Of course, the highlight of any geek-style conference is when Rich Mulholland or Don Packett (or ideally both) get to entertain the crowd. But not counting shouty funny people, two talks really stood out at yesterday's NetProphet conference in Cape Town. Both made it feel like a TED event in terms of inspiration and potential for real change, and each targeted opposite ends of the prosperity spectrum.
The first was the observation by Robyn Scott, social entrepreneur and founder of OneLeap.com, that we place considerable value on how extensive our social networks are, but we can usually count the number of people who made a big difference in our lives on the fingers of one hand. Whether the people you remember as catalysts in your career are mentors, investors, or highly-visible celebrities, she calls these “asymmetric connections”.
“I'm fascinated by the problem of how we create high-impact asymmetric connections,” says Scott, who grew up in an unorthodox family headed by a flying doctor in Botswana, a story she tells in her memoir, Twenty Chickens for a Saddle. “When they do happen, you feel like a fish out of water. To pursue them, you have to take yourself out of your comfort zone of people like you. Second, you have to break through the very significant barriers that surround people with lots of resources, power or time. And this is plain difficult to do. So often, we just end up not making them, for fear of having the door slammed in your face. I've had a lot of experience having the door slammed in my face.”
She says that busy people just overlook stuff on ordinary social networks, because it's so difficult to filter the stream of information and contacts that comes in. Her solution? A database of high-value contacts that charge money to contact. The money goes to a charity that the recipient selects, but the payment changes the dynamic, and earns you a guaranteed response.
If you pay, Scott argues, “you're more selective with whom you contact, and what you contact them about. Suddenly, we have a database of people who form a very high-quality network, and you're able to contact people, however asymmetric they are to you, on their own terms.”
The network has already had significant successes with innovative projects in Africa, including finding funding for the establishment of Mobius Motors, which aims to bring simple, rugged, affordable cars to African communities.
“People who are very different from you, and are very difficult to reach, often want to hear from you much more than you think, but they find it hard to filter the meaningful connections from the noise,” says Scott. “With oneleap.com, you're putting your money where your mouth is, and have a much better chance of building a new contact, a new relationship, that can really make a difference in your project or business, and can survive a long time.”
One the other end of the scale, NetProphet saw a talk by Yusuf Randera Rees, a young South African of mixed ancestry - the five members of his family all had different racial classifications in the bad old days - who ended up going to Harvard and excelling there.
At first, Rees was intimidated by the idea of attending a top-class Ivy League school, but, he says: “I came to realise that people are just people, and all that happens in those places is that they look for world-class talent, screen for it in a very robust way, and then give them the best resources. So you get world-class entrepreneurs and businesspeople.”
“Can we really write off a quarter of our population? It doesn't make sense that we who aren't part of it should support them, but it's also true that we haven't given them a chance to compete. Yet there ought to be as many world-class people among them. They are often equally smart, resilient, and resourceful,” he says.
With little but a dream, he started the Awethu Project, which recruits people whose only qualification is never having had access to systematic opportunity, and submits them to a standardised assessment test. The test measures cognitive ability and personality profile, independent of formal education or language skills.
“We found a taxi driver who scored in the top 1% of cognitive ability on a worldwide, American standard,” says Rees. “What do you do when you find talented people? How do you turn that potential into a career?”
After a few false starts, including running out of money, the project had received more awards than actual success stories. Those helped to attract serious funding from the Discovery Group, however, and today the project is focused on increasing the profit margins of the entrepreneurs to which it offered mentorship and access to business networks. One Awethu Project member used to sell beer, but now offers companies a market access consultancy in several townships. Another became a highly successful Soweto tour guide, telling his own story of how he left Limpopo Province with stars in his eyes, only to find a grim reality on the hard streets of Jozi. A third built a Chisa Nyama catering business that is in high demand. All earn more than R20,000 per month now, thanks only to having received a hand-up, rather than a hand-out.
Rees hopes that this approach to that part of the population that has missed out on formal opportunities - being evaluated on the basis of psychometric and cognitive testing, rather than matric records or business CV - will spread. Already, he says, banks are using such techniques to evaluate loan applicants.
“We're aiming for 1 000 entrepreneurs this year,” Rees concluded, to great acclaim.
Whether it's access to the rich to find funding and mentorship, or access to the poor to find entrepeneurial spirit and economic growth, NetProphet 2012 proved to be an inspiring event, which explains its rapid growth to become one of the annual highlights on the technology calendar.
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