Web 2.0 Summit Africa cancelled due to lack of support

I read a survey the other day, that about 70-80% of advertising execs in the USA do not know what Web 2.0 is. Not surprisingly, South Africa by and large hasn’t caught up yet either and there is only probably a very small segment of our population that knows what it is. “Web 2.0″ is an industry buzzword which means that pretty much only the people in the industry really know what it means and it’s effectively a hook for new people coming in, to summarize where our industry has evolved to.

The flip-side, is that anyone (well, maybe not ANYONE) watching the international Web 2.0 trends can pretty much dominate the local markets here and disrupt the old economy companies that are lethargic.

Granted it’s a bit difficult to displace Hotel groups, etc, but the media companies are going to run into big problems unless they take a Rupert Murdoch-esque route. On a quick side-point on hotels – back in 2004 I visited one of South Africa’s largest hotel groups’ CMO with probably 100 hotels at least to discuss online marketing services (for their very bad website that needed redesign), and I quote : “People don’t book hotels online, they go through travel agents”. At that stage we were doing about $250m/year in bookings for one of our UK travel websites. This sort type of mindset says it all – but it’s changing quickly due to increased competition (isn’t survival of the fittest a great motivator?!).

I received the following disappointing email today, but I totally understand.

Dear Vinny

Reference is made to the invitation sent to you to speak at our Web 2.0 Summit Africa 2007 scheduled for the 16th – 18th May 2007, at the Hilton Hotel, Sandton in Johannesburg.

It is with deep regret that we inform you of our decision to cancel the summit. This has been a very difficult conclusion to arrive at, though necessitated by the following factors:

* A considerable number of companies seem to have no idea what web 2.0 is all about and how it will help their companies.
* The few other companies that seem to have heard and read about web 2.0 are indicating that it is not what they would like to be involved in just yet. They need time to find out how it will help their companies grow.
* Above all, we seem not to have a business case on this summit in South Africa.

Having given these factors an in-depth consideration; we felt it would be in the best interest of all to cancel the summit at this stage before we proceed any further.

However we will be more than happy to give you first priority to speak at the same and other related events in the future. We sincerely apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused.

Looking forward to your continued support in the future.

Yours Sincerely

People often say that we’re in a Web 2.0 bubble – but my view is the same as Joe Kennedy’s: “When the shoeshine guy starts giving you stock market tips, sell!”.

The leading CEO, CMO’s and marketing execs still don’t understand the paradigm shift that is occurring, let alone the shoe shine guy. We are at the start/middle of a long sustained boom (great article from Fast Compant, by the way) and although there are a lot of startups in this space, common business sense will prevail.