Andy Hadfield

So I need a bit of help putting a better design face on all my personal web properties / projects. It's time. Blogger is nice and simple (remember people, content is king) - but I need to be a bit open minded, especially with some of the new trial projects. I've been playing with a lot of that platforms recently: from Tumblr to Posterous to WordPress... It's a funny realisation - of course it's easy to throw up a site, but it's very hard to do ANYTHING that the template doesn't allow without diving into CSS. Monetisation is also often harder than you would expect.

So here's what I need help with:

Web properties:

www.onebigwidget.com (holding company for consulting/training/case studies & links into all projects)www.andyhadfield.com (you're on it, personal blog and thoughts on the digital industry)www.extremepotjie.com (upcoming project, potjie recipes, outdoor living and 4x4 content)www.joumeme.co.za (upcoming project)allscrubbedup.blogspot.com (medic…

This is a little uncanny, as I just popped out mails to a group I was working with recently on how to start a movement. How to change a culture, make a difference, mobilise a generation.

And then these guys come out. Well, good on 'em!

Our conversations all hinged around this video. A JWT campaign to "light a fire" under the Indian people. It became wildly successful and even ended up in a reality show (yeah, go figure). It's powerful stuff. Take the time to watch it.


So, Elize from (the agency behind Don't Be A Passenger I presume) got hold of me a couple of hours ago to chat about the campaign. While this site / campaign / movement / call it what you will - seems to be leveraged off an electric car project, it's got all the trappings of ideas that us (and probably many other South Africans) have been playing around with for a while.

The premise is simple, as these things usually are... Take a tiny bit of time to make a difference.

The video is great, well p…

A quick informal Veynerchuk video on how the speed of business, especially social media, requires business to develop similarly paced teams.



Here's the trick: social media is tantalising and terrifying, all at the same time. It presents huge risk, having that "guest book" revealed to the world. And as we're seeing in South Africa, the primary engagement that customers are having with brands is around service failure. So don't get involved if you can't fix the service.

Then ask yourself... Do you want to REALLY have a conversation with your customers? Or are you just creating a service channel. Service channel is fine, but that suggests a different strategy. Conversation is also fine. It's more expensive, it's more risky but the long term benefits are self evident.

Just don't go into a conversation methodology with a service approach. You'll spend money and waste time.

I do ask myself: what was the last CONVERSATION I had with a brand. Can'…

I'm going to give the open model of web innovation a try. I've had this idea floating around for a while since I started the Twitter Wine Reviews. I'm not sure that it's a full time, call the VC's type idea. But it's niche, it's sexy. And it would make a really cool project.

So let's put it out there. I've posted this to IS Labs, always wanted to try the startup incubator that Justin Spratt and co. started. Please go vote it up if you have a moment.

I'd welcome any kind of commentary, thoughts or offers to develop (make sure those come with one or two cool examples of quick stuff you've done before).

Without further ado...

IDEA SUMMARY: Display wine reviews and conversations from Twitter and aggregate postive / negative language and scores to produce a recommendation engine. If successful, look to build community features off the back of the data stream.

POSITIONING: Wine information for the man in the street. For the guy or gal that can't de…