The future is in your hands By Kim Browne Our elections next week are on the minds of many South Africans as we try to anticipate what the future holds. Small business owners such as The Toast may worry about what the political future holds. This has made me think again about being responsible for a business and its employees at a time of uncertainty. The reality is that times are always uncertain. It’s up to us as business owners to navigate the stormy seas of our endeavours and make the best of a given situation. Something that usually helps me is a positive ingesteldheid (attitude). I find that when we look at things from a glass half-full perspective, the world and its challenges are easier to make sense of. This means it’s less about what others do (such as politicians) and more about how we approach what we do. I’m not saying it’s easy — it’s not. But what I mean is the journey towards solving the inevitable difficult situations life throws at us is as important as the end result. Positivity can make this journey more bearable. Another thing about being positive is that others respond well to a sunny demeanour. At The Toast we have found that even in the most difficult client interactions a smile on our dial will always diffuse tension and open another angle or solutions to a given conundrum. I am positive about our country, our people and our future and hope you are too. It’s a tough ride, but worth it. And if perhaps you are wondering what you can do practically in South Africa today to help us all move forward together, vote for small business. It truly makes a real difference.

The Toast is eight candles young By Kim Browne Twisted Toast turned eight on 1 April 2019. It's hard to believe how quickly time seems to pass when you're busy. Time truly is relative. The happiness created by the freedom of entrepreneurship is hard to explain to others. It's equal measure elation and terror at times and totally addictive. When Louis Eksteen and I left our previous jobs on a late-February evening after a staff farewell, loudly singing John Denver's "Leaving on a jetplane" in the Evil Empire's lift we would never see again, with Gordon and Sonja Patterson by our side, the world of possibility opened up. It's never been an easy ride. After eight years in business we have learnt that nothing about creating and managing your own business ever is. But that makes the little wins just so much more rewarding. This year has been tough so far, but our growth plans are in place and the early signs are promising. It will be a another long road to become nine, but thanks to an expanding list of truly wonderful partners in business (our Toasty clients), things are looking up. We've been privileged to help clients create a number of sparkling new brands so far this year. Creating brand strategies, positioning identities, developing brand personalities and visual language plus all the other things needed for new brands is what we live for at The Toast. Thank you to these special businesses that have entrusted their most precious assets with us. One thing that we kept while leaving our previous employ is our connections to the talented group of people who worked with us BTT (before Twisted Toast). The Toast's permanent staff complement who have worked with us previously, before our launch, today makes up no less than 75% of all our staff. In addition, the group of permanent freelancers we have the privilege to work with have all been with us for more than 10 years. It's an amazing feeling to be able to count on such a dedicated and committed group of professionals. Thank you to the following Toasters who have chosen to continue on this journey with us: Erik, our genius creative director who is the rock we depend on entirely for extraordinary creativity; Angela, our amazingly talented senior designer and superb Friday DJ in residence; Sharlene, who is the most amazing InDesign Ace you've ever seen, with an eye for speed and detail that's hard to match; Quinton at Toast@TheCoast in our Cape Town office for whom next-level creativity is never too much to ask; Antoni, our master mathematician, in-house programming genius and developer extraordinaire who can think in digits and who gave us our motto Semper in Altum (Always Higher); David, who runs our finances and operations with just the right balance to keep us healthily on track and to Last Minute Louis: It's been a long ride to freedom. Here's to a future full of the happiness that freedom brings. Onwards and upwards!

The feel-good of helping others By Kim Browne Earlier this week we were privileged to attend the annual Atterbury Trust bursary student event. Held at Die Klubhuis, Atterbury’s impressive HQ, the get-together allows the many studying students and alumni, who all received study bursaries from the trust, to meet and mingle with each other, Atterbury staff and donors. Atterbury Trust specifically assists students whose family circumstances are of such a nature that they will not be able to study without the financial assistance of a bursary. But it’s not all about financial assistance. Through a mentorship and coaching programme Atterbury Trust assists the promotion of students’ emotional wellness in many other ways too. Once students have graduated and have entered the labour market, the trust’s network often assists with finding employment. Students don’t get their bursaries for free. Once they start working, they pay off the bursary as a student loan. In this way the next wave of bursaries can again help many others who cannot afford studying on their own. Two students spoke with complete gratitude about how much they value the opportunity provided by the trust. These stories made us feel so grateful for the opportunities we’ve had to educate ourselves. Managing trustee Zahn Hulme explained in a heartfelt way how important it is for Atterbury to give back. She also provided amazing statistics that underscore the success of the trust. One telling number is that students on the bursary scheme have maintained an average successful completion rate of no less than 97% over the 20 years of the trust’s existence. That’s really impressive and attests to the fact that given the opportunity, people usually step up to whatever challenges await. The importance of realizing what a fantastic opportunity these bursary students have received and that they should embrace it and not waste it was eloquently emphasized by Atterbury co-founder and CEO Louis van der Watt. If you'd like to share the love and support the further education of students with potential who do not have the financial means to pay for their studies, please consider donating to Atterbury Trust and Atterbury Foundation, the two charitable trusts in the Atterbury stable: https://atterburytrust.org/atterbury-foundation/ But for now it’s time for March Madness! On 1 April The Toast turns eight and we can’t wait to see what the universe has in store for us... See you soon.

Emailing robots By Louis Eksteen Over the holidays I brushed up on my ping pong skills with my godson. He had already downloaded an iOS game before we left, which we used in preparation. Real life is different though and where we played, the tables were outside, so wind was always a factor. You can imagine the light ping pong ball swerving even more through the air, difficult to control with spin and wind thrown in. By the end of the holidays, I’m somewhat proud to say I made it through to the semi-finals of that week’s Tuesday tournament. Just to be comprehensively beaten by a decidedly older, but remarkably better player. It was so much fun we even tried some artificial-lawn tennis, with a lesson learnt in just how hard this game is. Hats off to Nadal. Upon returning home, the 2019 edition of the annual CES showcase of all things gadget featured the incredible artificial intelligence-powered ping pong robot from Omron. Named Forpheus, the robot has been much improved this year. Omron clearly uses Forpheus to demonstrate how its artificial intelligence prowess improves over time. Playing with a ping pong robot: https://www.cnet.com/news/a-ping-pong-robot-at-ces-2019-made-me-wonder-could-i-go-pro/ This is the most important thing about AI. It gets better over time, as the robots learn. The new AI email writing component baked into Gmail is another excellent example of machine learning. If you’ve been using it and think it gets better over time, you’re right. It does. Tired of misspelling people’s names upon a reply email to an unfamiliar, difficult to construct first or last name, no worries. Gmail will complete it for you when you start typing “Good morning…” Your fondness for a specific salutation is also easily taken care of. It starts becoming a bit scary when your email system starts suggesting familiar types of words and even phrases in the body text of mails. On the fly. What I’m most scared of is probably how dependent I’ve already become on Gmail assisting me to write quick, succinct and correct emails. Our genius head of development at The Toast, Antoni Urban, is an AI expert. He sees it not as any threat, but rather for what is really is: Humungous expanding databases of knowledge and learning that make life easier, when used properly. The thing about these databases is their unlimited ability to immediately access the correct knowledge, often powered by connectedness. AI is therefore not some sort of inaccessible magic, but rather collected pieces of static data sewn together at lightning speed into something useable. The latest thinking in AI development concentrates on teaching programmes to learn through trial and error, allowing the robots to remember and differentiate between errors and successes. This is how the machines become better over time. If Gmail suggests a certain word or phrase a few times, but I do not ever use it, the system will learn that it needs to provide a different word or phrase. When I then act upon the new suggestion, it will remember this and offer it again. It does not have to be a specific word or phrase though, it also remembers patterns, style, substance, grammar, etc. The earliest incarnations of these kinds of assistants were the early spell-checkers. These days spell checking happens as you type. The AI trick comes in when the simple task of looking up a word in a dictionary becomes an intelligent suggestion of how to construct emails that you become better at as time goes by. My latest interest is in artificial creativity. Call it AC. There is no doubt in my mind that the creative arts are already influenced by predetermined patterns of behaviour. Whether this can be coded is clearly open for debate, but I believe it can. Over time, at least, creativity will become heavily influenced by databases of previously gathered knowledge and experience and by the normal rules of AI trial and error, a certain kind of AC will become more prevalent over time. Or maybe I’m just dreaming of electric sheep. The quest for AI creativity: https://www.ibm.com/watson/advantage-reports/future-of-artificial-intelligence/ai-creativity.html

Posts Archives | Twisted Toast

Stormy paddles and a waddling king

Stormy paddles and a waddling king

Chasing downwinds By Louis Eksteen “Put your nose in the hole,” comes the high-volume instruction clearly audible over the howl of the stormy wind. “What hole?” I keep asking myself, while trying my utmost best not to fall out of my surfski into a False Bay whipped into a frenzy of terrifying white-top [...]

By LE|2019-12-05T05:57:12+02:00December 4th, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

Of Fakebook and Instafame

Of Fakebook and Instafame

Murmurings of the less blessed By Louis Eksteen Real feelings seldom find traction on the anti-social media landscape of today. Either everything’s absolutely fabulous (“I’m sooo blessed”), or so horrifically terrible the world’s going to end. No “I’m just sommer feeling slightly blue today because I stubbed my toe a little bit and it made [...]

By LE|2019-06-11T17:43:28+02:00June 11th, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

Celebrating Joburg’s rejuvenation

Celebrating Joburg’s rejuvenation

Living la vida local By Kim Browne Recently we found ourselves on the rooftop of an old central Joburg building carefully being completely refurbished for safe and dignified modern residential living. The friendly and enthusiastic host from our client Ithemba, a shareholder in Divercity, was showing us around the impressive Jewel City precinct. We liked [...]

By KB|2019-06-11T17:33:18+02:00June 11th, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

May Day!

May Day!

The future is in your hands By Kim Browne Our elections next week are on the minds of many South Africans as we try to anticipate what the future holds. Small business owners such as The Toast may worry about what the political future holds. This has made me think again about being responsible for [...]

By KB|2019-05-03T14:04:21+02:00May 3rd, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

Three drivers of our digital lives

Three drivers of our digital lives

Privacy, immediacy and dependency By Louis Eksteen Recent statements by Mark Zuckerberg, co-inventor of Facebook (depending on who you ask), frequently mention an apparently significant move towards protecting the privacy of users. The new Facebook look mirrors the white expanse of Instagram, probably because of its success in giving people an alternative to the blue [...]

By LE|2019-05-03T14:02:50+02:00May 3rd, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

FAANG threatens as it profits

FAANG threatens as it profits

The internet is freedom, but at what cost? By Louis Eksteen I love nothing more than to Netflix and chill. My first purchase on Amazon took place on 26 May 1997 and I’ve been with them ever since. I’m a bit off Facebook, but love Instagram to bits. WhatsApp is replacing email and some social [...]

By LE|2019-04-05T18:22:29+02:00April 5th, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

Viva freedom

Viva freedom

The Toast is eight candles young By Kim Browne Twisted Toast turned eight on 1 April 2019. It's hard to believe how quickly time seems to pass when you're busy. Time truly is relative. The happiness created by the freedom of entrepreneurship is hard to explain to others. It's equal measure elation and terror at [...]

By KB|2019-04-08T12:17:50+02:00April 5th, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

Making it onto the red eye to Slaapstad

Making it onto the red eye to Slaapstad

lastminute.comness By Louis Eksteen I’ve earned an unfortunate nickname over time. Last Minute Louis. Totally undeserved, I might add. But I do tend to “sometimes” leave things a tad late. It’s not that I like to be late, I just perpetually think I’ve got more time than I actually have to do this, that and [...]

By LE|2019-04-05T07:13:34+02:00March 1st, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

Giving is caring

Giving is caring

The feel-good of helping others By Kim Browne Earlier this week we were privileged to attend the annual Atterbury Trust bursary student event. Held at Die Klubhuis, Atterbury’s impressive HQ, the get-together allows the many studying students and alumni, who all received study bursaries from the trust, to meet and mingle with each other, Atterbury [...]

By KB|2019-04-05T07:12:51+02:00March 1st, 2019|Posts|Comments Off

Canned intelligence

Canned intelligence

Emailing robots By Louis Eksteen Over the holidays I brushed up on my ping pong skills with my godson. He had already downloaded an iOS game before we left, which we used in preparation. Real life is different though and where we played, the tables were outside, so wind was always a factor. You can [...]

By LE|2019-02-01T17:28:07+02:00February 1st, 2019|Posts|Comments Off