Disastrous SAfm Interview

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Off the back of our TechCentral article on Monday I got a call from SAfm (National radio station in South Africa) asking if I wanted to do an interview with Ashraf Garda. Of course! Why not!

It went really badly. Horrible. You know when you realise that you have said the same thing again…for the third time. In that moment, while you look down on the faltering words falling out of your mouth from the vantage point of a painful out of body experience, you realise you have passed a point of no return. There was zero chance of recovering  the random catch phrases that were thrown out in desperate unstructured fashion.

The thing is that I am super passionate about what we are doing at Big Inja and do not need much enticing to talk for hours on end about our desire to put the power of SAP type automation in the hands of everyday businesses.  I normally do a pretty good job of it too. In fact I sometimes surprise myself at just how articulate I can be. So what went wrong? Could I have been more prepared? For sure, but where I really let myself (and the Big Inja team) down was that I went in anticipating an interaction like I had with DJ Fresh on 5FM a couple of years back. Fresh had done his research into the initiative and my background and he asked me very specific questions. He was also insanely engaged and made sure that his objective was to get the most out of the interview for his listeners.

Yes, they are very different shows and the tone of  SAfm’s Afternoon Talk show is far more business like and targets a very different audience but the truth is that yesterday I got nothing from Ashraf but very broad, vague and frankly boring questions. Maybe my perception, but I don’t think that Ashraf knew anything about our company and what we do until the basic details were shifted under his nose just before he started speaking to me. We have an amazing brand that encompasses so much of what positive South Africa is about. Inja is the Zulu word for dog and we are hoping to take this Digital Data Dog global in an attempt to show the world that Africa has  it’s own Zuckerbergs. I am obviously biased but I reckon that we offer up many opportunities for engaging discussion. And you really do not have to dig too deep to find some interesting, and even sometimes contentious, stuff about Big Inja’s business philosophies.

You know how some radio stations give an opportunity to a business to promote their services in 60 seconds. The person reads out a scripted response to maximise the opportunity. My “interview” was a little like that… but without the script. I mean don’t get me wrong, we are hugely appreciative of the national exposure opportunity that SAfm kindly swung our way but I just wish that we had been given the heads up that it was going to be more in line with a business punt.

Check out a link to the DJ Fresh interview – I am listening to it repeatedly today in an attempt to make up some lost ground on my confidence which galloped away over a dusty SAfm horizon yesterday afternoon:

Big Inja DJ Fresh

5FM Interview with DJ Fresh – how cool is this dude!

 

image credit: Timeslive.co.za

 

 

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