Category: Social Responsibility

23 March

#CloseTheTap – Tweeting to save water for our future!

 

We’re pleased to announce that we’re one of the sponsors of an awesome initiative called #CloseTheTap – from the people at for love of water.

This online campaign, launched yesterday – 22nd March (UN”s World Water Day) encourages users to be aware of the water wastage associated with everyday scenarios, such as ordering that extra cup of coffee you don’t really need.  The slick, socially optimised site warns users of the things we do everyday that wastes precious  water, and prompts us to be more water-aware in our every day actions, such as the tongue-in-cheek pledge  ‘showering with a sexy someone’.

The campaign #CloseTheTap is essentially a digital initiative inspiring real world action – visit the site www.closethetap.co.za choose a water saving pledge, and share it via your social media channels.  We’re involved by sponsoring the live streaming of the ‘FlowCam’ which monitores twitter, and with every tweet, tightens the tap slightly – with the end goal of closing the tap completely with 10,000 tweets . (Pretty clever stuff!)  Note: the water used is in a closed system, re-cycling all of the water used – so no worries there!

The campaign anatomy was developed by the good folks and clever minds over at NATIVE, one of South Africa’s leading digital agencies, who are also one of our enterprise hosting clients. The campaign has been an overnight success – with over 1,600 tweets already! If you want to get involved you can do so by visiting the site and making your pledge or following the guys on twitter.

24 November

UWC Students visit RSAWEB

Earlier this week, we were visited by two students from the University of the Western Cape, who are currently studying towards a Bcom degree with a major in Information Systems. Cynthia Kanyenze and Tejas Gihwala are part of the UWC Job Shadow programme which RSAWEB actively participates in.

The students had the opportunity to meet 3 of our key personnel members – Jason von Berg (Technical Operations Manager), Vernon Naidoo (Network Operations Engineer) and Ayesha Bagus (HR Manager), who explained the ins and outs of their respective positions.

Tejas noted, “I’m interested in pursuing a career in Business Analysis and Business Information Systems Consulting (ERPs), and found the presentations from Vernon the most interesting as we have a mutual interest in networking, network cabling and the mechanics thereof. Jason’s talk was also very informative, as he covered quite a bit on how networks work, systems analysis and business analysis. He used a lot of technical jargon, but once he’d fully explained it to us, I think we were all on the same page.”

” The environment at RSAWEB is superb, the people were very welcoming , and I particularly enjoyed the presentations from Jason and Vernon. My programming skills aren’t strong, but talking to them opened my eyes to a new path of Information Technology which I’d love to explore.  Although I was only at their offices for 4 hours, I have nothing but praise for them – They really made an effort to welcome us,” commented Cynthia.

Allan Boyle, RSAWEB Sales Manager (middle) with Tejas (left) and Cynthia (right)

08 September

Learners join RSAWEB for a day of Job Shadowing

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

-          Plato

There comes a time in every Grade 11 learners’ life when they have to decide what they’re going to be when they grow up, and job shadowing is the school system’s way of guiding the learners onto the right career path. We participated in this activity recently, when 4 young ladies from the LEAP Science and Maths School spent a day with us to understand what a career in IT industry could hold for them.

Philisiwe Mzwana, Tina Lubambo, Nomfundiso Malgas and Nosiphiwo Rose Breakfast spent time with some of our team members who introduced them to our company, the various roles and responsibilities and how our employees came to be in their respective positions.

27 July

Supporting Mandela Day 2010

Mandela Day 2010 was celebrated on former president, Nelson Mandela’s 91st birthday, on July 18th.  The celebration of this day is an effort to encourage all South Africans to perform a selfless task to help their community… 67 minutes for 67 years. The 67 years is a reflection of the time Nelson Mandela spent fighting for the rights of humanity – from his pivotal role in the anti-apartheid struggle, to his presidency and finally his work as mediator in peace talks and as an AIDS activist.

21 May

How we provided free WiFi at a tech conference for 900+ delegates

Apart from great organisation, speakers, and coffee, conference delegates generally rate WiFi connectivity as one of the most important needs at a conference. So, while the word spread that the number of registered Net Prophet delegates (Net Prophet is a South African conference we sponsor) was fast approaching the 900 mark, we were meticulously plotting how we were going to provide free WiFi; whilst trying to figure out exactly how many devices would be connected on the day, and at any given time.

From last year’s conference (400 delegates), we learnt that balancing the load across eight 1mb/s connections was simply not going to cut it this time. We needed to find something that would allow 900+ delegates to freely tweet, upload, download, check emails, send emails and chat to their friends who were missing out on the conference.

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/mikestopforth/status/13910019982"]
 


Some of the challenges that face conference WiFi are:

  1. Providing enough back-haul Internet capacity
  2. Limiting per user download and upload speed
  3. WiFi coverage within the venue
  4. Wireless interference
  5. Wireless Access Point congestion

Net Prophet takes the form of a one day conference held in a large conference facility. We calculated that we would need an Internet back-haul link total with the capacity of about 20Mb/s down and 10Mb/s up to give the largely tech crowd a great experience. We provisioned this directly from our Data Centre in Cape Town via 2 5.8Ghz point to point wireless links to the roof of the conference venue.