Author: Editor

SARU is operating a class system in the game, claims former Springbok captain Tom Bedford in an open letter to SA Rugby president Mark Alexander. He says rugby in South Africa has again morphed into a game that is not equal for all. It has become a game for the four “haves” (the Bulls, Stormers, Sharks and Lions) which form a first-class cartel.Share with us your five, ten-year or greater plan and your intention to fund and develop the game across the country, asks Bedford, who now resides in London. The PresidentSouth African Rugby Dear Mark Alexander, Since the malaise of 2019…

By Angela Ho If you have not yet heard, the ex-President of the United States of America has started his own social media platform. Yes, it is called “From the Desk Donald J. Trump”. This is my rant from the desk of Angela Ho. As a practising marketer, I did not have much choice in dabbling in the dark arts! Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Social media has provided us with the ability to have access to global news to anyone with an internet connection and a device to read it. It has also provided…

By Angela Ho “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” yelled Zach Braff or otherwise known as Chicken Little. This noughties animation film is about a piece of the sky falling on the head of Chicken Little. Initially, no one believes him. However, his friends trust him, and together they save the world from ending. Last year during the lockdown, South Africans held their heads high and chests proud as Elon Musk, SpaceX successful voyage to the International Space Station was broadcast. Honestly, that last link to the Space Station was a little like watching paint dry. This weekend…

By Howard Feldman, Head of Marketing & People at Synthesis News that Bill and Melinda Gates are to get divorced after 27 years of marriage, hit me hard. Not because I know them or their children, but because if any couple stood a chance of growing old and miserable together, it was them. These are good people. They have focused on philanthropy, try valiantly to get rid of their money to good causes and will no doubt be leaving the world a better place than they have found it. That said, they are also a bit dull. As a couple…

If there is one benefit to be gleaned from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is that it has brought the construction industry to the brink of a digital renaissance. “The emphasis on quality, safety and timely delivery of projects is greater now than ever before, and companies are being forced to accelerate their adoption of technology,” says Databuild CEO Morag Evans. “It’s no longer a question of if companies will digitalise, but when and how they are going to bring their businesses into the 21st century and adapt their day-to-day operations to streamline the building process.” Evans points to six emerging…

For most individuals and organisations, it can easily be said that 2020 was one of the toughest years they’ve ever experienced. From the complexities of working from home to the legalities of regulations, and the fundamental changes to human interaction, it was a year that reshaped communication, collaboration and disruption. But there were valuable lessons to be learned from the challenges that the pandemic presented and perhaps the most valuable was the general resilience of people. It was surprising to see how well people adapted when the pandemic first kicked off in South Africa. When everything moved into high gear…

The increasing digitalisation of business processes combined with the normalisation of a distributed work environment have contributed to the tripling of Microsoft Teams adoption. As companies across the globe, including insurers, embrace this platform to improve collaboration between staff regardless of their geographic location, Silverbridge identified an opportunity to provide a more convenient way for users of their enterprise policy administration suite, Exergy, to action assigned tasks via Teams. “This integration delivers incredible value to the ‘occasional Exergy users’, typically part of an approval or review workflow, by enabling them to simply click on a work item in Teams and…

There is immense risk attached to the idea of offering your employees unlimited leave, particularly in a country like South Africa. Here, leave is a legislated and regulated minimum that cannot be lost, so offering unlimited leave can potentially open the organisation to people spending their lives on holiday, conning the system they’ve been given. But, according to Nicol Myburgh, Head: CRS Technologies HCM Business Unit, this is not the case if the organisation adopts an outcomes-based approach to employment. “The benefit of offering unlimited leave lies in trust – trusting your people to do their jobs, deliver to their…

By Hanno Brink, Synthesis Machine Learning Engineer A free press or media has an important role to play in democracies as it is responsible for gathering and distributing the information that citizens use to decide how they are going to vote. They then have the further responsibility to monitor and hold those in power accountable. Free press also plays a role in society by providing a platform for advocacy, expression of opinion and for society to create a shared understanding of the important issues and the best way to go about solving them. However, the mind-boggling amount of information that…

AI is here. And it is everywhere. Furthermore, if it hasn’t yet, it will touch every industry both present and future, and is likely to change all aspects of our lives. AI inspires enthusiasm and hope for a more efficient tomorrow and is a valuable differentiator. Its capacity to collect and analyse data, to provide insights, to recognise patterns, and to predict future behaviour has helped companies and countries to innovate. It can track how effectively the human moderators are fighting hate speech and gender abuse on Twitter, and how much progress we’ve made globally against the corona virus. AI…