Alpha Media Holdings announced yesterday via a press release in one of its papers that the media group will be hosting Stafford Masie at a tech breakfast meeting to be held in Harare on the 17th of February. Alpha is holding the event in partnership with Telkom owned ISP, iWayAfrica.
According to the release, Stafford Masie, a technologist and professional speaker, will explore a quote (probably mistakenly) attributed to the world’s second richest man Warren Buffet. The quote reads “Technology is changing your customer … and your customer will change your company”
Masie, 37, is quite an established tech personality in South Africa where he was the first Google country manager. He’s also worked for multinational tech companies like Novell and Telkom. You can read more about him in an interview he gave a South African tech publication, TechCentral, last month.
The Alpha Media release says the meeting is only open to “individuals involved in shaping the strategic direction of your organisation, such as CEOs, board members and senior executives.” The breakfast meeting will be held at La Serenata (Old Seasons restaurant) and will cost each attendee US $100.
Just something interesting: We tried finding the quote “Technology is changing your customer … and your customer will change your company” on the internet just so we wouldn’t dump this on you without some backing, and quite strangely, everything we’re finding attributes the quote to Forrester Research CEO George Colony. He said it in this blog post published in 2009. The one place it is linked to Warren Buffet is a tweet on this page by someone who seems to have heard it from Masie himself. Maybe we just didn’t look hard enough.
I can respect mr motivational speaker since he was a country manager for a couple of tech powerhouses, although generally I’m against the trend of self proclaimed success coaches/pseudo leadership gurus who have not achieved anything themselves but just talk success and have a to do list on how to make it. I respect the testimony of the men and woman who are in the trenches doing it and living it. Some people have actually gone to the extreme of declaring “I want to be a Leadership guru” dha -how can u be a leadership guru when u have not led even a small company. What we need is more biographies/profiles of tech pioneers and leader kinda thing on techzim and the like. I think it good if techzim adds a link to the word mention of every notable tech leader in an article like they sometimes do in mybroadband.
Great Tech Guy he is, I liked his views on SA banks’ NFC trials on http://goo.gl/VSZwd I wonder what his views will be on the uptake of Technology of Zimbabwean Institutions especially mabhangi.
Great Tech Guy he is, I liked his views on SA banks’ NFC trials on http://goo.gl/VSZwd I wonder what his views will be on the uptake of Technology of Zimbabwean Institutions especially mabhangi.
Him being not in Zimbabwe puts him at a disadvantage to comment on Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a different playground compared to SA, he will be found wanting..lol
Duncan Rack Please have a look at this video. This guy’s from Austria and is talking about and appreciating Kenya’s technology moves. Europe’s a different playground but skateboards can be used in any city as long as the surface is right. http://goo.gl/ngG6G