11.05.08
Posted in AlterSage at 4:22 am by Carla Fourie
We are very excited to announce that AlterSage was chosen by Springleap as one of the 100 trendiest companies in Cape Town. This forms part of Springleap’s summer promotion and some of the other nominees include DraftFCB, Spier Wine, King James, BDDO and Zoom to name a few. For the full list of nominees, click here. Also on the list is our favourite bakery, Charly’s Bakery 
Click here to see why we love Charly’s so much!
As a nominee AlterSage received a premium code that entitles us to a 25% discount on any t-shirt on the Springleap’s website. Ultimately, the nominee that uses his or her code the most before 16 January 2009 will win a GOMOTO scooter.
If you want to receive a 25% discount on a Springleap.com t-shirt, email me and I’ll send you a discount voucher. All the Sages are getting a Springleap.com t-shirt to add to our funkiness Check out Springleap’s website, they have some amazing designs to add to your uniqueness.
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10.15.08
Posted in AlterSage, Personal at 3:12 am by Jono
Poverty and related healthcare, housing and education issues are top of mind for most Africans. As South Africans, we are lucky in many ways to have access to the resources that we do.
There is no denying that there is a huge discrepancy between the very wealthy and the very poor in this country – but by African standards, we are a prosperous nation with decent welfare, health and education sectors.
Of course, when compared to first-world standards, the difference between service delivery and access to resources is staggering.
Some Facts About World Poverty*
- Nearly half of the world’s population (over 3 billion people) live on less than $2.50/day.
- In the 21st century, still nearly a billion people are functionally illiterate.
- Infectious diseases continue to blight the lives of the poor across the world. An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.
- About 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57% of them were girls.
*from Global Issues “Poverty Facts and Stats” – you can see the rest of their poverty stats here.
How can Technology Help?
One of the obvious ways that the internet and technology can help with poverty alleviation is through education and empowerment. Naturally the challenge here is access.
Projects like “One Laptop Per Child” seek to create education opportunities for children in third-world countries, by providing them with laptops to enable access to resources. The content and software on these rugged and low-cost devices is designed for collaborative and self-empowered learning.
Furthermore, on the software and access side of IT, open source breaks down barriers to entry by making collaboration easier and software resources more affordable.
Outside of the internet realm, technology can change the world too with developments such as cheaper medicines and generics, more low-cost and sustainable energy solutions (such as solar, wind and bio-fuels), more efficient and safer farming practises and lower cost and more widespread sanitary and housing solutions.
What Can We Do?
Every bit helps. As communications professionals, we can give more in terms of exposure and raising awareness. Often, it’s not even about monetary donations – time and skills training are other assets that could assist in this regard.
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09.01.08
Posted in AlterSage, Events at 1:40 pm by altersage
It is with a great big disappointed sigh that I have to announce that we had to remove ourselves from the workshop list of the WWW Conference.
You may recall how excited we were to announce in July that we would be presenting a really exciting workshop on search engines, their evolution and the adoption of various search techniques. Sadly however we have waited for increased sign-ups, but it seems that the workshops have been slow on the uptake and it is with much sadness that I announce AlterSage will no longer be hosting the workshop at this event.
We have offered to make our slides available to those delegates that had signed up, and may potentially run this workshop again in future on a private basis, interest of course prevailing.
Should you be interested in either or, please contact us and we would be more than happy to arrange.
*Please see updated post*
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