Near Hermanus South Africa - a very cool day to be sure. I was by myself, so I hitched onto a boat full of French students. We had a 40 minute boat ride, and a quick dive briefing. We started by snorkeling inside the cage - and could use "hooka" regulators later.

No sharks for the first 1 1/2 hours - I was second shift, and the water was damn cold. Shivering, blue lips, in a cage with 5 French students. All of a sudden the divemaster yells "Down Down Down" and you let yourself sink to the bottom of the cage.

The first time all I saw was a blur, and upon coming up saw the tail of a shark leaving the scene.

The second time down - JAWS - full, in your face, gaping mouth, big teeth, dead eyes.

I remained cool and calm. Kind of James Bond like.

Actually I screamed like a little girl.

We had about a dozen encounters in the cage. The above video is what happened after I got out. In 3 hours we saw at least 7 different sharks. They estimated the largest at 4 meters - about 2 1/2 tons.

Labels: Hermanus, Shark, South Africa

On the way down to Eden Campus in Karatara South Africa (www.edencampus.org) with Dr. Scott Fee an idea developed - how can we help empower the students to tell their own stories?

Yesterday Scott and I helped the students set up their own blogs.

These are amazing young people. They come to the school free of charge from rural, poor townships. They create their own education through entrepreneurial ventures they start, manage and staff. The money they earn helps pay for their education.

The goal is to be completely self sustaining - Africa's first Green Business School.

Imagine the power of having these students tell their own stories each day - handing in assignments online - interacting with teachers and students around the world. Creating powerful stories, and a portfolio they can use upon graduating.

Scott is bringing down a group of twenty students form Minnesota State University Mankato in May. Each student will be a student of Eden Campus for a week. Minnesota Students will be partnered - one to one - with an Eden campus student. Together, they will interact via the students blogs, and share their stories with the world.

These young students have amazing stories. They create entrepreneurial ventures to support their education. They learn through doing and creating. Please follow their blogs.

www.lelazatwork.blogspot.com
www.thembi-thembi.blogspot.com
(more coming soon)



I want to thank Seth Godin. His recent books - Meatball Sundae and All Marketers are Liars inspired this idea.

Labels: Eden Campus, Social Entrepreneurship

Here's a reprint from TeachAManToFish.org about Eden Campus. I depart in less than 24 hours to help out and learn from these amazing people.


Karatara, South Africa

Situated in the small rural village of Karatara 12 kilometres inland from Sedgefield on the beautiful Garden Route of the Southern Cape lies Eden Campus. We are busily involved in a unique project to create the first green business school in South Africa. The project started in 2005, has spent the intervening time gaining a foothold in the communities that it serves and is now ready to become a force on the South African education scene.

We are desperately in need of volunteers who would like to spend some time in this idyllic surrounding and who would like to have a never to be forgotten experience. You will also have the great satisfaction of helping the impoverished youth of the southern Cape to become employable.

Students of Eden Campus spend two years learning entrepreneurial business skills first through the excellent programme offered by the international Junior Achievement organization and then by applying the skills learned in practical businesses.

Typical businesses include:

Karatara Nature Cycles – This already successful business will be expanded in 2008. KNC hires bicycles to tourists and takes them on guided tours into the indigenous forests of the Karatara area

Gardens – In 2008 we are developing our gardens to provide herbs, vegetable and indigenous growth. The herb garden will produce herbs for resale, the vegetable garden for feeding the Campus and the indigenous garden as a tourist attraction and nursery.

Worm Farm – In 2008 we intend growing the size of our worm farm and from this we will produce compost for the gardens and become a reseller of worm farms on the Garden Route

The Karatara Shop – last year we were successful with our second hand clothing shop. In 2008 ar we intend to expand this to include general goods and even produce from our gardens and later the nursery.

Project Areas

* Education
* Agriculture
* Environment
* Running business ventures

Activities

* Teaching - English, Maths, IT, the environment and facilitating the Junior Achievement Programme
* Environmental conservation – indigenous gardening, water storage and electricity generating
* Livelihoods – Mentoring students so that they are able to run their own businesses

Getting There & Costs
Getting to Karatara from outside of South Africa involves flying into either Johannesburg or Cape Town and then taking a flight to George. The airport at George is 45 minutes from Eden Campus by car. You can either hire a car at George Airport or we will pick you up but remember this could leave you in a rural community with no way of seeing other gems of the famous Garden Route. Airfares can be found on the Internet. No financial contribution towards project costs is expected however you will be required to cover your own living costs. The average daily cost of a B&B or Self-Catering unit that sleeps two (and we really welcome couples) is R300 and car hire for a small car is about R160 per day.

To download our plans for 2008, click here

For fuller information on any aspect of Eden Campus please contact Graham Lashbrooke in Karatara on graham@edencampus.co.za or directly on +27-44-356-2789.

Labels: Eden Campus, Entrepreneurship

Here's a PDF of the story that ran in the Mankato Free Press about our trip around the world.

I think it turned out great.

Labels: Around the world

Here's a rough draft of the first few chapters of a book I'm writing. I'd love to hear what you think.

______________________

A couple of years ago I set out to find the people doing the “next big thing.” I wanted to find the ones on the cutting edge. Who are the people searching for meaning?

I had been a broadcaster most of my life – back in the analog world. I rose through the ranks of commercial radio, eventually buying my own radio station. Along the way I entered the Digital age.

A long time computer geek, I had an overwhelming urge to make money on the internet. It was 1995, and it was defiantly the next big thing.

I started a website for car dealers that eventually grew into a multi-state publishing and software company. By 2006 I had sold all my businesses, and went on a journey of discovery. I travelled to 23 countries, earned an MBA and a pilot’s license. I haggled for singing bowls in Tibet and sailed past the Sydney Opera House.

I had set out to find the people doing the next big thing. Who was doing the next big thing? Who had figured out a business model that encompassed the best of one-on-one communication, broadcasting and the World Wide Web?

I found Jalali Hartman.

On a cold January day my son and I flew from Minneapolis to Jacksonville Florida. A striking, instantly likable fellow met us at the airport. “Hi, I’m Jalali.” Turns out he’s a nice guy as well.

Jalali has spent the better part of his life deciphering what makes the web work. Like the great business leaders of the past, he figured out what works, how to measure it, and how to implement solutions.

I decided to write this book within two weeks of that first meeting. Social Marketing Optimization is more than a fad or a buzz word. It will fundamentally change the way we look at marketing.

The following is my journey of discovery with one of world’s experts leading the way.

Reaching the Unreachable

My son is an “unreachable teen.” He’s seventeen, never watches a TV commercial and never listens to the radio. He spends his time texting his friends, hanging out on Face Book, listening to his Ipod™ and playing World of Warcraft©. His family has had a DVR for years, and he doesn’t remember ever watching a TV commercial.

He can smell spam a mile away. He’s a jaded, opinionated, multi-tasking, 180 wpm-on-three-web-sites-at-once bright adult. He’s unreachable by conventional advertising.

He’ll be old enough to vote in the 2008 election. He’s a marketing nightmare.

The old rules don’t apply. Gone are the days where a TV campaign could reach 40% of households in a single week. The 2008 premier of American Idol reached 12.6% of the 18-49 US market.

Basic cable? Time Warner brags about Adult Swim being #1 with Adults 18-34 reaching a whopping .5% of households.

Think about 0.5% of households - that’s 5 out of every 1,000 households. Wow – that is the #1 cable show in its time period.

Putting that into perspective the Bob Hope Christmas show in 1971 reached 45% of all U.S. Households and nobody had Tivo. Way to go Bob.

So what’s a marketer to do? How do you reach this unreachable generation?

The Good News – Word of Mouth is still the best advertising.

Heck, I learned this in first grade when all my friends said Bubble Yum was cool. No way was I going to be caught with Bazooka in my pocket. Tupperware was built on Social Network Marketing. Betty Crocker cook books, bake sales and other ingenious forms of Social Network Marketing made this fictional lady a household name.

Here’s the good news: People who are passionate about your product have the ability to tell other people like no other time in history. They are better connected, connect more often, and love doing it.

How do you help spread the word? Read on…

Understanding the Power of Networks

Steady state growth curves occur in nature, as when you chart the growth of a mature ecosystem or when a healthy company grows via “normal” marketing and customer acquisition methods. Customers don’t interact with each other, and the value of one person’s patronage does not significantly enhance the value of the next persons purchase.

When you see steep growth curves, you are seeing the results of a social network at work. Plaxo grew because it enabled its customers to spread the word.

The value of your social network is the contributing exponential factor to the growth equation.

Take for example the growth of the fax machine industry. Vince Kuraitis posted great insight into Google’s advancement into the world of health care information on June 20, 2007. He draws a great example of the power of networks. Consider the fax machine:

When one person has a fax machine, the network has no value; when two people have fax machines, the network has “some” value because the two users can send faxes to one another. When the market reaches critical mass (the tipping point), network effects take over; adoption increases rapidly as people without fax machines feel compelled to join the network or be left out.

He cites research done by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian at the University of California, Berkeley in 1998 on Network Effects.

Why did the Fax grow so exponentially fast? The value of the network increased dramatically with each user. Remember when someone, somewhere first asked you if you had a fax machine? Chances are you ran out to get one.

If you don’t remember way back to 1988, substitute the words “fax machine” with “email” or “Face Book” – and you’ll get the picture.

How does this relate to your business? How can you harness this phenomenon?

______________

If you've read this far, and want more information, Jalali Hartman has it figured out.

Check out http://www.yovia.com

Labels: Jalali Hartman, social media, yovia.com