Dreams do come true!

I was told that my wife Ntombi had a childhood dream of being a model, being on TV, on billboards, magazines, on newspaper adverts. By the grace of God we are seeing the fruition of that dream. I also remember that the last person that my wife talked to before leaving Cape Town for Johannesburg in February 2012. She said, "you will see me on billboards". Now she is on a DSTV Compact print ads in national newspapers. Few lessons I have learnt from this: 1. Never stop dreaming (no dream is too small or too big) 2. Entrust your dream to God in prayer 3. Do not harbour thoughts or utter words that will negate your dream 4. Take action towards your dream 5. Be patient (wait, wait, wait) See...

TV reality show

My wife and I participated in a live TV show that is screened throughout the SADC region (South Africa and neighbouring countries). The theme that we addressed is marriage and relationships. We live in a time when marriages are under attack as if they are going out of fashion. Unfortunately many entered this institution with little preparation or no knowledge of the purpose of marriage. Lacking insight of the origins of marriage, they always see an end even before they embark on the journey. Many ignore the instructions of the Bible and mismatch their priorities to add to a negative statistics. See pic from the live TV show...below

My presentation at the ICKM 2012: Taking Knowledge Management to the next level in South Africa

In June 2012, the University of Johannesburg invited me to submit a paper for the ICKM (International Conference on Knowledge Management).

At first I was double-minded whether to wait until we have concluded the Knowledge Audit exercise for my current employer. The challenge for many organisations is how much info can one disclose on the public domain. I think in many ways SA corporations are so cautious of what information must be shared; and unfurtunately ending up sharing nothing to the public. We ought to strive to balance the scale by sharing some information and knowledge with the researchers and the industry at large.

With all the concerns, I eventually agreed to present the KM Journey which entails the embarking on a Knowledge Audit exercise in an organisation with over 27 000 employees who are dispersed in 9 Provinces of South Africa. A mixed methodology was deployed including the Zack's Knowledge-SWOT, KM Perception survey, and various KM Diagnostic tools. The journey has been eventful and rewarding.

During the conference I shared our experiences as well as Lessons Learnt from the exercise.

A special meeting with the top Strategy Evangelist

This morning I had a fruitful meeting with one of the South African "Strategy Evangelist", Dr Glen Mansfield who has a PhD and MBA in Strategy.

Dr Mansfield has been in the strategic planning field for more than 30 years. He is also a founding member of the Strategy Institute of South Africa, www.strategyinstitute.co.za. His institute focuses on strategy research, training and consulting.

On a numerous times he trained government officials as well as corporate senior/executive managers in Strategy courses at Business Schools and Government training centre, PALAMA.

Voting panel member for IEEE African Conference 2011

IEEE is hosting an African Software Conference on the 19-21 September 2011 in Cape Town, South Africa. The ACSEAC (African Conference on Software Engineering and Applied Computing) is attracting over 200 international and African delegates.

I was introduced to this conference by a prospective co-supervisor for studies, Professor Andy Bytheway, www.imbok.org. Owing to my current Studies and my Lecturing engagement, ACSEAC organisers nominated me to partake as a voting panel member for the Best Software Paper.

Visit www.acseac.org for more information.

Day 3 - GovTech conference, Durban

I started my day by a walkabout around the eye-catching Moses Mabhida Stadium. Took few pictures....

A walk along the South Coast Beachfront and I was hoping to ride on a Rickshaw but they only start a little later than 09h00. I managed to put my feet on the warm Durban waters. I am not so used to such warm water as I live closer to the ice cold Blouberg beaches in Cape Town.



Then during the last day of the conference I sat in the plenary session where a KZN provincial official was presented a Digital Nerve Centre project, which was followed by a presenter that I personally want to meet. He is a professor from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Prof Shaun Pather spoke on Government for Citizens.

Day 2 - GovTech conference, Durban

The day was kickstarted by real time VC interaction with the Australian Government Chief, Mr Glen Archer of the Australian IM Office. The video conference was made smooth by the Neotel's data lines and Polycom's video streaming technologies. Government 2.0 to achieve the three goals informing, engaging and participation with the citizens. Web 2.0 tools such as blogs (govspace.gov.au)

Followed by a presentation by a Canadian from OpenText who spoke on the Public Sector Social Media. Social Media in organisations is a brilliant KM tool to share tacit knowledge and collaborate to their colleagues. Their recent success story is setting up a social platform for the 2010 G20 convention in Toronto where governments, business, academia and youth in attendance interacted and collaborated on issues being discussed. Another successful social media project is the "Public Sector Without Borders" which encourages all governments to interact and collaborate on public sector issues.


My key moment was interacting with big business on how they are closing the skills gap, for instance, the recent graduates when they leave college they are work-unready and most of them struggle to catch with the work demands in the first year. There are quite a number big IT business that offer Learnerships, Internship and Training opportunities to close this gap. Let's see how far will this assist some of the recent graduates that I know - I will have to link them to these companies.


My personal contribution was at a breakaway session on "Effective Project Management in Government". I informed the delegates about the journey of Project Management Approach in the Western Cape Government and how in terms of the PM Methodology we are finding a balance between Prince2 and PMBOK. I also highlighted the biggest challenge to PMA implementation in any government, that is, residence to change. So Change Management should be a major investment in any PMA. The speaker from SITA, Ms Elize van Straten, agreed with me 100%.

Evening socialising

I ended my day by attending an MTN social party, upon invitation. I interacted with government officials and business as well as catched up with former classmates from university.