« Lester HeinSmall city boy, big city dreamsPage 30

I’m moving jobs, moving house and moving along

Life is a funny thing. Just when you think that you’re sorta getting used to it, it flips the fast forward switch and you’re hurtled headlong into tomorrow and before you know, it’s all a memory again. You never know what’s going to happen or when, which further confirms my suspicion that life is a women.

6 moths ago was a pretty quiet time in the world of me. Work, hang out, chill out. Occassionally play a set or produce a tune. Easy, but not the most thrilling existence to adopt. Since then I’ve been adopted by my new girlfriend (bless her saintly soul), changed jobs twice, started 2 businesses, become a partner in one and now, I’m moving house. Oh, and I semi-sorta became a Cape Town geek.

The latest change in Lester-land is my move from ForwardSlash to www.Afrigator.co.za. Stii and Justin approached me a few weeks back and asked if the project was something that I would be interested in working on, and I did my very best not to jump up and down and stiffled my ‘hell yeah’ woots. So, now I’ve handed in my notice at FS (which I did do with a bit of sadness – it’s been my life university for the past 4 years) I have signed my letter of appointment as a product manager at Afrigator.

The big news for the Afrigator team is the Acquisition by MIH Print Africa, which is all over the internet, like here and here and here. For those not in the know (which included me until about 2 weeks ago), MIH are the guys who started Mnet way back when and have interests in a number of local outfits like Mweb and Media 24. Needless to say they’re a big deal, and it’s cool to be going to work with them.

I’m pretty sure life has plenty more to throw at me, especially in the next few months, and for that I’m thankful, cos dammit there’s nothing worse than being bored.

Happy Friday,

Lester

StereoType Records invite bloggers to attend their gig

StereoType Records is inviting Cape Town bloggers to attend their next gig (this Sunday night) at Barmooda in Observatory. The idea behind this is that bloggers are the new media and that they should be present at events shaping their city and their areas of interest. The event is called The Chad Session and is hosted on the first Sunday of every month at Barmooda in Lower Main Road, Observatory. Cover charge for the event is usually R25, but bloggers are being offered a free pass this month. All they need to do is email their name, blog url and mobile number to vip@stereotyperecords.co.za and they’re on the list. On the bill this month is Claire Phillips, the 2007 SAMA award winner for Best Soul/Rnb album as well as Chad Saaiman, Byron Clarke, Lloyd Jansen, Liberation High, Christopher Jo and Gio. All music performed on the night is00% original and more often than not is written by the artists themselves.

I hope to see you there supporting our local music industry!

Lester

Cape Town Storm Pictures – Shopped or not?

So this is either one of the coolest pics of the Cape Town Storm that I’ve seen, or a fake. Are there are designers/shoppers out there who can tell me if this is real or not?

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

My brain hurts.A lot. A few months back, I started StereoType Records with some like minded friends. We had a good concept, great music and a sound business plan. We would all contribute to the music, Lee would run the business side, Ebrahim would run the studio, Chad would run operations and I would tap into my marketing genius to come up with unique, innovative and astounding ideas. Easy, right? Maybe not so much…

For the last few weeks we’ve been planning our label media launch, all learning valuable lessons about business, PR and event organization along the way. One of my responsibilities is to put together the media pack that the press will receive on arrival at the event. Said gift pack would contain the relevant biographies, data and music that the journos could consume on their own time. This one task has come to consume, agitate and infuriate me endlessly over these past weeks. It started with the obvious – scanning trade magazine and gift catalogues for ‘the usuals’ to see if there was anything that I might find useful. No luck there. After staring at the 100th keyring and the 50th mousepad, I still have no ideas. At one point this afternoon I really was tempted to say ‘screw it’ and just get some super shiny keyrings, chuck them in the pack and let that be that. But I know that I would never let myself live it down.

My Friday afternoon deadline is looming and racing ever closer and I now dread having to report back to the team that I have diddly squat for them. You see, the problem with everything out there is that it’s been done so many times before. I have more business card holders that I know what to do with and enough pens to write War and Peace in at least three differetnt languages.

What I need is something relevant to our business (music production and distribution), has some ‘legs’ and will be featured or at least seen long after the event and most importantly, isn’t down right boring.

I read somewhere that simplicity is ‘subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful’. And try as I might, I cannot seem to perform that arduously simple task.

Maybe the answer will come to me in a dream. It just might, so maybe I should get some sleep.

Update (even) more Cape Town Storm pictures

Yes – I know – three posts in as many hours on the same topic is a bit excessive, but my inbox is overflowing with pics from the Cape Town Storm this weekend. Thanks for Csaba from cybercapetown.com for taking the pics

This is a bumper post with lots of pictures