My answer to this question often depends on the sophistication of the audience.

Before I answer this one let me clarify something quickly. I operate in George,  which is in the Garden Route, where the typical web design student is a small business owner that sells to real people within the local area, and not to online customers.

In George the typical small company either has a website or wants to get a website. That’s pretty much as far as it goes. There is no strategy around most websites, it is simply used as a shop window or brochure stand. Convincing these SMME’s that a web presence is about a two way dialogue with your customer is hard going, let alone trying to explain the importance of keeping the twitter discussions flowing.

For me the crux about having a online presence is having the opportunity to open a conversation with your market. This means having the ability not only to push out content to potential customers, but also to hear back from them, and to gauge the market response to your initiatives and offers.

Together with SEDA we are running an e-marketing course that helps SMME’s find their way around the online world.  It covers blogs, twitter, facebook and many more topics. I try to make it clear that online marketing is not about pushing brochures out via web pages or unsolicited mail, but rather opening a dialogue, listening and responding.

This is all fine and well I hear you say, but often this strategy falls flat simply because companies do not take the conversation seriously. It requires constant attention and focus. Shouting without listening is as pointless as listening without acting.

Maybe it is time for the Garden Route small business sector to realize that there is a bigger market out there, that it is worth pursuing, and that the effort and investment needed to go there is worth it. Problem is most of these small businesses are so busy running their business they do not have the time or ability to drive their online conversation.

How about the idea of a social media agency that manages your online reputation on your behalf? Are there any online players in the region willing to take on such a mentorship / curatorship role? I think this could be a great additional service for those small companies only now emerging into the online world.

A consortium of Garden Route based companies is ready to launch an IT technology hub in George which will create jobs and train up new skills.

George’s IT company owner Imel Rautenbach is currently drumming up support for the initiative at provincial and national level.  The consortium aims to use the Western Cape Province’s business arm to market and develop in order to get launched nationally and internationally. IT technology and electronic centred businesses will be the engine that will drive this local initiative. “The idea behind pooling resources and skills is to keep all our software and hardware developmental work in the Garden Route. We already have around 30 businesses on our data base that have all the necessary skills and technology to form the nucleus. “

“We plan to link up our efforts with that of the Province. By collectively marketing and taking on projects jointly we can land contracts which may otherwise have been outsourced to companies outside the region. With the skills data base we now have we can take on big contracts, and the risk of one small company folding, is eliminated because collectively we can pool our skills to ensure continuity” says Rautenbach who was recently elected the Vice President of the George Chamber of Business.

On www.gardenrouteconsortium.co.za you can read more about their quest to “Provide project management and quality control services during the full lifecycle of large and complex projects. To define, enable, and manage key technology growth areas in the region.”

Provincial government support

Rautenbach has just returned from a very successful round of meetings with Western Cape Government on how the IT Consortium can link in to and benefit from the Western Cape’s own IT strategy and marketing initiatives. Alan Winde, MEC for Finance and Tourism is very excited about the potential the consortium holds for the Garden Route region. He has committed to bringing a high powered delegation of provincial officials to the region to further explore this potential.

”This initiative fits perfectly with our own plans for the growing of the Technology industry within province”, said Jo-Anne Johnston, Western Cape’s Chief Director of Trade and Industry Development.  She has committed her department’s full support for the initiative and is exploring ways of bringing other government departments onboard as well.

Jenny McKinnel, Executive Director of the Cape IT Initiative (CITI), is equally excited. Citi is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to develop and support the information and communications technology (ICT) cluster in the Western Cape. “CITI is keen to support the Garden Route IT Consortium as their goals are directly in line with our own”, said McKinnel.  CITI are going to be working together with the Garden Route IT Consortium to unlock government funding and help promote the region as an IT destination, especially focussing on the impressive line-up of currently supplied services and R&D projects the various consortium members are working on.

Research and Development

The Consortium also has a strong focus on Research and Development (R&D), with several innovations currently in the works. These includes projects like fridge magnets that will show the current water level in your rain tank, a stock theft project that tracks animal and vehicle movements on farms in real time and alerts the farmers the moment the animal’s movements indicates distress, as well as a project to track hikers in remote mountain hiking trails.

CITI’s McKinnel is putting her full support behind the formation of a new R&D Lab in the Garden Route, which will help accelerate these R&D ventures. The Western Cape Agriculture department has also been tasked to get involved in some of these projects. DTI and other government funding for R&D spending will be applied for to cover the lab setup and initial phases of some of these projects. Talks with the Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA) on how it can assist the consortium in its R&D and marketing initiatives is ongoing.

Wireless technology is ready to be unfolded

As part of the R&D venture a state of the art wireless network is being set up. This network will eventually cover the entire Garden Route but is currently being rolled out in the George area. The network uses the latest wireless technology which promises much faster speed than traditional networks.

The network will be non-commercial and completely free to join. The network will not supply internet access but rather will be a backbone for R&D projects and educational programs.  Through wireless technology business can monitor activities through CCTV camera link-ups and WEBCAMs. Regional weather and water consumption monitoring can be done for instance through wireless technology.  “The potential of the new network is limitless. With remote monitors farmers can even check-up on where their cattle is grazing, or see what vehicles are accessing their farms.” said an excited Rautenbach.

Western Province Government is busy drafting a policy on City based networks and will be liaising with the consortium to learn from the initiatives taken in the Garden Route.

Training
On of the consortium’s major aims is to boost education in the Southern Cape. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT University) in the USA, has made available to the consortium around 2000 online programs focussing on science and technology. These programs will be made available to local schools completely free of charge, once they have connected to the new network.  ”The beauty of this is that it is all so achievable. Video conferencing can be set up so that children in a small rural school can also listen to and view someone in the USA giving a lecture and so be brought into the world of science and technology.” Students can do courses as well through internet. Ms Johnston from Western Cape Government is currently exploring ways of unlocking government funding to get all the region’s schools connected to this initiative.

Virtual hub

“By creating a virtual hub, we want to create a momentum which will bring about enough technology based work here in George which will mean that those people who are currently commuting to bigger centres, and living in George, can in future work here as well.
“We are having a road show to launch the roll-out and we are pleased that Western Cape Finance and Tourism Minister Allan Winde’s revitalization programme happens to coincide and slot in with our initiatives, and we hope to tap into those being rolled out.”

For more info contact Imel Rautenbach on 044 802 0402 or visit the consortium website at www.gardenrouteconsortium.co.za or send an email to info@gardenrouteconsortium.co.za

What follows is a simply breakdown of the many hats worn day to day:

The audience listens to the client, sometimes the message is clear, concise and to the point, other times it is passionate but vague, other times it is simply dreary. Everyone needs to have there say, as truly great clients can come out of small beginnings.

The assessor then needs to read the viability of the task at hand, and decide the way forward.  Knowing what it takes to please the customer is a skill the assessor cannot do without.  Sometimes it is better to walk away from a seemingly lucrative deal when the client needs are simply above what is practical or realistic. Trying to please everyone never works.

The negotiator cuts to the chase, turning a need into a price. These days costing web design is a black art, as the price seems to be more based around the desire than the effort.  For me at least it makes no sense trying ot compete on price, as webdesign should not be judged on cost but on result. Having said that, it would be stupid not be be price realistic.

The manager takes over, breaking the process into chunks and dishing out the work. This is not only a case of breaking the effort apart, there are the issues of timeline, complexity, etc. Knowing when to do it yourself and when to outsource is a critical component.

Then there is the heavy lifter, the person that makes the mechanics of the websites work. They put the framework together, install the CMS, set up the shopping cart, the payment gateway and the user registration system.

The designer steps into the ring, bringing light to a otherwise dreary looking result. Common sense needs to be kept in check though, as often budgets and time-lines can be blown by trying to constantly improve a design. Its a bit like gambling, nowing when to draw the line is key in walking away with the planned profit.

The showman has the job of selling the final result back to the client. The better the result math the expectation the smaller the costly tweaking will be, so getting it right in the delivery is as important as getting the execution spot on.

The tutor needs to be patient as the client is shown how to do what needs doing. Being prepared for the typical questions not only puts the client at ease, it results in real synergy.  I often find that it is the service that wins gold referrals, not the design.

When it comes to delivering truly solid work, thinking with different hats certainly helps put things in perspective. 

Being the best or the fastest or the cheapest does not work for me, and probably not for you either; rather, being consitent makes life a lot simpler, for me as well as my customers.

End user experience is a key decider when it comes to making a hosting or bandwith choice, but this is the most elusive measurable of all.

With the increased innovation taking place in the ISP hosting and ADSL offerings area it is becoming more difficult for users to make an informed choice.  It is often the extreme points of view, both good and bad, that surface on the web, distorting the real user experience.

I am proposing the creation of an impartial dashboard where everyone can view and compare the real life performance of the product offerings from the various ISPs.

What I propose is a dashboard that measures connectivity in a South African perspective, i.e. the typical experience a local user will have when using the adsl from a particular ISP. Various scenarious would be monitored, from various locations, incuding ping times, route analysis, etc.

Another key aspect when choosing an ISP is hosting performance.  Many local hosting providers offers very appealing packages, but how do a typical end user know which are worth the risk in migrating to a new offering. Things that would be measured and displayed in a visual dashboard would be hosting server performance (CPU, Load, memory, numer of sites hosted, etc).

For both adsl and hosting it is also key to measure availability as well as effective usability. From a technical perspective only opensource tools like Nagios, Smokeping, MRTG, RRD, SNMP, etc will be used to perform the monitoring and graphing.

For this to be a viable proposition I will need the co-operation of the local players, including Afrihost, Hetzner, IS, MWeb, Telkom, Web Africa, etc.  Let’s see if the new age ISPs will come to the party.

The site will not be a platform for those with a grunt to bear, but rather an informative portal where ISPs can be judged on what they deliver, not on what they promise, allowing the end user to make an informed choice.

“Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.”

The course is split into three separate parts, on consecutive days.  This allows participants to pick the days that are suited to there particular skill level.

Training is performed hands on, using the Office Reliance training centre’s laptops and interactive whiteboards.During the three day course you will create your own fully functional Joomla website.

Course fees includes hot lunch, printed training materials as well as a CD containing all the software used during the training course.

Cost is R 750 for day 1, R 1,150 for day 2 and R 1,450 for day 3; or R 3,000 for all three days, inclusive of VAT.

Limited spaces available, so early booking & payment secures a space.

Call 044 802 0400 or email training@officereliance.co.za This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to book.

The new site uses lots more images and unfortunately the template is fairly bloated with icons, styles and scripts, but the overall load time should be manageable.

After burning lots of midnight oil the new site has finally gone live. Go visit the new Office Reliance website, then let me know what you think.