This month, we’ve developed and improved features that will allow our audio broadcast clients to offer your audience a better podcasting and live-streaming experience! We've launched a new podcast widget that can be embedded on your website. This will display all the podcasts you've recorded through Echocast in one easy place for listeners to find on your site. We've improved our streaming options and we can now offer a more efficient 64kbps livestream. Your listener will experience nearly the same audio quality but spend half the data! In addition both the livestream widget and the podcast both support pre-roll advertisements!

Use Community Centre to view real-time engagement, administer your app membership & configure your messaging settings. From day-to-day operations such as membership application and member suspension to managing a conversation or channel within your Fabrik-powered app, Community Centre has been designed to be the new go-to tool for community management! Here are a few ways you can start to use our newest addition to the Fabrik suite of applications: Administer your app membership On your Community Centre dashboard, you now have the ability to view profile information about each registered member of your community, approve or reject their application, or assign trusted privileges to members. Configure your Messaging settings You’ll also be able to configure the settings of the Messaging functionality within your app by adding new conversations or channels, editing or removing existing ones, or managing particular members within each group. View engagement metrics in real time Via Community Centre, you will be able to access your Fabrik Metrics dashboard (which is currently in Preview) – a real-time, data-driven system that empowers your stakeholders with the ability to observe and understand your audience’s engagement, instantly visualise your data and immerse into audience’s behaviour in real time.

How Microsoft Azure’s scalability and elasticity allowed Fabrik to respond quickly to a rapidly escalating increase in community engagement during COVID-19. When immedia initially set out to build our Fabrik platform – a suite of ‘born-in-the-cloud' audience engagement tools and workflows - our development team elected to adopt a cloud-first approach in its development, using Microsoft’s Azure platform. Some of the benefits we considered in selecting Azure include: cost savings through economies of scale and a tenant-based system with shared resources; the inherent scalability, redundancy and reliability of Microsoft Azure which enables our applications to be automatically adaptable to increases in resource demand; the ability to take advantage of the monitoring and analytics of Microsoft Azure so that we can diagnose issues quickly and report accurately. the ability to adopt an Agile approach when architecting and developing the platform so we can be responsive to our clients’ needs, as opposed to over-engineering a system based on superficial and assumptive requirements. As the Fabrik codebase became more established and our service offering continued to diversify, our technical teams were able to add more and more features to our mobile apps, APIs and web-based tools aimed at empowering our clients to better serve their members with ease. As a result, the number of individuals using the Fabrik suite of applications in our platform has increased dramatically over time, and so in turn have our infrastructure requirements, which include PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) offerings such as ASP.NET APIs and Azure SQL Databases. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, our clients and their members heightened their communication with each other, leading to an increased reliance on their Fabrik applications. Our technical teams therefore anticipated a rapidly-escalating increase in traffic to our platform, more unpredictable network traffic into our system, and more strain on our APIs and databases. When this kind of demand occurs, the specific nature of the demand is difficult to predict and although we were confident that the Fabrik platform would perform based on Azure’s many elasticity and scalability services, in unprecedented and extraordinary times like this, our team made the call to be on high alert in case of any bottlenecks in our systems that might require manual intervention. The primary impact was to our backend database system which was developed on Azure SQL Databases using the Elastic Pools deployment model. The elastic pools served us well because of the dedicated amount of resources that were allocated for our databases, but when the demand drastically increased, the allocated resources needed to be expanded appropriately to cater for the demand. In addition, due to the number of people engaging simultaneously, our API gateway which is hosted on Azure App Services needed to be scaled out to more instances as well. The following statistics indicate the response times of some of our API calls during peak days: Using Application Insights, we were able to identify specific API calls in our system that were taking more time than expected to process. During the same period, the usage on our database was as follows: Each spike in database usage indicates occasions when our elastic pool was being maxed out. Our infrastructure team mitigated this by increasing the capacity of the pool to meet the usage demand on the platform. When our databases were strained, this impacted the response times of our APIs. App visitors would experience slowness when using some of the functionality in the apps. After analysing this usage pattern, we were able to identify areas we could improve to better cater for this kind of unpredictable usage. We identified specific API endpoints that needed to be optimised and certain areas of the system that needed reworking to take advantage of the serverless capabilities of Microsoft Azure. One of those services is the use of Cosmos DB for serving ‘chat’ related data, which will be beneficial in improving the overall load on our API. Cosmos DB allows us to separate reads and writes across multiple servers that are possibly distributed across multiple Azure region - as opposed to SQL Elastic Pools, where reads and writes happen on the same cluster. We are actively investing time in decoupling our APIs into a more microservice model, through the use of Azure Functions which, together with CosmosDB, will help in distributing the load on our APIs at a global scale. Scaling up the database tier took minutes to resolve the issues experienced by people using the apps. Throughout this entire scenario, we were able to take advantage of Microsoft Azure’s monitoring, alerting and log analytics capabilities which gave us access and visibility into the health of the system, highlighting areas that required attention and/or improvement at a glance. Looking ahead, there are always going to be improvements we can make to our platform and applications to better serve our customers’ requirements and the requirements of their members. The monitoring we have in place allows us to make more informed decisions that keep improving scalability, reliability and availability, and that are more anticipative of the areas we need to be scaling up and out in response to unpredictable and unforeseeable circumstances.

Use key insights from Fabrik's Metrics application to track live engagement and audience behaviour over time. If you're already a Fabrik client, you may have had the opportunity to start using the platform's newest application, Metrics - a real-time data visualisation and tool which offers a glimpse into your live audience engagement as well as key insights about your audience's behaviour over time. Having access to this kind of information empowers your teams to make strategic decisions in real-time by gauging how your audience is responding to your content and programming. Here are some examples of the kind of data and information that is now available to you via Metrics and, as the application evolves, our aim is to add even more insights related to audio engagement, as well as information around advertising inventory to strengthen your offering to advertisers. Current app and Live-stream Engagement View a summary of particularly useful live data, such as chat messages sent within the last hour, new member registrations and listeners accessing the live stream from your app or Fabrik-powered live-stream web widgets right now. Live-Streaming from your Fabrik and icecast streams A consolidated view of all streaming numbers from your Fabrik and Icecast streams. View the graph with trendlines to spot trends over time. App Engagement and downloads over time It may also be useful for you to track the impact of campaigns or on-air calls-to-action by monitoring app engagement or app downloads over time. App Engagement View a summary of your app engagement over time, including: Total app visits - the amount of times the app was accessed within the chosen period. Unique visitors - the number of discrete individuals who accessed your app within the chosen period. Unique registered visitors - the number of discrete individuals who have registered a profile within your app within the chosen period. App Downloads It's also useful to know how many times your app has been downloaded on each platform - in total, or within a specified period. Billboard Advertising If you are taking advantage of some of the advertising and revenue generating aspects of Fabrik such as billboards, then head over to Metrics to view all of your billboard campaigns in once centralised space, with billboard Views and Clicks visible at a glance.

Radio has been a medium that has essentially stayed the same for the last century. A trusted, resilient and human centred medium that has withstood waves of technology disruption and even built communities around audiences of common values. But there is no denying that radio is often seen as sleepy, stagnant and disrupted by the digital and social revolution. Who would have thought then, that the most interesting thing happening in modern radio would be coming out of Africa, and Durban at that? Gagasi FM, one of South Africa’s best loved and the number 1 regional commercial radio station is delighting listeners with their new digital engagement platform. The Gagasi FM App available on Google Play for Android and the Apple App Store for iOS has created a trusted socialised space for listeners to become truly a part of the real time life of the radio station. On the 22nd November 2019, Gagasi FM launched their Gagasi FM App. During the launch Gagasi FM’s Head of Brand, Phinda Magwaza took guests through the Gagasi FM App on screen to demonstrate exactly what it can do. The Gagasi FM App includes, amongst others, these useful features; Live-streaming via the app so you can listen to your favourite radio station, anytime, anywhere! Real-time podcasts available within seconds of broadcast. Private and secure messaging channels with the Gagasi FM team and other listeners. Listeners are also able to enter competitions via the app plus submit music for possible airplay on the station. The Gagasi FM App also enables listeners to vote for your favourite song for the Urban Top 30. It’s literally Gagasi FM at your fingertips. Over 23 000 listeners have already downloaded the new Gagasi FM app with over 70% registering and opting into the Gagasi FM community. But this is not just another radio app. This is an ecosystem driven by audience interaction and engagement. A powerful backend collating all messages, storing all broadcast audio, and making it even easier for the station to create and deliver on podcasts. “Creating a socialised audience with a real-time feedback loop into the studio and amongst the community has been an incredibly exciting innovation for our creative teams,” commented the station’s Managing Director, Mr. Vukile Zondi. Gagasi FM’s Head of Brand, Ms. Phinda Magwaza added, “We did a soft launch over the December/January holidays and couldn’t be more excited by these early results. The audience is now taking us in new directions already with over 1 000 of them opting into the conversational channel Uthando 101 connecting with each other about life, love and living exclusively on the platform.” Gagasi FM is already getting more direct engagement from their audience community than through global social platforms. “This feels like African digital,” mused Zondi. “Visit your nearest App Store and get engaged. We are charting new journeys in modern media and using local, home grown IP to do it.” Zondi is referring to Fabrik, the Microsoft Azure cloud based platform powering their private digital community. Built by Durban technology team immedia, the hot new OTT technology is offering broadcasters a new freedom to build and own their own digital audiences. The world had better keep an eye on Durban as the city that’s leading the way in broadcasting revolutions.

This morning our team had the honour of speaking at the Durban Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s Coffee Connection, held at the Standard Bank offices in Kingsmead, Durban. The regular Coffee Connection, a vital initiative that empowers conversations around #DurbanMustRise sentiments, was made possible by sponsors Standard Bank Corporate & Investment Banking, CCI South Africa and Vodacom Business. Our Mindshift talk delivered that morning was well-received by a KwaZulu-Natal based audience ranging from corporate entities to emerging small-to-medium businesses, all leaders in their fields.

The subject on the minds of every citizen of the world this week is the Coronavirus – how does it affect me, what should I do about it, what will happen next? The questions just pile up. The real-time feedback loops of digital social media channels are already feeding a fear loop of misinformation and mistrust. Political actors climb into these discussions to achieve their own agendas, further dividing us – for example, right-wing politicians in the United States are now referring to it as the “Wuhan Flu”, a very deliberate “othering” that will create issues of social cohesion and effective crisis management that will affect all humans, not just those of a particular class or political stripe. To deal with this crisis, we will be falling back on our communities and our ability to support and sustain our community members through this disruption. While there is a lot of focus on the role of social media on the response to the first global crisis rooted in our common humanity to take place in the digital era, there are elements of this crisis that elevate a very traditional medium to centre stage at a time like this. Not because of the technology but because of the human dynamics. As a human-centred medium, radio has been a high trust, high community medium ever since inception. Time and again, in times of crisis, radio has risen as the preferred, trusted and resilient medium of information distribution to citizens. During the coming hunger for trusted information and community support and resilience, because of its real-time, human and curated nature, radio will find a new relevance against the digital platforms. I would bet that citizens are going to turn to their radio communities with a far greater immersion and trust than their digital communities. Radio needs to think carefully on how it can meet these expectations when people are depending on it for their lives. As a modern digital station powered by Fabrik, you have a unique ability to amplify the trust and information dissemination on behalf of various stakeholders – government, community and faith organisations, residents and private sector – in a real-time, choreography that is simply impossible for your competitors to replicate without such a platform. We suggest you adopt a best practice methodology to service your audience hunger for information AND engagement around this crisis. Create a “Coronavirus Updates” channel that is curated by the news and content teams. Add ‘Trusted Members’ from the Metro and Provincial Departments of Health so as to be able to publish direct information from their stakeholders. Negotiate a private feedback loop to Health or Social Welfare authorities or the regional Coronavirus “war room” to have citizens engage and log needs, updates, status and information directly with the authorities. This Cloud Contact Centre is already functional in your environment and your listeners have already registered with you – so it allows authorities to rapidly listen to your audience on a private loop around emerging conditions in their areas. Create a cross-station, interdepartmental co-ordination team for blending on-air, social, direct digital, events and on-demand content and engagement together that builds your status as a high trust, reliable and consistent information partner. And when it all blows over, just switch the channel off again. It’s that simple. But what you want to do, is be the credible source of information, not for posting memes or fostering half-truths, but to be a trusted information channel that builds a deeper relationship with its audience.

This month’s Mindshift event held earlier today brought with it new questions for our attendees from the real-estate industry. ATTENDEE FROM THE REAL-ESTATE INDUSTRY “Fabrik offers brands the chance to focus on the main challenge ahead of them. How to retool your habits, workflows, and operations to a serve a real-time audience that is co-creating and participatory with you,” said Mindshift presenter and founder of the immedia ecosystem, Anice Hassim. The audience was introduced to digital practices and tools that can be implemented by businesses and the individual consumer that will take them into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and directly impact their business strategy. In reaction to the seminar, an attendee in the Real-Estate Industry pondered on the implications for the future of their business, profession and customers. “Fascinating and thought-provoking… Completely challenged my ideas of social media i.e. how we are trying to use it like mass media and not how it is intended – real-time communication being key. “We’re grappling with how to create the ecosystem and add value to communities. Would love to explore how it could be applied to my real-estate career and I would like to explore this… “In an extremely competitive environment, all real-estate agents have the same platforms to market themselves on. All agencies receive the same training and it is outdated. We must consider how feasible and possible it is to change this way of thinking.”

Mindshift has kicked off for 2020! With an average audience of about 8 to 10, the seminar saw all kinds of people from manufacturing, healthcare, and education sectors in attendance. Regular Mindshift events are designed around sharing insight around the constantly-connected consumer of today, contextualised within the technological shifts that have brought us here, and how to get started taking advantage of digital workflows that empower your business and customers. The audience was introduced to digital practices and tools that can be implemented by businesses and the individual consumer that will take them into the Fourth Industrial Revolution and directly impact their business strategy. In reaction to the seminar, attendee Vineshree Pillay, BDM of Software Solutions at Mustek, remarked, “Everything you do, you do to perfection! From the invite to registration process, to event and post-event – excellent… “Anice manages to capture his audience – I loved it, very inspiring!”

The first Thursday in November, November 07, saw immedia host yet another session of its monthly Mindshift digital transformation seminars. Focused on helping to navigate businesses through the technological shift, the seminar was attended by entrepreneurs, members of the general public and technology enthusiasts. Speaking about the seminar, Mindshift co-ordinator Kelly Pringle stated that the real focus of the event was to share information around how businesses can prepare for digitally-aware consumers. With an average audience of about 10 to 15, the seminar saw people from all kinds of industries and sectors in attendance. Titled ‘Patterns of The Future’, the event was led by founder of immedia and now CEO Anice Hassim. With an actively engaged audience, Hassim briefly took attendees through the company’s 24-year history and the long-standing business principles and practices in existence at immedia. The CEO, with a history lesson through the ages as context, firmly navigated the audience through all things digital. Through his vast experience and analysis in the digital space, Anice walked the audience through real-world applications of digitisation. Hassim stated that digitisation has and is still yet to bring many positive changes to the world as we know it. “The ability to empower kinds of behaviour and spread kinds of fluidity and patterns of thinking – is what digitalisation is doing to our communities,” said Hassim. Turning to the main goal of the seminar, he demonstrated the importance of digitally active businesses by taking consensus of how many members of the audience actively use technology, most especially their cellphones. Through this, Hassim actively demonstrated those present that consumers, most especially in Durban need businesses that tap into their use of data. This access to data and information by both the consumer and the business will result in changes to business practices and patterns. “As an emerging technology business in the 90s, we made sure we rapidly gained access to information. The way we transformed our customers was by liberating their own data to them, so that their behaviour change could start,” said Hassim. The audience was introduced to digital practices and tools that can be implemented by businesses and the individual consumer that will take them into the fourth industrial revolution and directly impact their business practices. “In order for businesses to go digital and take advantage of the economy, to find their own space in said economy, it is not just about deploying tech tools – it’s about changing culture and mindsets,” said Hassim. Cautioning attendees, the CEO stated the digital is not limited to social media, it’s changing how stories are told and what value they bring to a human society. “How do we service and make our ecosystems and consumers lives better?” said Hassim. “In the new world, consumers have the ability to influence company ethics and value systems by leveraging their buying power. Businesses need to be authentic because consumers are now individually empowered to make their up own minds,” said Hassim. In reaction to the seminar, attendee Sandile Majola said: “the event was very productive. I have learnt many ways of using our phones on a day to day basis. The most powerful thing I have learnt is that I can actually use my phone as my office and actually make money using the apps. It was a powerful session.”

The Fabrik team were in attendance at the Southern African Broadcasting Association (SABA) Broadcasting Convention & Annual General Meeting (AGM) from 29 – 31 October at Victoria Falls, Livingstone, Zambia. The largest annual gathering of media owners, managers and professionals in Southern Africa, the annual Convention aims to enable industry decision-makers and executives review innovations and find solutions to strategic and operational issues within the context of the constant evolutionary changes of the digital ecosystem. With the theme “Connecting People With Vibrant, Converged Broadcast Media”, this flagship gathering is an excellent opportunity for TV, radio, film, music, telecoms and advertising professional to activate digitisation tools to connect the peoples of Southern Africa sustainably. Information courtesy Independent Broadcasting Authority. Zambian President urges SADC to harness acting talent among young people to revamp economies. How do we generate revenue from internet radio and television which are extremely viable, yet not regulated, asks President Edgar Lungu. The Mast – October 30 2019

Originally posted on iol Business Report. DURBAN – The Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry held its 163rd Annual Gala Dinner on the 21st of August 2019 where the chamber inaugurated a new President. Present at the event were members of the KwaZulu-Natal business community, entrepreneurs, members of local government, the MEC of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs Nomusa Dube-Ncube as well as former Presidents of the Durban Chamber. The theme for the night was “From Durban, with love” and showcased Durban’s energy and vibrancy as a significant economic hub on the rise in line with the City’s vision to be the most caring and liveable city in Africa. Nigel Ward, President of the Durban Chamber Commerce and Industry said that it is a big honour and he is humbled  by the opportunity to be inaugurated as the new President. He also thanked his predecessor for his contribution. “The economic and business context in eThekwini, the province and the country as a whole, is not an easy one currently. Indeed, this is a challenging and uneasy period, with a lot of domestic and international pressures. However, it is also a period full of promise. The eThekwini business sector needs strong representation,” said Ward. He added, “This is why Durban Chamber and the Chamber Movement need to step even further into the forefront, actively engaging with stakeholders in this role and presenting a clear and concise economic message – that eThekwini is primed for business”. Long-time member and technology partner, Vodacom, was a gold sponsor for the event. The additional digital innovations launched at this year’s event are: Durban Chamber Mobile App in partnership with Fabrik, a division of the immedia ecosystem, which permits members to have exclusive access to a secure real-time communication platform. BoardPAC Management Software in partnership with Vodacom Business to streamline our operational efficiency and improve our overall governance structures, especially at the executive level. Durban Chamber Website has been upgraded to an innovative platform that ensures that our site stays up to date with the latest technology, trends and user needs. Palesa Phili, Chief Executive of the Durban Chamber Commerce and Industry said, “As a future-focused organisation, the Durban Chamber wants to put a spotlight on technology and digital innovation.  We need to highlight how leveraging disruptive technologies and innovations can play a role in driving our inclusive and sustainable economic growth objectives.”