Corporate is out, Honest is in

Posted on | August 17, 2008 | 8 Comments

I recently attended an event called Cerebella, the third of its kind, previously called Geek Girls, an initiative for smart woman to get together, the tag line being, ‘Smart is Sexy.’

We all met at Origin Roasting in Seapoint where the coffee is arguably the best in Cape Town. David Donde, the owner, had a remarkable idea on how to run the event. He termed it an experiment in social responsibility. There were divine smoked salmon bagels and their famous coffee on offer, as well as the use of the venue for the evening. Our only instruction was, ‘Here is a glass honesty jar, put in it what you think this evening is worth.’ As you can imagine I am burning to know how that worked out, since there were also many waiters at our beck and call. Was everyone as ‘socially responsible’ as David had hoped?

Maximillian Kaizen described our space at the event as a trusted space where common values were observed such as social responsibility and not spaming each other if email addresses were given out. We can always rely on Max for new idea and angles. To me she is the local ‘concept gal’, who always manages to blow my mind in one way or another.

Max who was the host for the night said something that almost brought a tear to my eye. She said, ‘There are many people in this room who are so brave that they risk looking like fools for their dreams.’ That was incredibly special because we were surrounded by brilliant women, young and old, who are forging their way in e-marketing, rising up the corporate ranks and people brave enough to make a go of it on their own.

Nikki Friedman from Big Words Scare Me, spoke at Cerebella. She is a story engineer or copy writer with a BIG difference. She believes in capturing people’s attention and imagination, by telling authentic stories, stories with a personal, creative and honest touch. This as part of your personal branding can separate you from dry corporate branding. Nikki puts it perfectly on her site, www.bigwordsscareme.com, it’ll separate you from, ‘irrelevant shotgun marketing, saint-like values or unrealistic mission statements.’ Telling an authentic story builds trust amoung your audiences and makes your story really memorable.

I met some very interesting people at the event and also saw people I had met at a previous event called, ‘Flying Solo.’ It was organised by Jo Duxbury and Pam Sykes for people starting up business’ with loads of useful advice.

Links and sponsors of the event, including information from the blog, Little Pinch of Salt @ littlepinchofsalt.com

Sponsers:

A big thank you to:

Moreson for the champagne

Origin Roasting for the venue @ 28 Hudson Street De Waterkant Cape Town

Brandseye for delivering cupcakes from Charlies Bakery with the coolest tagline ever: mucking afazing cakes

Flight Centre Seapoint for international travel vouchers

Quirk marketing for sponsoring the E-marketing book give-away.

Links mentioned at the event:

Flying Solo South Africa – a network for those of us working alone

Freelancecentral – make sure you’re finding those clients!

Femtrepreneurs – a network for smart women

Huddlemind – Huddlemind accelerates people’s abilities to make sense of new trends and work challenges, and gives them concepts, language, tools and processes in order to deal with them.

Ephipany – A new intiative that Max is involved to bring smart people together, would love to know more about that one!

One more thing. I was lucky enough to meet Josie Stewart of Springleap. They sell T-shirts through competitions that designers would kill to win.  Springleap are the only South African Company chosen as a possible winner in  The Standard Innovation 100 awards, vote for them at www.thestandard.com/awards/tis100

Go Springleap!

The photo is of my coffee cup taken by Kerry-Anne Giloway.

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What if we thought more about courage, creativity, resilience, curiosity, compassion and wisdom, than the equivalent energy poured into stressors and distractions? We would effectively be interested in the very topics that Positive Psychology addresses. Positive Psychology focuses on strengths, and not on the pathologies of an individual. By studying these strengths, we can uncover which factors most reliably support happiness, fulfillment, achievement and other positive states.

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