money & age

Check out this quote I’ve just found while going through a pile of newspapers from EAK I received the other day:

Q: At 24, you are probably one of the youngest CEOs in the region. Has this been an obstacle in your quest to market the company?

A: Yes, it has. As a young entrepreneur maketing a new concept, I faced a lot of challenges, with some prospective clients not taking me seriously. But once I proved my worth, people started respecting me, especially when they learnt that at my age, I have 45 employees. I believe it is the youth who will lift Africa out the yokes of poverty.

(Nadeem Juma, CEO, E-Fulusi (T) Ltd.,
ex: “Q&A”, The EastAfrican, No.682, Nov 26 – Dec 02, 2007, p. 23)

My Indian colleague at work who is currently writing his master thesis and, at his age of 22, also is the youngest intern at the GTZ, recently introduced me to one of his friends who – at the age of 28 – is currently setting up a branch of a well-known Indian bank in Frankfurt. And I was told that an Indian guy has three things to achieve in life: a very good education, getting married and buying a house.
Now compare that with what the average German wants to achieve in his life…hmmm.

As for that quote above: Nadeem’s company in Tanzania, E-Fulusi, offers mobile banking services – operator independent!

———

The purchasing agents of Father Christmas recently approached me and asked, what I would like to receive as a xmas present. Well…

I’ve been living out of two suitcases for the past 1,5 years – and it feels good. As long as the battery on my N95-phone/mp3player/webthing is fully charged, I’ve got a comfy bed to sleep in and access to a broadband inet connection, there isn’t much else money could buy for me.
As for the other, unmaterialistic stuff: good health can’t be bought, 8h of sleep every night neither and love….well…it’s always good to be loved! :-)

Lessing

“We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.”

“Reading, books, used to be part of a general education.”

“And we must remember that this respect and hunger for books comes, not from Mugabe’s regime, but from the one before it, the whites. It is an astonishing phenomenon, this hunger for books, and it can be seen everywhere from Kenya down to the Cape of Good Hope.”

“Yet despite these difficulties, writers came into being, and there is another thing we should remember. This was Zimbabwe, physically conquered less than a hundred years before. The grandfathers and grandmothers of these people might have been storytellers for their clan. The oral tradition. In one generation – two, the transition from stories remembered and passed on, to print, to books. What an achievement.”

“Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a processor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, “Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write? Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas – inspiration.” (source)

As long as someone with a Mercedes has a better social standing than a university professor, as long as books are still very expensive in some parts of the world, as long as tv is the “new” medium for those who have been without such entertainment for a long time, as long as the old generation will still mistake LOLcats & Jackass videos on YouTube for the new digital world order – as long as these conditions persist – blogs will fill in the gap where publishers have just failed in the past, wikis will do what encyclopaedias have failed to deliver and multimedia online will provide what many controlled institutions are trying to hide from the masses.

übers Bloggen

Einer der Umstände, die mich manchmal vom Bloggen bzw. Ausfüllen dieser Website mit Inhalten abhalten, ist die Auswahl der Sprache. Weniger ob Deutsch oder Englisch, als vielmehr die Frage nach dem Schreibstil.

Sicherlich kann man anonym bloggen und dann Dinge aufschreiben, die Andere gerne lesen, Reiseberichte verfassen, übers Kochen schreiben oder neues Technikspielzeug. Darum geht es mir aber gar nicht. Dieses Blog entstand ja im Sommer 2005 aus der Not heraus, dass ich mich bei Neon angemeldet hatte und den Moderatoren dort meine Texte für eine Veröffentlichung als Artikel nicht gut genug waren. Ohne Angabe von Gründen. Wohl nicht hip genug. Oder so. Daraufhin beschloss ich, mein eigenes blog aufzumachen – auch weil mich Cedric dazu ermutigt hatte – und bin damit seitdem auch recht glücklich.
Ich blogge hauptsächlich a) auf Englisch, obwohl ich manchmal lieber auf Deutsch schreiben würde, einzig auch nur um bestimmte Dinge anders – nicht besser – ausdrücken zu wollen und b) weil ich ein sog. “Bridgeblogger” bin, manchmal zumindest, der durch das Berichten über die lokale Situation das Ausland informieren möchte.
Vor allem aber versuche ich dabei c) nicht nur eine bestimmte Seite an mir zu bedienen, sondern mehrere Ebenen wiederzugeben. Ich bin ja nicht NUR so wie das dem Leser zwischen den Zeilen hindurchschimmern mag. Was ich hier schreibe muss ja nicht vollkommen meine Persönlichkeit wiedergeben. Deswegen habe ich auch irgendwann persönlichere Dinge gebloggt, weil ich mich für eine breite Palette an Themen interessieren und auch begeistern kann.

“Ich hätte gar nicht so viel zu schreiben oder den Drang, mich anderen mitzuteilen” – solche Sprüche hört man als Blogger oft. Glücklicherweise hat sich das in den letzten zwei Jahren bißchen relativiert, und ich glaube viele dieser Aussagen sind nicht richtig, da es meiner Meinung nach viele anonyme Blogger gibt, die nach außen hin dieses low profile bewahren möchten, um dann aber insgeheim irgendwo über ihre Erfahrungen zu bloggen. Wäre mal ne interessante Studie: wieviele anonyme Blogger gibt es?

Nein, nein, es geht nicht um die öffentliche Tagebuchfunktion. Nächste Woche Dienstag haben wir in der Firma die offene Web 2.0 Gesprächsrunde, die Christian mit moderieren wird, und es werden dann sicherlich nur die Inetaffinen Gestalten auftauchen, diejenigen also, die mit dem Begriff Web 2.0 auch wirklich aktive Inhalte verbinden können und den Sinn und Zweck verstanden haben. Ich freue mich schon sehr darauf und finde es großartig, das Christian hier so missionarisch unterwegs ist!
Meine Arbeitskollegin frug mich letztens, wer das alles lesen soll. Weiß ich doch nicht! Ich hab ihr dann aber den Link mit der öffentlichen Besucherstatistik zu diesem Blog geschickt, was die Frage einigemaßen beantworten sollte.
Für mich sind Blogs also nicht nur persönliche Tagebücher im Internet, sondern vor allem Publikationswerkzeuge, um Inhalte schnell und einfach einer breiten Masse im Internet präsentieren zu können.
Sobald sich mobiles Bloggen vom Handy aus durchsetzen wird (Stichwort: Googles offenes Handybetriebssystem, das diese Dienste mit Sicherheit verschmelzen wird), wird man auch nicht mehr unterscheiden wollen zwischen reinen Blogs und moderierten Webpräsentationen. Alles verschmilzt online zu einem großen Pool an Daten, everything is miscellaneous, ist auffindbar, wird über feeds dem interessierten Leser direkt in den Feedreader befördert, nach Inhalten sortiert, jeder Nutzer ist wie bei den P2P filesharing Diensten auch automatisch Bereitsteller von Inhalten (zB durch Kommentare)…kurz: das Web lebt vom Mitmachen und Verwenden von Informationen.

Die Zweifler werden sich ob des Hypes sicherlich immer noch fragend am Kopf kratzen und ihren old-school-Status unterstreichen wollen. Sollen sie ruhig. Die Verwendung von Blogs oder sozialen Lesezeichendiensten wie del.icio.us (die qualifizierte, von Menschen vorselektierte Inhalte festhalten) sind für mich aber der Beweis dafür, dass diese Dezentralität des Netzes die Gegenwart darstellt.

So, und an dieser Stelle würde ich jetzt gerne auf den Schreibstil eingehen, alleine: es gibt keinen eindeutigen JKE-Schreibstil und außerdem muss ich jetzt grad schnell los und meine Wäsche zum Waschsalon tragen. Have a nice weekend!

Halbwertszeit

The worst job about online stuff is thinking of decent content which may be published on more important platforms than private blogs.

During the past few weeks, I had to think of content which shall be published on a website that will be launched soon. I think it’s even easier to write a proposal for a project because then you know only a few recipients will be targeted and you can streamline and adapt the content for their perspective. With websites though, there’s this 24/7/365 readership out there that closely follows all your steps and mistakes – and everyone has a different opinion on issues you are writing about. This generates conversations – which is good and wanted.

The difficulty really is to find a politically correct way in between all those opinions and still hit the nail on its head with precise definitions.

What I like about blogging is that I can just put my own content online without thinking too much about how it could offend others, how I wouldn’t have to double-check content with my boss who will even find the smallest typo and that I can actually cover any subject that I like.

Also, it’s interesting to see how services like Twitter are used to express feelings or moods, while blogs are then used to cover subjects that have a slightly longer Halbwertszeit. That’s an interesting development, I think. Seeing how these new services are used and how the general opinion on blogs has changed in the last two years. From personal diaries to corporate blogging -how nice is that!

Back to the content management: while thinking about the ultimate content for this project I am currently on, I came to realize that it doesn’t really matter what’s online – as long as there are enough conversations going on. Editing content with such an assumption in mind, the approach to getting your message and content across to the readers becomes much easier.

Spendenmarathon 2007

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The person who designed this billboard may have agreed with me about the beauty of this kid (who btw reminds me of Jirani), but just after taking this snapshot tonight, I immediately realized what bugs me about this advertisment for an upcoming fundraising campaign to be aired on tv on November 22nd:

poorly dressed + small + black + kid = poverty?

As long as such stereotyped messages are used to raise attention for the fact that still a lot of people are living in poverty, I will keep on hearing phrases like “..but you are white, you’re supposed to be rich!”.

Not yet convinced? Then do a quick image search on Google with the keyword “poverty”….

the choo issue

Compared to the population of the world, only a few people are able to drive a Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW or Lexus – yet they are built with some sort of comfort and perfection in mind.

Everyone of these 6,6 billion people out there, however, needs to go to toilet. Every day.

I wonder why ppl spend so much money on good cars and other items but actually never really think about improving their sanitation needs. Same attitude applies to ppl using public toilets. How come many people often don’t care about clean sanitation facilities?

videopinion

Some years ago, epinion communities used to be _the_ ultimate social platform on the net. I don’t know how this developed in the USA, but in Europe I think it has stalled.

So, instead of people writing their particular product review on dedicated opinion communities where reviews are at the centre of all attention, today’s customers go to:

a) webshops that focus on one particular product range, e.g. ebags, amazon, etc.

b) blogs

c) youtube reviews (!)

IF consumers switch from putting their opinion on a certain product they have been using from a central website to their own media platform (blogs, youtube) – how do they benefit of it? Google AdSense?

If I write about a Nokia phone, a Creative mp3 player or Eastpak/Eagle Creek luggage like I’ve done in the past, produce a short video on the phone, the mp3 player and that wheeled luggage piece – how will these companies directly pay me for praising their products?