/tacanderson

Today, I make my last trip of the month (which also happens to be the first trip of March). From London, I've been to Brussels, Seattle and San Francisco and now I'm heading back to South Africa where I'll visit Johannesburg (also called Joburg or Jozi, by the locals) but this time I get to continue on to Cape Town. 

That's a lot of travel, especially when you consider that I went to Helsinki in January and will probably make one more trip to Munich before March is over. I'll continue to share pictures and posts here but if I'm a little slower to respond to emails and comments over the next 10 days, you'll know why. 

A year and a half ago I had the great pleasure to take my first trip to Africa. I was there to open Waggener Edstrom's new office in Johannesburg, South Africa. You can read all of my posts from that trip here. 

In the last 4 months coming from the states I've been in London, England; Munich, Germany; Edinburgh, Scotland; Paris, France and now Johannesburg, South Africa (or as the locals call it: Joburg or Jozi), and of all the locations Joburg gets me the most excited. 

Joburg is not a prime tourist location; it's a huge city in the middle of the desert with no large body of water. There's not much "to do" compared to the other locations. There are not a lot of cool art museums, theaters or the usual things you see in the other places. The place also has its problems. It's still very much a developing market. But Joburg has something the others don't.

Everyone I meet with is super optimistic. The entrepreneurs there are amazing. The people believe in their community and know that there isn't anything they can't do. I got to see several areas under urban renewal. There was loads of culture unlike you'll see anywhere else.

The people are also incredibly open about what's working and what's not. They talk openly about race and poverty and corruption but they do so with an attitude that tells you they believe these are fixable problems, even if they don't totally know how they'll fix them. 

They aren't afraid to try and fail and try again. In these ways they're very American and as I talked with people there, they do self-identify more with America than Europe. Not that they think America is perfect nor do they want to emulate everything about America but they've caught the entrepreneurial spirit in a big way. 

My advice is to watch South Africa closely. With only 12-15% of their population online, they've got a ways to go but the one's that aren't online are still doing some impressive stuff and the ones that aren't online are still very much "connected" with their mobile phones and SMS. 

South Africa gets it. 

To be able to focus is a great virtue if you are a watch repairman, a brain surgeon, or a chess player. But the last thing you need to do when you deal with uncertainty is to “focus” (you should tell uncertainty to focus, not us). This “focus” makes you a sucker.

I'm currently reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" and loving it. I think I've highlighted more things in this book than I have any other Kindle book. I'll have a full write up on it later on New Comm Biz but this quote explained my professional career better than most.

I deal in the uncertain. If you're familiar with the concepts behind The Black Swan, my job is to spot Black Swans (market changing/making opportunities) and develop strategies to get the most out of them. To date, that's mostly been in social media and digital marketing, so I tell people I work in marketing, but that doesn't really cover it. 

I think it's why I hate job titles, professional development goals and setting performance metrics. How am I supposed to tell a manager what my outcomes will be next year when we don't even know what I'll be doing by the end of the year?

While most people's job is to focus, my job is to not focus. 

It's a sad day when people are singled out and physically attacked for speaking out and being bold enough to go on the record with the press. 

I was contacted via Twitter by a reporter in Boise, ID. (my hometown), about my perspective on the London riots and what I was seeing. I warned him that I hadn't seen anything interesting as the riots never came to Chiswick but I figured if nothing else they wanted to be able to say they had talked to people in Boise in London during the riots - good for viewership and all. 

Here is the video clip and you can read a partial transcript here. 

But once local hooligans found out I talked to the press, I was viscously set upon for speaking to the press.

Here are the weapons I was attacked with. The weapon has been modified and fitted with a camera.

This is a particularly insidious device as it first surprises and shocks the victim before they are then grilled mercilessly with questions they don't have time to think about before they answer and the whole time a weapon is being aimed at them so you're afraid your answers will upset the attacker. 

And all in the name of supposed vigilante justice. 

You can see the video of me during the attack.

After this event I am a big proponent of using water cannons.  

The last 2 days have been pretty intense. It's Sunday afternoon now and I'm in London England, but less than 36 hours ago I was on my way to Soweto, South Africa, the largest township in South Africa. The visit was an exercise, emotionally and physically. Then I got 3 or 4 hours of sleep while on the plane, the brand new Airbus A380, the largest passenger airplane in the world. Talk about going from one extreme to another. I went from riding a department store mountain bike around one of the poorest areas in South Africa

to riding business class on one of the most expensive civilian airplanes in the World.

First I have to thank our new GM of the office in South Africa; Marcus Sorour.

The bike tour participants and our guides from Soweto Bike Tours

There is a lot I can say and a lot of back story to the pictures but for some reason, even though they're not that great, letting the pictures talk for themselves seems more appropriate.

My biggest takeaway from the whole trip, and I plan to address this more on my other blog, is the importance of optimism and community in South Africa and that in the next 3-5 years as reliable Internet becomes available to all Africans, you will see a radical transformation there that will have an effect on the Internet, startups everywhere and therefore, the World. I'd encourage you to pay close attention to Africa, I know I will be.

This was one in a series of posts about my trip to Joburg South Africa. You can see all of those posts under the tag: Joburg.

At least that's what the girl at the restaurant told me after she painted my face. 

This was one in a series of posts about my trip to Joburg South Africa. You can see all of those posts under the tag: Joburg.

Today we met with the professors at the University of Johannesburg's Strategic Communications Department. We had a great discussion about the industry of integrated communications and how to prepare students for the job market.

One of the pieces of advice our SVP of EMEA, Chris Talago gave them was to encourage them to have be passionate not just about marketing communications but to find an industry you're passionate about, It would suck to be passionate about nonprofits and be stuck in tech or the other way. And of course that experience matters as much as your degree.

The challenge that UJ has isn't just trying to stay on top of the industry, which is something every university in America also struggles with, UJ has the added challenge that not all of their students have access to the Internet away from school. That sure makes teaching digital communications that much tougher.But its still essential because when they hit the work force they'll have to be able to use these tools.And while Africa has very low Internet penetration that will change and as it does people will be starting off in a Web 2.0 World not ramping up from a 1.0 World the way we did.

Course work, class projects and internships become even more important.

This was one in a series of posts about my trip to Joburg South Africa. You can see all of those posts under the tag: Joburg.

Forget Gen Y: Gen X is Making Real Change