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Communications appears to be diverting from action.  Many ads promise the world, yet the companies cannot deliver. What, then, is the point of advertising?  If companies walked the talk they advertised, the world might actually have been better. The problem lies in what we envision for ourselves versus what we actually do about it. 

I find many of my clients want to do the same thing that's happening elsewhere in the world on the Internet, but add value with "local content". It makes sense - there are some part of African / East African / Tanzanian / inter-Tanzanian cultures that play into the way we do things, like business, education, behaviour change communication, retail, engineering, etc.  But to what extent? We can't be so different that even best practice is unique.  The "local" in local content only goes as far as language, law of the land and loyalty to certain norms. Outside of these areas, I'm not sure what else makes local content so special. 

I recently submitted an essay for the NUHA blogging prize . The question I picked was "Most people don't listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." - Stephen R. Covey. Do you agree? My title was " We Make the Sacred Profane ". Here is the introduction: Covey writes at an interesting time for humanity. While his quote is taken from a book about personal change, it is also written in the context of effectiveness. Effectiveness can be defined differently depending on one’s context, but this essay focuses on two perspectives: One is of the Responder, and the other is of the Understander. These two perspectives can often seem to be opposites, but are in fact interdependent. Read the rest of my essay here . I also submitted an essay back in 2016, titled " The Paradox of Arts Today ".

Are habit-formulation and disruption mutually exclusive? I read a lot about how successful people (Pending: Definition of "success") attribute much of their success to well-formulated habits; things they do day in, day out that are fixed in a schedule bound by time. Yet, I also read about unconventional activities that lead to changes in the way our world works that were previously unprecedented. So, in a world where "habit" implies consistency and "disruption" breaks it, what's a 3-year old to choose?

Just came across this page on The Economist and am left wondering how I never saw it before. My favorite excerpt: "Do not be hectoring or arrogant. Those who disagree with you are not necessarily stupid or insane. Nobody needs to be described as silly: let your analysis show that he is. When you express opinions, do not simply make assertions. The aim is not just to tell readers what you think, but to persuade them; if you use arguments, reasoning and evidence, you may succeed. Go easy on the oughts and shoulds." I was also happy to be reminded that I need to get a copy of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language".

I've been pushing my company to run digital comms from within our organization for more than a year now, and so far it has worked really well for us. However, third-party providers haven't stopped asking us to give them that work, and the question of whether to run it internally or externally has occasionally continued to arise at meetings. Of course, it's more costly to run it from the outside, but also less of a burden on the organization. The most important benefit that I see as running digital comms internally is substance . If content - the very voice of an organization - is being generated from the outside, there is simply no way it can provide 100% of the fabric and turnaround that people and firms who really care about their digital voice/appearance require. I may need to develop this more fully and say something out loud. I see the tendency to run digital comms externally, and I think it defeats the purpose of saying/doing anything online. 

I attended a MOTO meet up yesterday after a few months. We heard from a new member - Najma - who had written a piece on beliefs, discussed writing and editing, and watched Samaki Mchangani .  The discussion on writing and editing was intriguing: Some of us were of the opinion that it is mandatory to go over one's writing and make it perfect by consolidating ideas and throwing unneeded ideas out. Others (me included) were of the opinion that sometimes the most potent way you can express an emotion is in the very moment you pen it down for the first time; any iterations beyond this instance waters the emotion down to suit public convention.  In the background, a question lingered: Is all of emotion able to be relayed through words?

"Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours, it belongs to you... its yours to take, rearrange and re use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head." - Banksy

Many clients I build websites for seem to think a website is like a press release; that once it's first iteration is complete, no further work is needed. But digital communication is becoming more adaptive to every-minute interactions, similar to how we change our voices' volume level, tone and pitch depending on where we are talking. In other words, digital forms of communication need to be adaptive, which changes the one-version-works-forever way of thinking. Particularly, more effort needs to go into watching peoples' responses to your deployment and having conversations with them. Out of this, new tweaks need to be made as you progress over time, creating space for new conversations at every turn. 

Text is only as good as people who read it. I have such a hard time finding the right kind of help on design projects, not because it is not available, but because 80% of people's comments are useless. It feels like just because they had the facility to contribute to the discussion (ie: open commenting), they did in the most bland way possible, thus increasing scroll time, shortening patience and serving no value to the reader whatsoever. #21stCenturyProblems #TooMuch(Little)Help

Today I observed a discussed on Facebook prompted by one of my friends on whether or not books should be delivered to Tanzanians' doorsteps. On one hand, my friend and his supporters (myself included) contended that not all books can be delivered to one's doorstep given scarcity, and following this logic, the people who will come to view a book at a store in person are most deserving of the purchase. On the other hand, people argued that we live in an age where home delivery is a premium service, and only those service providers who will deliver will survive. The rest, those who demand a customer to come to them, will lose out in the long run. OK, so let's assume that every product and service was brought home to you. In this state of affairs, you need to be prepared to make wise choices, otherwise one of two things will happen, assuming that our need for stuff is never satiated: Either you will run out of money and into debt, or you will have too much shit lying aro

I have a feeling I have written about this before. There is a popular saying (even in The Godfather )   that goes something like this: "It's not personal, it's business". But some time ago, this seemed like an oxymoron to me. That is, if a business is very close to one's philosophy and way of acting, then the business is not just personal, it is the person. But in recent days, I have come to realize one important distinction between what is personal and what is business, and it has to do with the kind of people one interacts with. One's personal space may not - and in most cases does not - involve the same people as one's business space. Yet, one's business space is what keeps one's personal space happy and prosperous. In this light, "it's not personal, it's business" has taken on new meaning for me. Sometimes, the personal needs to stay out of business, otherwise there would not be enough time or resources to satiate everyo

Words are tools with which we can express ideas. But when words are abused to shy away from a solid idea, one of two things needs to be done: Either the idea does not need to be expressed and nothing needs to be said, or proper words are used. Sentences such as "Like you know what I mean?" or "a thoughtful way to think about" or "let's plan to try and go" or "I'm almost uncertain about this" are misconstruing the point or are simply unnecessary. 

Stories have been told throughout humanity. Sometimes they were told through cave paintings, and other times through paper documents created on Microsoft Word. Fact or fiction, they are stories, and are all ready with the same instruments. The situation in which they are read may change, but the principal of telling the story for another person, group or even generation to ready does not change. What, then, should be expected of the number of stories? Is it proportional to the human population? Does it depend on the ability of storage devices (from caves to disks) to stand the test of space and/or time? And can some stories last forever?

Two more Economist articles. This one suggests that academic journals are likely to lock down their clients' sharing tendencies (including asking their clients' to remove published content from their own websites). One journal, Elsevier, has already started asking people to take stuff that belongs to their journal down. I appreciated this quote from Thomas Hickerson, chief librarian at the University of Calgary: “Requesting such removals…seems at odds with the nature of an academic enterprise, in which the sharing of research information is an essential element.” Another article discusses the skew of research itself; that it is mostly based on the US, where there is an abundance of data available. It's a sad situation for the world's poor, who ironically need the implementation of all the cool things that academia finds out: "The world’s poorest countries are effectively ignored by the profession. From 1985 to 2005 Burundi was the subject of just four

When do we think most efficiently? A joke with one of my managers at work today got me started on this (thanks, VL). My guess is that boundaries, such as an office with all the objects and activities it involves, focus thinking. That is why we institutionalize great ideas. And when one needs an "open" mind, they tend to leave the confined set of objects and activities in order to "think outside the box". In short, leaving boundaries helps thinking. But what about other, bigger boundaries. Such as our households, education systems and nation states? Surely, we come to point where we can't actually leave because we've been brought up in those boundaries. To step outside those would be to go insane, to lose touch of what we know and hold as truth. So, can we ever think outside boundaries? I believe we can, and this is what makes religion and/or metaphysics interesting. There are concepts in religious values, ethics and morals that cannot be described in

It's been an absolute pleasure going to the Moto meetings once a month. Our discussions span a variety of topics in the art and culture of writing, including formulating good storylines, character development, dedication to drafts, copyright, etc. This past Wednesday, as we were discussing someone's piece, it became apparent that we were divided in how we think an author should visualize their story. One half of us contended that in order to write a terrific story, even if it ends abruptly, the author needs to have the whole story clearly laid out in their mind. The other half of us contended that the author doesn't necessarily have to have the whole story mapped out, since they may want to involve the readers' perspective in shaping the "rest" of the story. So what is this bigger picture in the mind of an author: Is it the entire story, including words not included on the page? Or is it many different stories, some finished, some unfinished? Perhaps t

One of my friends sent me this link to an essay by George Orwell from 1946. In it, Orwell critiques modern uses of English words. Particularly, he makes the argument that while words will always carry their meanings, their combination in sentances is poor and remains poor because we imitate eachother. It's worth reading the essay for yourself. So far, my favorite extract from this essay is this: In the case of a word like democracy , not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite diffe

On May 11 last year , I briefly discussed Amartya Sen 's recommendations for how media could be more useful in the promotion of justice . One of these recommendations was to use the media as a tool for public reasoning. "Reasoning" can be defined here as the act of thinking logically, rationally and/or analytically. Public reasoning, then, can be understood as logically, rationally and/or analytically thinking as a group or as the citizenry. For this to happen, two things need to be in place: There need to be people who are thinking, and there needs to be a way for them to deliberate on thoughts collectively. Everybody has thoughts, so I will assume that there are thinking people wherever you look. But not everybody has a way to deliberate their thoughts with other actors in the public sphere. Sure, they may be able to exchange thoughts with their neighbor, local storekeeper or family members. But will this really be "public" or private? In order to

Barack is in Dar today and tomorrow. The country has seen crazy amounts of media focusing on his visit. To me, this is awkward. It's not awkward because it's overhyped. It's awkward because from what I know about leadership, security and communication today, a lot of it is engineered. Imagine you're in Barack's shoes: Your trip to Tanzania was tentatively scheduled about a year ago. You have an adviser who has at least 10 arguments why the US is politically and economically invested in the East African region. You have an agent who is advising you on the method of your travel; everything from the suit you will wear to the wheels of your car. You also have a media analyst who has been studying the country's most common and least common media topics. The set up can be further illustrated. My point is this: Barack isn't the only guy visiting Tanzania. He comes with an entourage, indeed a country. This comes with a complex set of considerations for all