Charl Norman

Category Archives: Personal

Speak Up! SA blog survey

October 28, 2008 – 8:04 pm

What is intended to be the most comprehensive survey of South Africa’s blogger community has been launched today by 24.com, in association with blog aggregators Afrigator.com and Amatomu.com and online DVD rental company PushPlay.co.za. The goal is to demonstrate the diversity and sophistication of South Africa’s portion of the global blogosphere.

“South Africa is the continent’s largest blogging community, yet very little is known about the individuals who blog and what inspires them to share their thoughts, observations and experiences with the world,” says Matthew Buckland, GM of online publishing and social media at 24.com.

“Although African bloggers make up less than one percent of the global blogosphere, we have a vibrant local online community, with some exciting growth in the number of those contributing and reading blogs.”

For those who complete the survey, Speak Up!, at http://blogs.24.com/blogsurvey/start.htm, three lucky participants will stand the chance to have their blog profiled on the 24.com network, as well as be eligible for one of three prizes offered by PushPlay. All South African-based bloggers are welcome to participate.

“Bloggers are a broad range of people from different walks of life and a wide spectrum of opinions, interests and experiences. With this survey, we hope to get a good snapshot of how bloggers make the ‘net work for them,” adds Buckland.

The highly collaborative survey was developed with input from luminaries across the local blogosphere, including Arthur Goldstuck, Vincent Maher, Nic Haralambos, Mike Stopforth, Charl Norman (I got a mention!!), Justin Hartman, Rob Stokes and Tertia Albertyn.

The deadline to complete the survey is 23.59pm on 7 November 2008.

Source: Bizcommunity.com

Photo: Bandwidth Blog 24.com office photos

By Charl Norman | Comments (0)

Model Millions

October 20, 2008 – 4:19 pm

Model Millions is a new reality show coming out of Cape Town, SA - the concept is similar to the very popular American reality production ‘America’s Next Top Model’ by Tara Banks. The show is hosted by Kerry Mcgregor and her sister Tracey. Thousands of models (including anyone who wants to be a model) came through castings around the country until they narrowed it down to 30 girls who was then flown down to Cape Town for the show. All the girls are in a mystery house in (or around) Cape Town. The show is on episode two with 18 girls already being eliminated.

The reason for my post is that my girlfriend, Jade Allen, is in the Model Millions show and kicking ass!! She has made it past the first few elimination rounds and is my favourite to go all the way (I might be biased). She is also the face of Blueworld under the nick J-Princess. The show is on SABC 3 on Wednesdays 8:30 - be sure to check it out and root for Jade!

Besides the Mcgregor sisters the other judges are local comedian and actor Cokey Falkow and a rotational judge seat which has been shared by model agency owners and professional photographers so far.

Jade on the cover of Style magazine

By Charl Norman | Tagged model millions | Comments (1)

27 Dinner Jozi talk

July 22, 2008 – 2:10 pm

I will be doing my “building and managing social networks” talk featuring Blueworld at the 27Dinner on Monday the 28th of July. This will be my second Jozi 27 dinner appearance. Last time we had a blast with the Afrigator launch announcement. You can view the guest list and rsvp here. From the official 27 Dinner site -

Speakers
Social media entrepreneur and publisher Charl Norman will be presenting his “building and managing social networks” talk - this is one not to be missed! Charl has built up a formidable portfolio of profitable web properties including www.blueworld.co.za, www.zoopedup.com, www.bandwidthblog.com and www.carblog.co.za and was recently nominated in the Top ICT Young Entrepreneur Award category for the annual Forgeahead 2008 African ICT Achievers Awards.

By Charl Norman | Tagged public-speaking | Comments (4)

Gadget guy interview

July 22, 2008 – 2:02 pm

Fresh after my Tech Leader interview I did a gadget insert for Mandy de Waal for the newly launched MoneyWeb Life section - you can read it here

Name: Charl Norman

Age: 23

An entrepreneur and Web Native, Charl Norman is just out of twenty and has already done his first deal, having sold a stake in his start up BlueWorld to Nasper’s 24.com. A web entrepreneur behind some of the top local social networks in South Africa, Charl also owns a network of successful blogs, writes for tech and auto publications, lectures at UCT Grad School and does the occasional public speaking event. Does he ever sleep and how does he manage to get all this done? MONEYWEBlife gives you the inside scoop to his life.

My working day:

I normally get into the office just before eight in the morning. I have a habit of rather working till late instead of coming in really early. I work a lot more productively at night with no distractions and no cell phones ringing every few minutes. I typically start my day by opening Google Reader to catch up on my feeds, open Twhirl (for Twitter) to see any new developments in our local community (Muti is also good for this) and log onto my GMail account to start the battle against my over flowing inbox. The rest of my day is typically - in between meetings at 24.com, writing blogs and monitoring the various projects BWCOM are involved in. My day to day responsibilities at BWCOM include project management, search and social media marketing, product development and dealing with staff issues.

My gadgets:

My best gadget at the moment is my 16GB iPhone, which I imported from the states. Each day I discover new functionality, tricks and applications to use with my iPhone which enhances my experience of it. The iPhone definitely lives up to all the hype - I have a 16gb media player in my pocket at all times which I use to watch the latest series or sitcoms during flights and I can blog and tweet on the go through WIFI in a decent sized browser window. I don’t have to visit a toned down version of any web app by having to go to their mobi site.

By Charl Norman | Tagged interview | Comments (1)

ICT Young Entrepreneur of Africa

June 19, 2008 – 4:22 pm

WOW! It’s been a crazy few weeks. Beginning of this month we moved into new offices on Long Street, then we had our BWCOM quarterly report back to Media24 and they are over the moon with us and finally yesterday - I received the most exciting news!

I have been nominated for ICT Young Entrepreneur of Africa 2008. Now to even be nominated is a great honour for me seeing as last years winner of the award is internationally renown Vinny Lingham.

ForgeAhead, our Partners and Stakeholders, congratulates you for being nominated for the 2008 African ICT Achievers Awards. ForgeAhead is celebrating the 10th Anniversary for the African ICT Achievers Awards programme…

..Â You have been nominated in the following category: Top ICT Young Entrepreneur in Africa.

Got a few interviews coming up later this year to determine the final list of nominees and then to Jozi for the ceremony. Hold thumbs!

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Press | Comments (7)

Friend Feed

May 31, 2008 – 10:56 pm

Really enjoying Friend Feed and the services they allow you to aggregate - subscribe to my friend feed

I’m aggregating my shared items on google reader, my tweets, delicious bookmarks, youtube favourites, diggs and a few others.

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Web 2.0 | Tagged friend-feed | Comments (0)

iPhone 16gb

May 29, 2008 – 12:33 pm

Just took collection of my 16gb iPhone. “Why not wait for 3G iPhone!?!?” - I hear you ask - Well, it’s gonna be crazy expensive and I got a great deal with the 16gb.

Hard work pays off and I’ve been spoiling myself lately with new toys.

Here’s the iPhone on my desk

iphone

iPhone 3G Applications

By Charl Norman | Comments (6)

The new ride - Astra OPC 2L Turbo

May 28, 2008 – 1:40 pm

If you follow me on twitter you might know about this already -Â I got myself a new set of wheels - Astra OPC Turbo . Stock standard the car pushes out 182 KWs and 365 NM of torque. 18′ wheels and full body kit also standard.. She’s a dream to drive each day!!

Check out my cyber garage profile on Zoopedup - I got the plate to match ZOOPDUP-WP

Here’s some pics

opc

opc
opc

By Charl Norman | Comments (4)

My Springleap video interview

April 10, 2008 – 12:31 pm

I just uploaded my Springleap video interview onto Blueworld. Eric Edelstein ’surprised’ me at our Blueworld offices in Cape Town. I gave a short tour of our offices, introduced the brains behind Blueworld and answered some of Eric’s questions on how I won the competition.

By Charl Norman | Tagged Blueworld, interview, press, springleap | Comments (0)

My 2007 in review

January 4, 2008 – 9:51 am

charl norman

It’s been a crazy year. I’ve managed to launch a few projects with exciting partners and learnt a lot about the web, getting investment and startup life. Each year I start off by thinking “this is gonna be a big year”.. Finally, 2007 has been huge for me and I look forward to the exciting opportunities that lie ahead in 2008.

Here are some of the stuff myself and my partners have been involved in the past year -

My Blogging network

My network of blogs have grown its readership considerably over the past year - I started Car Blog last year and managed to squeeze in a redesign with Adii just before year end. Car Blog has done great over the past months growing to a 1000+ uniques a day. In the beginning of the year I launched Bandwidth Blog which has also done great year end. Some of the posts I wrote on Bandwidth received some good traction - One made it to the Digg homepage and the other was published in print.

CarBlog’s growth from Jan-Nov 07

Finally, I bought two blogs from Adii, SA Rugby Blog and Daily Glamour, then revamped both with a new look and got writers for each. Both blogs are growing steadily and I look forward to managing them in 2008. My adsense earnings, mainly derived from my blogs, have also grown exponentially over the past months.

Blueworld Communities

In January this year I joined a company called Blueworld Communities (Pty) Ltd. which owned one website - a night club photography service called Blueworld. In Feb 07 we sold a big stake in the business to two Jozi based businesses, Teljoy and The Creative Counsel. They sat on the board and funded the business 100% allowing us to focus on building our technology. We managed to relaunch Blueworld as a open social network featuring a blog platform, user profiles, video and photo sharing.

During the year we aligned our strategy to create niche targeted audience social networks and launched Zoopedup and GayPeers. With GayPeers we teamed up with a gay ad agency (Pink advertising) and gay magazine (Wrapped mag) to help promote and monetize the network. All three social networks are growing very well and I have a huge announcement to make about our company in the coming days.