snowgoose

This has been a totally crazy week so far – I’ve not gotten home even remotely near the light side of sunset once and my days are rushing past in a blur. Of course that means that I haven’t gotten a chance to write about The GeekRetreat yet. This I am viewing as a good thing, most of the people who were at the retreat at Stanford Valley near Hermanus last weekend have written about it at length. Some of the posts are factual, some are a bit odd. One resonated deeply with me and made me re-evaluate everything I thought I felt about a person, it made me see the heart underneath the ‘arch-cynic’ (his words). It’s this post in particular, and the heated debate it has sparked, that I’ve decided to write my GeekRetreat post on.
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You may have heard the rumour that it is my mission to convert ordinary people into geeks. Even though my hatchling series is temporarily absent, I still believe firmly in this. I don’t intend to make every person on the planet into a mac-toting, publicity loving, browser aficianado – What I want is for every person I meet to see the internet, and her possibilities, like I do… limitless. The only problem with my passion is that geeks are a tiny subsection of society – less than 2%, so… how do we spread our message? We’d need someone to create some sort of recognised internet marketing course. Not a 3 day conference, an actual, affordable, certified, supported course.

It seems that Quirk and GetSmarter have done just that. Between them they are presenting an 8 week, distance learning course in eMarketing. The course is based on the super-easy-to-read Quirk eMarketing textbook, already in it’s 2nd Edition, it’s the only eMarketing textbook in South Africa and one of only a handful in the world. (just ask Seth Godin). The cool thing about this course is you actually learn something. Too many certificate courses (and even some degrees!) in South Africa teach you absolutely nothing and have no practical application. So you have a masters in Philosophy? Whoopdie frikken doo. And you can apply what you’ve learned immediately, and you can see the results almost immediately too.

Another cool part is it’s cheap: R5 600. Now I know that sounds like a lot of money but education is expensive, there are some 2 day courses out there that cost twice that!! (no kidding, I checked). You could get a loan if you can’t find the cash – it’s your education so it’s borrowing money to gain a valuable asset.

Have I convinced you? Will you become part of the Geek-squad? (how flippin geeky am I?) Learn more on GottaQuirk or GetSmarter’s website.

Lastly, I am not writing this post because Quirk asked me to, they didn’t. I have been passionate about Digital Education for a long time, Quirk shares my passion and it is one of the reasons I chose to work here.

I mean, c’mon… what other agency do you know of that has written a 400 page textbook?