Eric is the founder of Kazazoom a niche development company, specializing in Mxit Apps & Games. Eric supports the sharing of ideas and innovation in the South African, as well as African Mobile Industry. Eric has made open source tools available for the creation of services on Mxit, recently launching the mxPress Plugin, which instantly integrates a WordPress site with Mxit.
Kazazoom’s apps rate in the top 10 of Mxit 3rd Party Apps, with a registered user base of over 600,000 South Africans. Eric holds a honours degrees in computer science from the University of Pretoria, and has focussed on the Mobile Industry the last 10 years. For his sins, Eric spent the majority of that time at a Management Consulting firm working with Mobile Operators. Also an ultimate frisbee player, Eric is based in Joburg, working in the fun Greenside area. Follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Session: “WordPress to manage Mxit Apps. Really?”
Time: 09:00 – 09:25
Articles related to mxPress
Tell us more about how you became interested in WordPress, what about it drives your continued interest?
I was introduced to WordPress by my brother Andre Clements, one of the “oldest” WordPress fundi’s in South Africa when I wanted to create my company website and be able to manage it easily. The concepts of Theme’s and Plugins instantly started to interest me and sat in the back of my head for a month or so.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Cape Town?
To be frank, I’ve been at one too many Mobile/Social Media conferences, and wanted to explore something on a different topic and meet people who are also using WordPress in their business. I wanted to share our experience, and gauge whether anybody finds our experience useful in their businesses.
What is your talk going to be about?
How we used mxPress, our open source WordPress plugin to create a Mxit App called “SAGold” with updates of how Team South Africa performed at the Olympics. But not just that, also about how we are building a business around supporting the Plugin, as well as getting people’s creative juices flowing around how they could use WordPress in weird and wonderfull ways they might not have thought of yet.
What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?
WordPress is not just a tool for BLOGS and Websites. What have you NOT thought of yet, that you could do with WordPress in your business?
What is your favourite WordPress theme and/or plugin, and why?
Other than mxPress? 🙂 Theme would be Weaver because it’s so customizable, Plugin would be WordPress SEO or All-In-One SEO.
Do you make money from wordpress?
Yes, some clients pay us a specific WordPress maintenance retainer.
Is WordPress an effective Content Management System (CMS)?
Yes, even though WordPress has it’s roots in BLOGS, it has become an effective CMS tool for services and applications that require a fast, simple to manage CMS with a very easy to use graphical interface
What differentiates WordPress from other CMS tools?
We find that many marketing managers, product managers, journalists, and other people we work with at our clients, have been exposed to WordPress in some way or form. This makes the process of bringing the client onto a CMS much faster than having to train people up in using other complex looking CMS admin interfaces.
