bacon wrapped chili poppers. I gota tell you, it only takes a couple of those margherita’s to get the smile going – thank goodness we’re around the corner and can walk! This time I had the courage to get up and dance some salsa with Fe, which was a lot of fun and earned us a little round of applause ;)
Zapata Chili Poppers
All in all it was a fantastic weekend excluding the emergency ER run.
I hope you all had a good weekend too!
PS. Let’s hope the troll doesn’t pay us a visit again.
Some good friends of mine have just launched their startup, Airborne, and there’s already some great hype around it. I’ve been fortunate enough to hear about the startup over the years whilst they’ve been building it and I’ve been dying to tell you all about it because I think it has legs, in fact, I think that with the right marketing they might be onto something really big and the awesomeness is compounded by the fact that it’s local!
Casual one sentence: A way for musicians to share their music and for fans to receive it – for only one dollar!
The idea in a video:
I sent some questions through to Justin, Ruark and the crew, and here’s what they had to say:
What made you build Airborne Music? Do you have a passion for music, was it a gap, did you see a system that you thought could be bettered?
A tricky one to answer. Many have suggested that the two industries most ripe for disruption are the banking and music industries. It’s no secret that the music industry is sick, so the opportunity to do something revolutionary is there but I think Airborne happened to be one of those right idea, for the right people, at the right time kind of things.
It doesn’t hurt that music is a pretty damn fascinating business though.
How many people work for Airborne Music? What does everyone do?
Our full-time staff in Cape Town is 5. As with most start-ups we wear many hats day-to-day but we comprise of specialists in roles like product design, Artist acquisition, Carrier growth, marketing and strategic planning. Our ‘extended family’ includes 12 others dotted around Europe where our heavy lifting engineering unit and corporate structure is based.
How did you fund the project, who paid the salaries and did you do client work or salaried work to fund it? Do you have investors?
For the first 3 years, while Airborne was a dream, we paid the bills (mostly) through our work at RUBIKS ROOM which built up a somewhat impressive roster of client work over the years. It was a good for us to experiment with various design and build methodologies before we started building our baby. In 2011 Airborne finally got traction when I managed to convince a beloved band of friends and fools to back the company and development of the first version of the Network (A0M1).
How long did it take you to conceptualize the platform?
Airborne began as a tag-line (music is the virus and the virus is Airborne) and design concept about 4 years ago. We’ve constantly refined and distilled the dream into an idea, and from an idea into a plan which is now a dream, realised.
If I might humbly espouse some advice on this point -
Take considerable time to mentally prototype your idea before jumping out of an aircraft with your first idea for a parachute. Discuss it with interesting people, draw pictures and model things. You can have many ideas about one idea.
How long did it take you to build the platform?
Start to finish, probably about 6 months. It’s just the first version of the Network though, we call it A0M1. We’ve received a lot of thoughtful and constructive feedback about the interface in particular and we’re already developing an enhancement update which will include a proper discovery mechanism and some pretty cool enhancements for web and mobile.
What are the 3 most important lessons you learnt from building Airborne Music?
Always have a plan B (and C, D, E, etc.) – it’s important to be responsive to change and always think a few moves ahead. Things seldom turn out the way you planned.
Fairness is the best foundation upon which to build your house. Be fair with your Crew, Investors and Partners.
Be open and communicative.
What 3 things would you change if you could do it again?
I thought about this for quite a while, there isn’t anything I would change, even the difficult times were good learning and growing experiences. If I could pick one thing -
I would start the setup of the corporate structure and payment gateways sooner (never under estimate the ability of bureaucrats to piss on your parade).
Did anyone inspire you to build Airborne Music?
No one individual stands out in this regard. If anything the passion of the team behind it and feedback from Artists and fans was the most inspiring for me.
Are you aiming to capture the local market first and then the International, or the other way around? Why?
We have our eye’s set on the worldwide market from day one. Music is universal and one of the things we want to do with Airborne is to open the biggest music market the world has ever known. That said, we’re working very hard in the local scene but with the view to expose local Artists to international fans and local fans to international Artists. If that makes sense?
Would you sell a portion of the platform to a 3rd party or do you want to hold 100% shares? And, why?
There may come a time when we decide to sell Airborne but for the moment we are focused on building something of value, something that can make an indelible mark on the future of music.
Where do you see Airborne Music a year from now?
Ready to scale, 2012 is the year of refinement, preparation and bridge-building. We’d like to see a quarter million Carriers by year end but the focus is definitely on preparing for aggressive worldwide expansion in 2013.
How many cups of Vida coffee do you think you consumed, as a team, over the months/years of building Airborne?
Good Lord, we probably burn through a 100 cups a month between us. Over the years… that’s a scary thought.
When you aren’t working, how do you switch off?
Good question, not exactly sure. Sometimes the best thing to do is to try and achieve balance by exposing yourself to new things outside of the working cocoon but when you love what you’re doing, and it’s new every day it doesn’t feel like “work”.
Are you hiring?
Yep! We’re looking for interns to assist with Artists Acquisition in the short term but if there are any sheet-hot designers out there, drop us a mail on iwanttowork@airbornemusic.com.
- end
Really awesome team, really awesome project, I wish them all the best and hope that their dream comes true!
PS. I’ll be getting some free vouchers to try out the system, so keep posted!
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