UPDATE: Roy was interviewed on the show about Visual Facilitation – see the youtube video here.
My mate Roy Blumenthal from South Africa, who is the man behind my portrait on my lifekludger blog, has scored himself a gig as a weekly co-anchor of CNBC AFRICA’s business magazine show, ‘Kaleidoscope‘ where he employs his visual facilitation skills to draw the info under discussion live on screen on his tablet pc.
While Roy’s talent is undisputed, I rekon this is a great example of the “Because Effect” (as termed by Doc Searls) as an indirect outcome of Roy’s digital networked life of openness.In the connected network world, the Because Effect feeds on openness. And it’s more than an API.
Kudos Roy.
Dave
life tools 
Wow! Thanks for this piece of connectedness, Dave!
I think you may very well be right.
The way the gig came about is VERY much about the ‘Because Effect’. A long, convoluted set of coincidences and taken-opportunities, all tied up in one common principle… a kind of ‘I do what I do cos I love what I do’.
Here’s the chain…
1. Years ago, I directed a tv show called GO_OPEN, about the open source movement. One of the contacts I made back then was the bunch of presentation mavericks at a company called MISSING LINK.
2. Thanks to my exposure to open source, I became more of an open sourcer than I originally was. This meant that I started open sourcing all of my artworks.
3. Missing Link and I kept crossing paths, with me doing the odd bit of writing for them. And some artworks. At one of those gigs, I met Clive Simpkins, a public speaker, and really inspiring, awesome fellow.
4. Time passed.
5. I was doodling in my Moleskine notebook during a free seminar one night, a seminar put together by a bunch of open sourcers. It was a 27 DINNERS event. And someone sitting behind me asked me after the event, ‘Are you a visual facilitator?’ Conversation followed. And I became a visual facilitator thanks to Louise van Rhyn, the woman in question. She was my first paid client.
6. Clive Simpkins encouraged me to join an organisation he co-founded — NSASA, the National Speakers Association of Southern Africa. I was interested, but wasn’t doing much public speaking at the time, so I ended up not joining.
7. Fast forward to me doing a three-day visual facilitation gig for the Mugg & Bean annual franchisee convention in Somerset West. At the event, the keynote speaker was a fellow called Stef du Plessis. The OTHER co-founder of NSASA. He loved the work I did for his session, and observed me during some of the other sessions, and gave me the most powerful testimonial imaginable. He also phoned the NSASA people and insisted that they use me for their annual convention, also a three-day event. One of the conditions to working at the NSASA event was that I had to be a member of NSASA. I duly applied. And, thanks to my more or less full time engagement in presenting pitches for Blue Moon, and my visual facilitation work, I was accepted at the highest level… professional.
8. The NSASA event happened. And it was amazing. Clive and Stef were both present. And both encouraged me to attend the monthly NSASA meetings.
9. Fast forward to one of those meetings. My first. (By now, the name had changed to the more accurate PROFESSIONAL SPEAKERS ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN AFRICA, PSASA.) Jennifer (my girlfriend, and manager) was there with me. Clive was at the event. And he opened proceedings by giving a massively glowing review of my skills, and what I do as a visual facilitator. One of those things I wish I’d caught on tape. When the evening was over, Clive came up to me and said, ‘You know, Roy, it would be AMAZING if you could get a television slot doing this.’
10. Minutes later, a quiet fellow came and chatted to me. Turned out he was one of the marketing blokes on CNBC AFRICA. He was just visiting the meeting as a guest, to see what it was all about. He’d listened to Clive’s intro, and was very interested in following up with me. Turns out he’d been exposed to my blog for some time, and actually knew who I was. Clive’s intro made him put one and one together to make a dozen. The show Kaleidoscope was in the process of having a makeover, and what Clive said made him realise that I would be an ideal addition to the show.
11. Hence, I’m now the show’s official Visual Facilitator. Awesome stuff. Unsolicited. And powerfully ‘because’.
Blue skies
love
Roy