The HeavyChef Project

Carte Blanche, South Africa’s premier investigative news programme, visited our studio this morning to interview me on the success of the Verity campaign.

Verity and World Wide Creative have been working for three years with the goal of raising enough money to produce her album. The idea was to sell an album that didn’t exist, and, as it turned out, we reached the goal a few months ago. Verity has just completed the production.

We designed her website, e-commerce facility, her CMS, a newsletter system, her blog, logo, flyers and a host of other social media widgets and gadgets to raise publicity for her cause.

Carte Blanche picked up the story through the press, and are now combining her journey with a piece on how the internet is changing the music industry.

The interview was pretty nerve-wracking. Funny how you always figure out what you want to say when it’s too late. The French call this ‘L’esprit D’escalier’ or ‘the spirit of the staircase’.

If you’re in Africa, the piece should air in the next couple of weeks. Our international readers can pick it up on the Carte Blanche website. Check it out and let me know how I done!

[Check out more pics on the WWC Flickr Photostream here]

Last night was the latest in a long line of Heavy Chef Sessions, with Eric Edelstein (above) and Charl Norman regaling us with juicy stuff from their entrepreneurial adventures.

This particular Session was interesting because we were trying some new stuff. It’s the first of a mini-series called ‘Netrepreneurs’ with successful internet entrepreneurs talking about their journeys. It was also the first with two speakers; and the first that has been filmed in its entirety - thanks to Play.24.com. It was also the longest session we’ve had: it ended at around 8:30pm. Usually we’re in straight after work and out in about 2hrs.

I was well stoked with our two speakers. Eric and Charl have two very different styles of delivery, with Eric being nicely off-the-cuff and Charl a little more methodical.

Eric gave us a fascinating insight into the ‘early days’, with failures eventually followed by great success. We got an idea of some of the twists and turns in getting premises, growth, hiring staff and whether to employ or outsource.

A nugget I learned from Eric’s talk is that if you want to launch an online venture (or any venture for that matter) there has to be a champion. Without someone who eats, sleeps, breathes and lives the business, it will surely falter. This is a wake-up call for some of our own projects in-house at World Wide Creative.

I’ll also be keeping a close eye on Eric’s latest Internet start-up SpringLeap.com.

Then it was over to Charl. I fluffed his intro royally by saying ‘mybroadband.co.za’ instead of ‘bandwidthblog.co.za‘. Eish. Leezl, please edit that one out…

Charl took us through the thinking and direction behind the social networks he and his colleagues have worked on. We got an inside look at Blue World Communities, the strategy behind the different niche groups and how traffic is driven to the sites. Charl gave us an idea of why social media is here to stay, and how the acquisition by 24.com has given them the muscle to take advantage of this exciting channel.

We were then privileged to get a sneak peak into a new project that Charl and his colleagues are working on, but unfortunately it’s top secret for now. That is, until it’s broadcast to the world on Play.24.com video of last night’s session… oop.

Special thanks to Play.24.com for sending a team through to capture us in full flight. Looking forward to seeing that video. Also, big love to Hatfields for the venue, yummy pizzas, and beer on demand.

There was a great bunch of people who attended, including Robyn and Scott from Encyclomedia; Bruce and Andrea from Cape Peninsula University; Frank and Anne-Marelle; David Murray from Cape Venture Partners; Jason; Jason; Bruce; Reg; Patrick; Chris; Daan; Patrick; Jade; Leezl; and of course, the one and only Chris Roper, who disappointingly was on his best behaviour for the night. Thanks all for coming; hope you enjoyed it!

btw. keep watching this space for a) when the video will be live on Play.24, and b) the next Heavy Chef Session.