Andy Hadfield

Awake. At the same time as the lads and lasses back home it seems. #sxswSA   Opinion piece: Chatting with @ lynettekloppers about Banking 2.0. http://bit.ly/bc2wEN I'm at Ze Frank Conversation: The Creative Lifestyle in Austin, TX http://gowal.la/s/4rxF If you're interested in tech at all catch all the summaries, pics and opinion from SXSW here http://bit.ly/9da54d - keep scrolling! From TrendHunter: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. <-- makes it tough. Culture is a fickle bitch. TrendHunter was an excellent session - and part of a growing theme I'm noticing at SXSW. Culture is becoming a critical piece of the strategic mix. And that presents a challenge to us marketers and web product people. Culture is fickle. How do you put your finger on culture? How do you create one service that can speak to many cultures? Or is this more about creating a product that taps into culture, or even better, becomes a culture? Distributed web technologies

The Banking 2.0 panel was so good, I thought I'd pull all the thoughts together into a post. This is more a list of trends and themes, but it's well worth a read. Banking, gambling and porn are going to be the dominant industries on the Internet (you laugh - but it's true). And banking probably has the most to win and the some of the easier short term solutions to implement... At the Banking 2.0 panel. Opening remark -- Banks = innovation gone wrong. #sxswSA Power panel at Banking 2.0. CEOs of Mint, SmartyPig, Credit Karma and Lending Club. Serious traffic. Serious money in web finance. New Banking: LendingClub.com = 1 billion dollars in demand. Smartypig = $350 mil in deposits. Mint.com = 2.5 mil users. Let's just pause here for a minute. 1 billion dollars in demand for LendingClub.com? That's a lot of demand for what seems to be a largely US based service.  $350 dollars in deposit for SmartyPig, the social savings portal. These aren't just start

Just hooked @ lynettekloppers up with a sexy Dell netbook. Jealous.  Netbooks are pretty cool - and a global phenomenon that Windows 7 is aggresively and transparently going after. This one is a Dell Inspiron, dual core Atom processors and a 10.1" screen. 8 hours batter life. Nice sized keyboard. It's a little klunky, but also unfair to compare the performance of this machine to their big brothers and sisters. Netbooks = lightweight and useful travel companions Pepsi using crowdsourcing to spend what looks like charity / corporate social investment fund. Nifty execution. http://twitpic.com/18540z Pepsi are also streaming some great live stats of the conference. Zeitgeist style. Again nifty execution. http://bit.ly/ceH4dH   I just unlocked the "Austin Explorer" badge on @ foursquare ! http://4sq.com/atvbc9 While this must have been farily irritating to a bunch of my Twitter followers (I do apologise) - the virtual "incentive" programme

This is a summary of my SXSW experience in 140 character bites with pictures... Breakfast taco time. Also contemplating how the cat treats the wife when Im away. http://twitpic.com/17wteo   So the first piece of news back home is that the cat has gone back to his inappropriate ways. I assume Dexter misses my presence an is moving in on the alpha female in the group. Cholestrol beware. My first taco. http://twitpic.com/17x3ov In search of my GoWalla Sweet Leaf Tea voucher. Testing location based fulfilment. Bit of a hike http://twitpic.com/17x76z   Sucess! Score 1 for location based marketing. GoWalla + Sweet Leaf Tea combo. Very cool experience. http://twitpic.com/17xk9g   Is fulfilment the most important word in digital? A GoWalla / Sweet Leaf Tea story. http://bit.ly/ac4yli Social media can only truly be appreciated when there's volume. The movement is palpable. RETWEETING -- @ EveD : The #crowdfund is 75% there! R750,000 raised so far, in le

This is a summary of my SXSW experience in 140 character bites with pictures... About to explore Austin. Wow. Location based services SERIOUSLY make sense here. No wonder FourSquare/GoWalla got funding. Location based services and marketing suddenly make a lot of sense. http://bit.ly/dbc7vW These location based services were pretty amazing. The combination of relevancy and immediate access to crowdsourced information is powerful. The images below are from GoWalla and FourSquare - the two front runners in the location based service space. Ah. Stopped in on my first location based offer and store was clueless. Fulfilment!! http://twitpic.com/17rzn9 Had my first US begging experience. Lady stopped me on the bridge asking for change. Tough world for all at the mo it seems. Lovely evening walk down the Austin river http://twitpic.com/17srsy

This is a summary of my SXSW experience in 140 character bites with pictures... Oh baby... off to airport for the SXSW Texas trip! Going to check out FNB Premier Banking SLOW lounge while I'm at it. Aw. FNB Premier Banking SLOW lounge only in domestic. Bounced because I'm not a 'private client'. What can ya do! Mental note: chat to them I was extremely impressed to be contacted by RMB after this, inviting me to apply. OK, they're all part of First Rand - but it's still a great example of social scanning and quick, reactive response . Andy, Austin and an iPhone http://bit.ly/9YgXhZ Let's go live. I'll be blogging #SxSW at http://sxswsa.co.za/ -- Also, follow @sxswsa This tweet from Ivo Vegter kicked off his live (and proper) journalistic coverage of the South African delegation and their experiences at SXSW. Check out his site, it's well worth it. Tweeting at 30,000 feet. Somewhere over Texas. Surreal. My first blog post at 30000 feet

Just attended the Banking 2.0 panel with my colleague from FNB, Head of Digital Strategy in the Personal Banking segment at FNB. The following is an interview style summary of some of the amazing content that was discussed. The Panel comprised of CEO's from Mint.com, SmartyPig, LendingClub.com and Credit Karma. Andy: So with all the intermediary aggregation / content / experience services that are coming into the US market - are banks going to be around for much longer? Lynette : Yes. Banks still own the money, the relationship and the banking licenses. We will have to be careful how we manage these relationships because these services are starting to intrude on the gaps left by the industry meltdown and ingrained inefficiencies. Andy: Who do you think is the most exciting web player in the financial services space and why? Lynette : Mint.com. They use the bank's information to add value and provide relevant content to our customers. It's perceived by customers a

Here's a quick pic of April (Sweet Leaf Tea social media / communications manager) and I with the product. Acquired virtually. Fulfilled in the big bad real world.

In the last post, I was quite excited by the application of location based services in a community that has the infrastructure to generate enough traffic. I'd like to temper that exuberance with some considered thinking . It involves a good story, and a not so good story. And one word, for which I have my 'banking' experience to thank: fulfilment . My first attempt at acting on a LBS (location based service) was at a curio store called Ten Thousand Villages. The offer was a Fair Trade chocolate to every 5th FourSquare check-in. The poor lady behind the counter didn't have a clue what FourSquare was. In fact, she looked at me like I was a little mad (foreigner?!). To her credit, she was a dear old thing, and I left with the desired chocolate having had a long chat with her about the store (store managers are volunteers which starts to explain the issue). The experience very quickly highlights the great potential social media has to disappoint . As a business,

Checked into my first hotel in Austin, a little one night stop before hitting the Hampton Inn and Suites with the rest of the SA delegation. My bag didn't arrive - which carries on a long and stormy relationship I have with baggage. And airlines. Ahem. Delta. Anyhoo, the Delta Airlines lady was wonderfully pleasent and I should seeing my gear later. Being a digital conference, I decided to give the whole location based social networking thing a try as I undertook first explorations of the city. Luckily I'm on an iPhone, so these services are fairly accessible. A little patience and a lotta battery life is all you really need (many thanks Darryl Bernstein for the life-critical iPhone extra battery pack). Wow. So this location based thing really does make sense all of a sudden. Sitting in the hotel room, I switch on GoWalla and FourSquare and start checking out the live tips/comments and nearby places. 5 minutes later I'm sitting in Jo's coffee, a quaint cornersi

So I'm winging my way off to Austin, Texas for the SXSW Conference . I'm on the connection flight via Atlanta, blogging this while 30000 feet or more in the air . Yup. Go Go Wifi on Delta flights. I'll do a speed test ;) ( Update : Speed Test gave me over 100 kb / second - that's 3 TIMES bottom level South African ADSL speed. In a bloody plane.) It's the first sign of a truly first world adoption of technology. Broad and pervasive accessibility (US's greatest strength which is also Africa's greatest challenge). Pretty much every mobile related advert or service has an iPhone on it. Even airport services, flight checks, check-in sites and queue checkers come firstly with a smartphone app, secondly with a call centre. Entry into America was pretty uneventful. Airports are airports after all. Didn't see much of 'em as I was sprinting between flights. They really don't give you much time. Uh. Turbulence. *fastens seatbelt* I'm also now

And we're off. I'm sitting at OR Tambo airport, having a farewell Castle Draught before embarking on a mind numbing, Stillnox induced flight to Atlanta and then Austin. Bumped into Mike Stopforth. He was having lamb shank. Something I don't know? So here's the deal for SXSW ( follow the #sxswSA tag on Twitter ). I'm going to do what everyone else does there. Absorb the future. The culture of the Internet as embraced by the US. What is happening in the big, wide world out there? How is it relevant to banking? How is it relevant to me? I'll be live tweeting, live blogging and digitally doing everything I can to keep up. Follow most of the action here or on http://www.Twitter.com/andyhadfield . And. I'll be doing this all on an iPhone. Just how good is this device? We'll see. Got my extra plug in battery. Hear me roar. Catch you soon Austin!

Little side project that came to me like a cheap shot of cheaper brandy while reading a Wired Magazine. Did you know the Cheezburger Network ? Yes, the SEO-centric site from the brain that brought us LOLCats ... is worth around $6 million per year! That's utter madness. That got me thinking. What do I hate most in the world? Email spam. What do I hate almost as much as email spam? Those crappy chain mails and photo jokes that people send around. Yet... my wife always bitches at me that I missed "the funniest" thing "the other day". Well no more. Introducing Jou Meme ! Collecting all that funny crap in one place for your enjoyment. I'm particularly fond on the initial strap line - Funny Kak for South Africans . Har. Har. So I whipped this up using Tumblr , which is a remarkably sexy blogging platform. It doesn't have a flashy header, 3 column wonky layouts or any of that other fancy design stuff - but if I've learnt anything over my time on

Huh. This is an interesting twist. Popped up a couple of days ago on a test search. If you ogle down towards the bottom of the image, you'll see Twitter results from "3 minutes" ago appearing, page 1 of Google Search results. My thoughts: Very cool. Wow. That's quick indexing. It's a vote of confidence in the industry's trust of "what's happening now" being as relevant as information on a site. Oh dear, if they go ahead, they'll destroy Google Search. Twitter is SO FULL OF BOLLOCKS. Can't imagine how they could find a way to sort the 140 character gems from the bollocks. We'll see (UPDATE: Seems like this only works on Chrome. Perhaps they're testing, but it's not widely available)