I have a warm smile that would melt any dictator’s heart and would make you feel at ease anytime.

Easy and fun to work with just as long as we finish the task at hand, love having people around me cause we all can learn from each other. And hey “a day without a smile is a waste of it”.

I’m passionate about learning more from other cultures, as well as sharing my own cultural ‘tales’.

Looking forward to working at Avocado Vision!!

This is a photo of the ’smoking section’ in the Keg, Johannesburg International Airport. I think it’s a stroke of genius. In most restaurants, tucked away in some corner, smoking sections often resemble neglected herpetological exhibits. I’m not a smoker, but I often feel sorry for our oxygenically-challenged brethren.

The Keg has turned this perception on it’s head by enclosing the busiest area of the restaurant off and calling it a Cigar Lounge instead of a smoking section. Ironically enough, it was the busiest section of the pub when I visited this evening, and my guesstimation was that less than 50% of the people inside where smoking anything at all. It appears that it is quite cool to sit in the Cigar Lounge and leaf through the morning’s paper, regardless of whether you smoke or not.

Sometimes the difference between brilliance and a missed opportunity is just a little thought. Another great example is an ancient old lady that works a till at our local Pick ‘n Pay. She always greets me when I arrive at her station by looking me in the eyes and smiling. She scans my groceries as though they are ming vases. If I pay by credit card, she glances at my name and says, “thanks for your business, Mr. Stopforth. Enjoy the rest of your day”.

Mr. Stopforth.

I’m one-eighth her age, for crying out loud.

Small acts of brilliance, huge impacts.

Perhaps you own one. I don’t. I barely write anymore – most of my thoughts get hammered out on a keyboard or spoken directly into a digital recorder. But I’m intrigued. Not by the odd Moleskine-bearer strolling nonchalantly around Melville or Rosebank (I usually dismiss them as artsy-types), but rather by the phenomenal online following the ol’ Moleskine brand enjoys.

The Moleskine (pronounced mol-a-skeen-a) is simply a brand of notebook manufactured by Modo & Modo, an Italian company, bound in oilcloth-covered cardboard (Moleskin) with an elastic band to hold the notebook closed and a sewn spine that allows it to lie flat when opened. Not particularly high tech, or particularly sexy, for that matter. The pocket notebook’s reputation has grown in stature through the endorsements of the likes of Bruce Chatwin, Neil Gaiman and Pete Doherty, and rumour would have it that the Moleskine was a favourite accessory to the likes of Picasso, Hemingway and Van Gogh.

Whether all the folklore is verifiable or not the Moleskine brand, through its product’s minimalist design and stylish simplicity, continues to enjoy a formidable, almost cultish following. I’ve never heard Moleskine notebooks advertised on the radio, nevermind on the telly, and yet everyone who’s anyone either owns one or can tell you something about them. That’s exceptional - the immense power of viral marketing, personified by a wad of blank pages.

I was interested to hear Jackie Huba of the Church of the Customer blog talking about her Moleskine-fetish, and she listed some fascinating links to some of the more fanatical Moleskine Evangelists in the online world. Moleskine blogs, a MySpace site and even a comprehensive Wikipedia entry (from which, just by the way, I got most of the information for this article). All this free marketing by unpaid, enthusiastic citizens, who believe in the unobtrusive allure of an overpriced notebook.

How many citizen marketers does your brand have?

…good news for Apple as the Pope endorses the iPod. And speaking of iPods, even DA leader Tony Leon is getting in on the podcasting act. Other South Africans making a mark on the Web are AJ Venter, who’s just launched a blog on his site, and Stormhoek Winery, whose blog has helped them double their wine sales in less than twelve months.

Wells Fargo has made history by being the first major US bank to launch a public blog. Guided by History is an attempt to provide readers with resources to better prepare for the future, using the analogy of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake & Fire.

Google are busy buying, well, everything… the two latest acquisitions being Writely and @Last (who created Sketchup). Om reckons this is part of a much bigger plan, “Now buying Writely is in line with Google thinking of using browser for
everything. I mean an online word processor, and online excel spread
sheet…”.

The Web is abuzz following South Africa’s miraculous cricket win. Top cricket blog, The Googly, has some interesting comments.

And finally, if you really have nothing better to do, Ian’s Shoelace Site (I kid you knot), has more than 16 methods, brilliantly illustrated, to tie the average pair of shoelaces…
“Most people only know the one shoelace knot that they learned as a child, having been taught by either a parent, a sibling, a relative, a teacher or even another child. Many are surprised to learn that there’s more than one method, let alone sixteen!”

Highlight of the Week…

Chuck fever

After all the kicking and screaming to get the votes in, being accused of intimidating and corruption, it is finally done. It was a very difficult position to be in, but I was strong and took the bull by the horns. “Before I announce the winner, I would like to say you are all winners because all your blogs were AMAZING”. HA HA! You hear this line in very competition, from the judges trying to make everyone else feel better about losing. Some people fall for it very time, but guys I do mean it ok, “You are all great!!!!!”.

OK OK OK OK!!! I will stop and tell you the winner of the best blog - DRUMS please!!!! It’s HANLI!!! YE YE YE YOU GO GIRL! There is a prize for this competition, it is one thing that all the Avos are dying to have. Can you guess what it is?

I’ve stumbled across an excellent article at KansasCity.com entitled The Bottom Line on Blogging which takes a look at some of the emerging stories from blogging and bloggers in the corporate world.

Our very own, extremely successful Stormhoek Winery blog gts a significant mention!

A snippet from the article:

“But blog watchers and yes, there are blogs that track business bloggers say 23 of the Fortune 500 companies now have formal blogs. The practice has been institutionalized at companies such as Microsoft and IBM.

Smaller businesses with blogs probably number in the hundreds.

Companies are using blogs to build good will, to push their Web
sites higher up on search engine lists and to get consumers talking
about their brand.

IBM encourages employees to blog and set up a ‘Blog Central’ site on
the company’s intranet to spotlight the work of IBM bloggers. The
company also set up templates to help bloggers get started.

We’re a company of experts, said Brian Doyle, a spokesman for IBM.
We’re about encouraging these people to interact, and that leads to
breakthrough thinking and innovation.

Time management is not one of my finer skills.  Quite frankly, I suck at it.  I procrastinate, can’t organise a diary, forget or misplace appointments and on any given day find myself wishing for a handful of extra minutes to catch up an all the stuff I need to get done.

Not anymore!  Check out Grasshopper Enterprises’ ‘Boundaries of Imagination’ site, and their theory on ‘time management’.

How to stop time.

Dave Winer has come up with the idea for an unconference out of sheer desperation - conferences are malignantly boring. Here’s the full text, or you can read his post here.

“The idea for an unconference came while
sitting in the audience of a panel discussion at a conference, waiting
for someone to say something intelligent, or not self-serving, or not
mind-numbingly boring. The idea came while listening to someone drone
endlessly through PowerPoint slides, nodding off, or (in later years)
checking email, or posting something to my blog, wondering if it had to
be so mind-numbingly boring.

In a desperate attempt to curb the ever-increasing digital download problem the Music Industry faces, one indie label has opted to appeal to the inherent good nature of mankind - with a love letter.  Read the full story at Boing Boing.

Uncky G - A term of endearment (so I am told) that I have earned while working at UBS Investment Bank London for the past 8 years. Allegedly the nickname was given to me because of the way I was always on hand to help the new staff find their way. My manner sometimes referred to as a father figure or uncle. I guess uncle Glenn was not too catchy and my dad is Mr Collie. So Glenn Collie was transformed into Uncky G.

I have now returned, along with my beautiful wife and children (1 girl and 1 boy), back to the sunny shores of Africa. Here, as a little Avo pip, I look forward to flourishing into a wonderful avo tree which offers more than just shade and fruit.