John Kim who blogs about the Worldcup and CSR @ http://worldcupCSR.wordpress.com was kind enough to invite me to write a guest a article on his blog and introduce http://worldcup2010.dzcus.com to his readers.
This is a full extract of that posting.
I recently launched a Q&A website on South Africa and the World Cup called dzcus worldcup2010 (As in ‘discuss’ the worldcup2010). The website aims to provide factual and relevant advice to the fans or tourists visiting South Africa during WorldCup2010.
John Kim who actively tweets and blogs about CSR and South Africa, found my website on the Internet based on a post I made and contacted me. We started talking and discovered many common interests and goals. He invited me to contribute to this blog as a guest. I am very flattered and excited that John found value in my idea and that he is interested in having me introduce my wiki to some of the influential readers that visit his blog.
To start with, my site is not a discussion forum. The key difference here is that the community gets to vote on all the question and answers, the idea being that the wisdom of crowds is better the knowledge of a few. The best (or most voted) answers and questions flow up to the top where they are easily found and the users that post the best questions and answers are rewarded by what is called reputation points. The voting and the reputation built up over time, authenticates and gives the answers a level of validity that you could not associate to a simple answer culled from an Internet search.
So why did I create this? I created this site because contrary to all the alarmist, sensationalist naysayers out there( guardian.co.uk & New York Times included), I think this World Cup is going to be one of the greatest ever and I wanted to be a part of it. I also feel that it provides an opportunity for ‘ordinary’ South Africans to tell you how it really is.
This year Woodstock featured a lot in the news in celebration of its 40th anniversary. When I think of World Cup 2010, I think of it as the Woodstock of our generation. Yes there is going to be mud but it is also going to be a social, culture and economic pivotal moment that will be talked about by our children and our children’s children. After all football and rock & roll share a common philosophy, in that it is mainly about having a great party and having a good time.
This is not just an optimistic statement I just made and my reasoning behind this is not the amazing goals I know that Lionel Messi is going to score, or because South Africa is a beautiful country, or the diski dance, or the delicious South African wines, or Kruger national park or because of the best efforts of the Organizers. The reason is that this is World Cup2.0, South Africa could not have picked a more opportune time to host the World Cup. Social 2.0 technologies have matured and their adoption has reached tipping point. What this means is that this event is going blogged, tweeted, facebooked, youtubed, ninged, and visualized on a scale that has never been seen before. The whole world will socialize and interact this event, and we are all going to be there. Permanent lasting memories will be captured in unique ways and this is why this event this going to be so pivotal.
I also believe that this event will have a lasting social impact on Africa. World Cup 2010 because of all this priceless Social2.0 publicity is going drive tourism and business up in South Africa for years to come. Social issues of the African continent will become more visible and the more “net-izens” around the globe get involved, the better the chances of some of the continent’s problems being solved. I strongly believe that technology is great equalizer and game changer. In today’s web 2.0 world the small time entrepreneur is as visible and as connected as the largest companies. I would go even further to assert that the small entrepreneur is at an advantage because he does not have the costs associated with the large enterprise and also because large companies just don’t understand the new paradigms. I was able to launch this, connect with like minded individuals like John and market this to my audience on a very tight bootstrap budget all within three weeks, something I would not have been able to do even a year back. Of course to capitalize on this, people need to be educated and that is an area the South African Government should really focus on.
My site is http://worldcup2010.dzcus.com, keep an eye out on it. I am looking for sponsors and partners for the site, if you are interested please contact me at mmathew @ dzcus.com. You can also follow me on twitter; my twitter tag is @mathaix and@dzcus_worldcup.
Mathew Mathew
Founder dzcus.com
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