Nur Ahmad Furlong

Category: Events

  • Ad Designed with no electricity, Ogilvy tackles Power Crisis

    I found this interesting story on biz-community.com

    Ogilvy Cape Town’s art director Jennifer Macfarlane and copy writer Cuan Cronwright are the winners of The Times Young Creatives Competition, held 23 – 26 February 2008 at this year’s Design Indaba Expo.

    Winning Ad Designed without using any electricity

    A PR stunt no doubt saw creatives pitting their skills against each other in a fishbowl style space with Public onlookers. Pity the procedings had to be screened on Plasma screens which would have used a fair amount of power themselves. Kind of defeats the purpose a little but I suppose it was about driving a message home and this little stunt certainly did that.

    The winning agency was rewarded with a full page ad they can use for any pro bono client of their choice worth about R50000. Check out the article with all the details.

  • Design Indaba 2008 ends off SA design Week

    design_indaba(2)Gone are the good ol days when the big ad agency I’m working for sends me on an all expenses paid Design Indaba Conference. Sniff, being an Independent at the early stages of starting a business means I just can’t afford to attend a conference of this nature, in fact it almost went by without me noticing.

    I did a bit of browsing on the Design Indaba portal and was shocked to find out they’re using blogger to power their blog, can you imagine that. I’m not a big fan of blogger based blogs, they all just look a certain way and don’t interest me at all, in fact none of the blogs I subscribe to are blogger blogs. Come on Design Indaba, haven’t you heard of WordPress?

    I’m not anti DI at all, far from it, I would have loved to have been there as there seems to be more activity than all the previous years. One interesting aspect is the “Most Beautiful Object in South Africa” awards.

    Of course the Conference is booked out already, but there’s still a chance to book for the Simulcast screening which will play the presentations on a large Screen and will be hosted in a different Auditorium. If you’re under 25 you’ll pay R950 and over 25’s pay R1500, still a bit steep for my liking but gives anyone who’s really keen but can’t foot the higher main conference bill or those who missed out on the bookings a chance to see the conference. If you have the cash and are into design it’s worth a visit.

    design-indaba-magazine lastly if you miss it all there’s still the quarterly Design Indaba Magazine which is packed with juicy local & international design bits. I have my own collection of mags from the last few years though they usually go walking after I’ve had them for a year or 2 so keep yours safe.

    Design Indaba's primary aim is to advance the cause of design as a communication fundamental, a business imperative and a powerful tool in industry and commerce.

  • 1st WordPress Meetup Cape Town – Post Mortem

    After struggling to prevent a few business people from hijacking the session with their own off topic focus, not mentioning any names, we managed to get stuck in talking about a few pertinent issues.

    Callum explainaing a few things about migrating to wordpress

    Those who attended were:

    • Organiser, Callum Macdonald – Nomadic entrepreneur & web developer/blog master from Scotland
    • Marc Pelteret – Business Science / Computer Science Graduate with an interest in open source development
    • Christina de Silva, Online marketing strategist and wordpress enthusiast – AlterSage.com
    • Nada Jones, sales & biz development executive – Work Online Interactive
    • Chris – iMod
    • Rob Wilkonson – Butlers Pizza (Energy Crisis Maniac) 🙂
    • Will – 2oceansvibe.com
    • Grant – mobi me
    • Jamaal – Web Strategist at Jayz

    What was spoken about?

    (more…)

  • WordPress Meetup Cape Town – Monday 18 Feb

    Finally it’s here, something I’ve been wanting to organise myself but haven’t managed to get around to doing, an (un)conference style wordpress meetup, and hopefully only the first of many to happen in Cape Town.

    Callum Macdonald, nomadic web worker and travelling entrepreneur hailing from Scotland was responsible for setting the ball in motion after the recent Open Coffee which was recently held in Cape Town.

    Visit the wordpress meetup google group or the blog to catch up with developments. Tomorrow is the first meetup and you’re required to register just so we can get an idea of the numbers for catering and logistical purposes.

    The River Club[1] can provide us with a venue for R175 per person. That includes tea and coffees on arrival, a light dinner in the restaurant, and reasonable use of the internet (web only, no heavy downloading). So I’ve confirmed that booking for Monday 18th.

    Leave a comment on this post to confirm attendance.

  • Open Coffee Feb 08 was gr8!

    Yesterday’s Open Coffee event held at Origin Roasting in Cape Town was a great success. I met some really interesting people and put faces to a few names I’ve come across online for a while. A little before the event I met with Callum Macdonald from Scotland who’s graced our shores with his nomadic presence for a few months. Very interesting guy indeed. Callum is amoung other things a blogger, web developer and nomadic entrepreneur with an interesting outlook on life and work. He’s the first person I’ve seen actually wearing a pair of black spot sneakers though I’ve read about them online quite a few times. We chatted a bit about business, life and even religion.

    Callum has gotten a WordPress Meetup project on the go, something we’ve all wanted for a while but have been too lazy to organize ourselves. He tells me he has plans to do a Cape to Cairo Trek in the near future.

    I met an American Philosophy Professor as well who shared his world view with us using a few very big words and some little ones in new and interesting ways, always good to know how others see things.

    I also met a Dutchman, Frans, who is an open source enthusiast and uses open source technologies to assist NGOs with their projects.

    Tim Shier was one of the organisers and it was also good to final shake hands in person and share a few words. As usually Dave Duarte was around checking out the scene and a few other online marketing and development types.

    Henk from Skyrove handed out free Skyrove credits worth 50megs which was welcome on the day as I had a few things to send off and download.

    I met a really nice guy who was preparing the coffee called Ghee, which he told me means humility. He’s from Congo and said he was pleasantly surprised that I spoke to him and ask his name even. C’mon people, where’s the Love?

    Business cards were shared and lots of networking and bouncing around of ideas of all types. All in all a great success. I think I might have had a little too much coffee though. Maybe we should start an Open Orange Juice or something :).

  • mmm, Open Coffee on tomorrow at Origin Roasting 2pm in Cape Town.

    939875_66813630

    You might have noticed a post I recently wrote which took a look at the trend of drinking alcohol at Networking sessions and other web & entrepreneurial gatherings. Dave Duarte, the mind behind huddlemind.com, posted a comment suggesting I check out Open Coffee which takes place the first Thursday of every month.

    Tomorrow I will “God Willing” be attending my first Open Coffee. The event will be hosted at Origin Coffee Roasting and is organised by Eric Edelstein and Tim Shier.

    Arrive at 2pm on the first Thursday of every month. Bring your laptop if you want to do some work, or show people your site as there’s a wireless network.

    Work if you want… Or spend the time discussing ideas with other entrepreneurs.

    When? Thursday, Feb 7, 2008, 2:00 PM 20080207T120000Z

    Where? Origin Coffee Roasting, 28 Hudson Street De Watekant, Cape Town. call +27 (0)21 421 1000 for more info.

    Who? 13 members registered to attend

    If you have the time and value networking with entrepreneurs and web centric individuals pop around for a coffee and a chat!