Just over 100 days ago, a team of us gathered at Evans Hall on Berkeley Campus to design a new kind of learning experience - a Generative AI 1-Week Intensive. The faculty “Dream Team,” as Prof. Xiao-Li Meng called them in the Harvard Data Science Initiative’s press release , had flown in from Boston, Munich, Lausanne, and Vancouver. My team at Next Gen Learning (NGL) was privileged to work…
18 months ago, I gave myself 2 years to find my next business venture. If you know me, you’ll understand it took a lot to give myself that much time. Surely I could find it faster than that!? But, of course, timing is a major driver in business as it is in life. I needed to allocate sufficient time to explore actively and widely - making myself alive to possibility - while also waiting for the…
Location : Cape Town, South Africa. Overview: I am seeking a service-oriented, highly organised Executive Assistant to support me, my Family Office and my family. This role demands a proactive approach to managing a wide range of responsibilities, from project, property and office management to personal and family logistics. The ideal candidate will give me confidence that they will get ahead of…
12 days ago I broke my left tibia and fibula while playing Padel. It was brutal. I feel like I’ve lived a year in a week. Now, post surgery and as I emerge from a pain-medication induced fog, I begin the 6-month rehabilitation process and I’m energised to do it well. The following comprises excerpts from my journal in blog post format. The irony is that I have felt so strong this year. Kicking off…
Friends! We have news. This last year has been a journey of renewal at Kerala. A little over 12 months ago, we made the decision to start sharing Kerala with guests beyond our immediate family and friends. As our understanding of high-end hospitality has grown, so too has our excitement for and expectations of what Kerala can be. Names are important. To overcome the challenge of borrowing a name…
Musings on people, strategy and growth in building a fitness business with a work-from-home team The 13th of March, 2020, was a particularly hard day at JEFF. News of the Coronavirus had gripped us all. After a record prior sales month, the beginning of the pandemic saw our revenues literally fall off a cliff. We cancelled our lease, moved to WFH, and retrenched several roles. Telling people they…
Image: UCT News Link to video of speech here . Good afternoon soon-to-be graduates, and your impressive support team - the mothers, fathers, grandparents, extended family, spouses, partners, academic staff, and the broader UCT community that made today possible. First, let me say that I was milling around outside while you were taking pictures, and I noticed what a good looking graduating class…
Today is about their Mom. Don’t get me wrong. I’m really looking forward to celebrating them on their birthday in the years to come. Although, I’d much rather focus on regular, micro celebrations of the effort they put into deliberate objectives, and keep their birthday parties as group celebrations to mark the relationships they value most at that point in their lives. But I digress. The truth is…
Since opening our Family Office in 2018, we have made investments in the following companies who are currently hiring for roles based in Cape Town: Yuppiechef ; Hubble Studios ; and Johno’s Fitness Faculty . While these organisations are distinct in their stages of growth, specific culture and the people they serve, they are all well led, high-growth companies that value their team members and…
Nine months ago I gave my final speech as CEO of GetSmarter. It was almost exactly a year after we were acquired by 2U, and it marked my stepping down from the CEO role and taking up the role of Senior Advisor to 2U and GetSmarter management teams. This is my speech I delivered to a team that I love. I am confident they are going to go on to do purposeful, important work in higher education…
I'm currently studying the MIT Big Data and Social Analytics class online. It's one of the collaborations GetSmarter has with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and takes the form of an 8-week, intensive, hands-on course that explores data and social analytics fundamentals. I'm really enjoying the course, and one of the reasons is that our Learning Design team, together with our talented…
And today, I am so proud. Proud of the 300+ talented individuals who make up the GetSmarter Team and all of those who have come before us. We have achieved a significant milestone in the GetSmarter journey by bursting into the international education arena in collaboration the world's #1 University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Today we become a global company by launching the first…
It is my privilege to be featured, alongside my brother and business partner, Rob, on the cover of this month's Entrepreneur Magazine. The last 8 years of building GetSmarter have been amongst the most influential of my life. It is no coincidence that this period of time runs in parallel to my relationship with my wife, Keri. This feature is recognition for all the people who have been a part of…
Video has so much potential for effective teaching and learning. But after reviewing how video has been used by leading online education providers - ourselves included - i'm often left wondering if we're doing the medium the justice it deserves. Until recently, that is. Eight years ago, when we first introduced video into our online courses, we saw it as a way to replicate the in-person lecture…
Your company strategy should be top secret, jealously guarded by your top management and only spoken about behind closed doors, right? I don't buy it. A company strategy should guide an entire team of people. After all, the word company means "a group of people". A strategy should unite a team around a common purpose, help them make difficult decisions and give them direction for their planning…
If you're like me, every other year you set a few new year's resolutions. Fast forward a few weeks and most of them haven't stuck. Any by most , I mean none . Right? I'm right. If i'm wrong and you regularly achieve your new year's resolutions, please leave a comment below on how you do it. I'd love to learn. So, the start of a new year is such a great opportunity for reflection and planning. And…
I love coffee. Six years ago I used to drink three cups of instant coffee in a working day. It was all I knew, and it seemed to be the perfect companion to an 11-hour work day. Ignorance is bliss, right? Then there was the fateful day. Vida E opened near our offices and I order a single shot, flat white to go. Heaven. It was unlike any coffee I had tasted before. And so started a daily ritual of…
At GetSmarter, we will educate 7,000+ students on semester-long university-endorsed online short courses in 2014. Learners spend between 60 and 100 hours learning on these programmes, which has them working through several learning activities every week. At GetSmarter we call these groupings of learning activities ‘work units’, and each weekly module has several work units. One advantage of the…
Today we launched our new and improved website. #YesPlease! The launch marks an important milestone in our journey. Three years ago, our marketing and IT competency comprised of a handful of people. We were young, ambitious, and full of potential. And we had just enough talent, at the time, to build a website that "did the job". Heck, I did the graphic design for the site! Today, our marketing…
My brother, Rob, and I were interviewed by IamYoungpreneur last year. It was a really fun interview to do, and I think they produced a great 8-minute clip. We talk about how we started GetSmarter, some of the lessons we have learned over the past 6 years, and some of our plans for the future.