My dream for the #EasternCape: Create 2 million jobs over 20 years. Why? So many of us, after graduating, move to Johannesburg, Cape Town or even overseas and never come back. So many of us leave for greener pastures, start families and only visit during the holidays. Those visits become less and less over the
[Port Elizabeth, Monday, 27 June 2016] – Sharing a world of dreams with the global TED and TEDx community, TEDxPortElizabeth will launch their first conference this year with the theme Through the Looking Glass in partnership with the new AFDA Film School in Port Elizabeth. TEDxPortElizabeth continues on from TEDxNMMU (2012) and TEDxSummerstrand (2013), both
Does money buy happiness or just a big mansion? This funny video by blogger Victor Pride reminded me to always think differently from what Bill Cooper called “the sheeple!” And so after watching this video, think about it for a while, and ask your friends to get their reaction. You will notice the clear bias
This is an my first column published in Ningbo Focus magazine. “Madam Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen…”, is how many speeches start at a Toastmasters club meeting. Two years ago when I arrived in Ningbo there was only one club with 5 guests. In 2015 there are five Toastmasters clubs, who meet regularly, from Book City
Recently I’ve been watching a new TV series from the UK, Humans. It shows an all too familiar future where robots (or Synths as they’re called in this show) are meant to aid humans in their daily lives with mundane tasks. Far away is the future predicted by Blade Runner, et al where AI robots
It’s about 10 years since I first joined LinkedIn, the social network for business professionals. Over the years it’s grown in leaps and bounds to over 350 million users. Not surprisingly LinkedIn it is not blocked in mainland China, and has a solid integration with the mobile messing app, Wechat. As one of the websites
Since I can remember I loved science fiction aka sci-fi stories. Maybe growing up on comic book superheroes helped. Usually Sci-Fi are stories without limits or boundaries. And yet the “science” part implies some possibility that it may happen, could happen, in some near or distance future. In recent years we’ve seen the excessive use
On 21 April, my birthday, my mother told me about a missing teacher from a local high school, Jayde Panayiotou. She’s since been found murdered and her husband is the prime suspect. My mother casually mentioned that Jayde studied teaching with my younger sister at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. This morning I was reviewing the
Years ago I read the book, The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. It was one of the first self help books to shine a light on achieving my goals. It reminds me of this phrase often used by Les Brown: shoot for the moon and you may end up in among the stars.
There are times in your life when you’ve tried to help people, and it seems it all backfired. This is really the meaning of “no good deed goes unpunished.” And I’m reminded of the failure of friendships every day as I witness how people have withdrawn into themselves either through smartphones or endless downloaded TV