Doing Something Wonderful

A note from a moment when ambition, technology, and community possibility were converging in a new way.

immedia is proud to have been selected as one of the handful of investment targets for the DTI/Microsoft EEP Programme, an initiative that aligns strongly with our own ambitions as a company.

The Department of Trade and Industry previously commented that the initiative had the potential to boost transformation within the South African ICT sector, and to help drive the shared vision of a strong home-grown South African software industry. Programmes like the EEP create real room for entrepreneurs to imagine beyond their circumstances.

We want to foster a new generation of South Africans, animated by the impact we can make on our communities when we are focused on the boundless potential of what we can do together, not alone.

At immedia, we are committed to thinking, improving, and becoming better technologists and converged innovators in service of a better future, better opportunities, and deeper satisfaction in the impact we can have on the world around us.

We believe that by changing our community, we change our city, and so our country, and so our continent. If we do that, would we not have changed the world?

From a genesis of two people, immedia Studio had grown to employ twenty people in high-value jobs, while also inspiring dozens of ex-immedians who were making an impact on communities and industry. A small band of people drawn from many of the communities that Durban and South Africa have to offer had helped pioneer an industry that opens twenty-first century jobs and opportunities.

We believe we can compete with the world. That inspiration is tangible here. We have been told that you can feel it when you walk in.

We see it when a teenager attending one of our Open Nights thinks, "This could be me." We see it in the confidence of saying, "I can do this here."

We see it in the space carved out on a Silicon Beach in Durban by teams like ours: being relevant in a new age, and creating the careers we want wherever home happens to be.

The DTI/Microsoft EEP programme makes it possible for us to accelerate that process; to strengthen the things we are not yet great at, and to pour energy into the things we are.

As a child of apartheid, I could have laid blame for the many challenges that sit at the feet of any entrepreneur there, but true entrepreneurship is inspired by the question "why not?" It looks at what can be done better, not only at what has been done badly.

There is a sign in the Intel Museum in Silicon Valley, a quote from Robert Noyce, one of the valley pioneers: "Don't be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful."

"Don't be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful."

That idea matters enough that we take teams there every year to see it for themselves, and to return home with renewed belief in what they can create. Silicon Valley is not a geography. It is a state of mind.

It is a state of mind that allows us to believe that, from the green cane fields and blue ocean we gaze on every day, we can create a future for ourselves that allows us to be part of the world, to act in our country, and to make work that matters to our communities.

Technology is changing the world. We were fortunate enough to experience HoloLens, a Microsoft innovation that immerses people in virtually created worlds. The promise of technologies like this for science, medicine, and education is something we want to help bring to life for our people.

That is the future we can see, and it is a future we want to play our part in.

We begin this journey with the best generation of talent immedia had ever had and, if we do our jobs right, our greatest generation is still to come.

We are deeply grateful to the DTI and Microsoft for this opportunity, and to our families, clients, and colleagues for the support and understanding that help us reach toward that future.

Anice