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Category: Garden Route

Change is coming to George, and we better get ready

Change is coming to George, and we better get ready

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Everywhere one looks there is signs of change. Construction is happening near the Garden Route Mall, Chinese shops are popping up everywhere, “coming soon” bus stop signs are scattered all over the landscape, and the papers are full of stories of new investors entering the region.

I see many comments in the papers and on social media channels of people objecting to proposed developments, citing concerns that the ‘garden’ must not be lost from the garden route.

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The importance of buying local

The importance of buying local

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We often hear people say we must buy local, or support local business. Is this just a tactic these people use to get us to buy from them instead of their competition?

Sometimes yes, but let’s look at the underlying benefits.

Buying local really means supporting a local small business, and most often, a family-run business. Supporting these businesses means that the profits stays here, and gets spent here as well.

Non-local business are typically big chains with a branch in the area but their head office in a big city somewhere. Their profits are typically sent back to head office, where it is used or pocketed by the shareholders.

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Is George open for business?

Is George open for business?

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George is open for business. Open as long as it is not a public holiday, the day between the public holiday and the weekend, an actual weekend, too early, too late, or any other time the business owner feels inconveniences him or her.

One place where service to customers still has a significant way to go is our local municipality. Their attitude of entitlement and power does not help to breed trust or engender goodwill. We are all quick to tell horror stories of long queues and useless officials. Unfortunately they are not alone; our town is full of local businesses that operate in the same way, some even complaining just as loudly about the poor service they get from the municipality.

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Small town thinking is like a glass ceiling

Small town thinking is like a glass ceiling

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Small town thinking is like a glass ceiling. It can trap you and stop you from getting those big deals just out of your reach. Getting out of that small town mentality is easier than it sounds.

All it takes is a little bit of faith, and no, I am not talking of the religious kind. I am talking about faith in your fellow business owner.

You would think that living in a small town business owners would be keen to work together, but this is definitely not the case. I have seen countless examples of deals passing us by because a joint venture could not get off the ground or one party pulled out at the last minute.

This fear of commitment is typical of small town thinking. In the big cities companies do joint ventures at the drop of a hat, and generally it is as successful as any other business deal.

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Outeniqua Smart City Corridor in the pipeline

Outeniqua Smart City Corridor in the pipeline

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From the George Herald, 19 Dec 2012

GEORGE NEWS – A plan to kick start the economy of the region on a sustainable basis, using smart city technology has been taking shape over the past few months.

Citizen connectivity, environmentally friendly transport, sustainable natural resource management and a knowledge economy is all part of the master plan.

The brains behind the concept – George Business Chamber President, Imel Rautenbach and technology strategists Rudie Shepherd & Nathan Jeffrey  – will in mid-January be tabling their roadmap plan for Outeniqua Smart City Corridor (OSCC) at a joint session with the four mayors of the Garden Route, and the Western Cape Finance and Tourism Minister Alan Winde.

Central to the concept is the idea that when the towns in the Outeniqua Corridor from Mossel Bay to Plettenberg Bay join forces to tackle common regional issues, the opportunity arises to gain the benefits of Smart City designs and technology – otherwise reserved for the mega cities of the world. “We should not wait until we develop the problems of urban sprawl, pollution, traffic congestion and technological apartheid. Now is the time to design the future place we will all love to live in,” said Shepherd.

“We already have had significant buy-in for our plan, and believe this collective thinking power can be put to use, for it is our intention that this master plan for making us internationally competitive must be refined and be implemented – as soon as possible,” said Rautenbach.

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SA ISP’s don’t know how to spell Cloud

SA ISP’s don’t know how to spell Cloud

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A few weeks ago I attended the annual #SATNAC conference in George. One thing became abundantly clear very quickly.

The South African ISP’s & Telecoms providers that attended, talked and exhibited there are seriously out of touch with the cloud reality. These included the likes of Telkom, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent & Ericsson & Nokia.

All of them mentions the “internet tsunami”, talking of an overwhelming demand for data and connectivity. None of them realises that the demand is actually for services. There response is entirely based on data volume and how to scale it.

A further failure is the absolute lack of realization that cloud services and virtual server hosting is not the same thing. Moving your physical server to a hosted virtual server (VPS) does not mean you have now cloud enabled your applications. It simply means you have moved your hosting.

We are still seeing virtually all local ISP’s tout VPS as cloud services. It is not the same thing.  Allowing users to increase or decrease the capacity of the VPS still does not make it a cloud. VPS is simply one of the building blocks of a complete Cloud infrastructure.

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The Garden Route, the best kept secret of the South African BPO Industry

The Garden Route, the best kept secret of the South African BPO Industry

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The Garden Route is open for business. Serious technology business.

This is the second in a series of posts identifying and substantiating several ICT projects to stimulate and grow the Garden Route ICT industry.

It is undeniable that the Garden Route offers a superior lifestyle and great infrastructure. This combined with a talented and motivated workforce, strong ICT skills pool and an effective and efficient local government makes it a top investment destination. In fact, two of the Garden Route towns have recently being identified by FinWeek’s as two of the top 10 of SA’s best places to do business.

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The Garden Route is open for Business!

The Garden Route is open for Business!

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Ask anyone outside the region what the Garden Route is all about and they will tell you it is a place of beaches, lakes, rivers, mountains and forests. Ask them about the business that happens in the region and they will give you a blank stare.

This is the single biggest obstacle the region face in growing the local economy. Overcoming this must be the first step in any economic development initiative planning on attracting more business to the region, even tourism business.

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