The Digital Dreams Department

With the help of some exceptional people, the Digital Media department launched this week. The first class of students have started a 4 week programme to infuse the internet’s power into their being. Skills they will walk out with next month will allow them to speak to the world, to work global and stay local, to channel life, laughter, business, creativity through a screen in ways they couldn’t have imagined (and most of us still can’t imagine). Skills that WILL change their futures.
 
The impossible is being effected here at 9 Ntemi Piliso Street through the hearts and minds of some very special people:
 
Taddy Blecher -  the legend whose mind evoked CIDA University (<< read this for an inspirational dose of defiance of ‘reality’) and now this School of Management
Mandy De Waal -  whose rare quality of getting things done, took a conversation and made it so >>
Dave Duarte - cited as one of the most innovative forces in global business education, specializing in digital marketing and philosophy, takes up the mantle of Dean of the faculty.
The Quirk team – especially Lyndi Lawson who collaborated with Dave to craft the first curriculum around their eMarketing textbook (psst.. free for download here).
My particularly heartfelt thanks to Ismail Dhorat and Saul Kropman who have generously offered their time and fine.grained expertise to teach the eager first class of 60 in my stead.
 
No photocopied keyboards to learn and imagine from this time, CIDA’s new sister business  school will be accelerating deep into the digital with some of South Africa’s social media finest lighting the way.

[I'm looking forward to seeing this school, and those without whom 9 Ntemi Piliso would be just another anodyne downtown building, grow strong and reap rewards for generations to come].

“People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live… We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” – Albert Einstein in a letter to his best friend Otto Juliusburger sometime in ’42

 
 
The better part of genius -that doesn’t get subsumed by madness or misanthropy perhaps- is kept alive by the childlike wonder. Wonder from the simple stuff that Uncle Walt drew out in poetry to the ridiculously-cool scientific improbability of human existence. Uncrutched by a blanketing binary religious belief it could do your head in. THAT, if nothing else is what most religion has stripped from us,  the possibility of looking nakedly into the total perspective vortex (thank goodness we had the indisputable genius of Douglas Adams walking with us for a while).. the feeling of entitlement rather than feeling absurdly lucky, is dangerous beyond any cruel weaponry we can fashion.
 
wow, sidetracked. Okay so essentially:
Intelligent fun are us. I’m taking what I do in my secret life (the arcana vitae) and sharing the magic that I’ve seen, woven into everyday urban life and crafting edventures that others might enjoy too. Into social learning experiences, urban games and unusually powerful travel experiences for the slim minority that take delight in learning (even if you’re a grown-up, with the academic papers and debt instruments to show it) rather than just looking cool and together.
 
I’m doing this with a group of brilliant ones like some kind of oldskool Explorer’s Society. Global citizens who are up for adventure beyond cracking the corporate C-suite. We may have mapped the physical but there is still so much yet to be discovered.
Ah, heady delights.
We’d love to do this with you if you too are not entirely convinced that the smug consumers life is the life for you (and you’re not heading out for a monastry anytime soon).

So here I am,¹ still in Johannesburg, Joburg, Jozi, the District 9 city. The African version of LA.
The rough & tough old mining town that I was born in. esCAPEd from. And evidently needed to return to make peace with (like an ex-smoker I bore greater rights to cast scorn on its dirty sexy evils when I’d slipped its golden handcuffs in ’99).
 
Here for the best of reasons – which means I’m not here for the money. And not leaving anytime soon. Which means I better bloody well deal with it.
 
I’m sure you’ve also caught strains of that tatty mantra : it’s not your conditions but your decisions that make for success. Unfortunately the damn thing rings true, and not the kind of thing a “When I ..” wants to hear. (You know those When I’s? those who stubbornly defer giving their best until some favourable condition shimmers in: when I ..get married ..finish school ..lose weight ..write that book ..get a job/liver transplant/goldfish ..er, get out of Joburg).
 
We humans have so many forces that nudge our destiny: biochemistry, genetics, market forces, religion, politics, chemicals in our food, the neighbourhood we live in, our choice of friends. We can’t even trust our rational decisions any longer – beware the descent into paranoia from Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational all ye elegant logicians (or watch this for 17 minutes for a quick scare).
 
It’s easy to be buffeted, eroded and move along en masse with the grand forces of our time and evolution. It takes a ferocious inner force to carve out your own destiny, regardless of circumstance. Hard cities are the best places to track down those who embody that level of defiance and strength.
 
Living in a place with a sophisticated, stable market to support your talent, obviously makes it easier to succeed. Urban social scientists like Richard Florida [Rise of the Creative Class] make sense of why some cities attract a disproportionate share of talent, spawn innovation and wealth with greater ease than most (think Silicon Valley or Singapore).² Being in Jozi just requires digging deeper (as you’d expect of an old gold mining town), but it yields some dazzling human.shaped gems.
 
This is a place where unexpected local brilliance radiates out globally, like YouTube star Khaya Dlanga

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Urban Survival : my 2 rules for enjoying cities that don’t share your ambitions

1. Deal with it. Resistance is futile. Remember the maxim: “bloom where you’re planted” fortune favours the fast adaptors. One of the best things you can do for your career is to learn some improv theatre techniques [think "Whose Line is it Anyway"]. Same goes for moving cities. Rocket scientist of adapting improv in business is Rob Poynton (Everything’s an Offer)³ who preaches almost only one thing: ACCEPT, then make something fresh/ useful/ outrageous from whatever life thrusts your way (sounds easy, but it takes serious theatre-ninja skills).

 

2. Genius begets Genius. There are 2 things I believe about developing genius. The second of which is that genius begets genius. Surrounding ourselves with people who are ferociously brilliant and determined, awakens the brain’s portals to significance, positive competition and heroism, otherwise dormant in less challenging company. HANG OUT WITH PEOPLE DOING INSPIRING THINGS, not just friends by convenience. Find your tribe and then go adventuring. Thankfully we aren’t limited by who’s in our hyperlocal ‘hood any longer. We have the world to search for our kind. Nothing beats realworld though – which is why it’s a no.brainer that the best and the brightest cluster in close vicinity - but resourceful digital nomads can get the best of both worlds. To stave off entropy, your average coffee, dinner, movies with friends doesn’t apply to this tribe. These are the people you want to go on expeditions with, develop a cure for Albanian measles, rack up some patents with, learn new languages together, build a school, discover a new species ..find something in your area of shared passion to defy time and the numbing cycle of work.buy.display.repeat. that our cities can loop us in.

[Wherever you are, be there.]

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* Check if YOUR city on the best-of lists (Joburgers, let me end your suspense. It isn’t. Deal with it.)

Monocle Magazine’s 25 Most Liveable Cities 2009
Business Week’s slideshow on The World’s Best Places to Live (from the Mercer 2009 Global study)

1. 9 months after leaving Cape Town for a 2 week holiday
2. Keep an eye on the Vinny Lingham & Justin Stanford passion project – Silicon Cape – vying to make Cape Town the first African creative attractor city
3. I’ve been lucky enough to get into Rob’s classes – find out where he is in the world and catch one of his sessions if you can