About ToingToing!

Q. What is ToingToing.com?

ToingToing.com is my personal blog. I hope it becomes a meeting place for people wishing to exchange knowledge-currency with like minded knowledge seekers.

Q. Why can’t you comment?

I feel that comments are an unnecessary rehashings of ideas (since comments refer to past information.) If a piece gets your imagination going – I’d rather ask you to write a new piece and send it to me. (Scroll to the end of the page for an email address.)

Q. What type of content am I looking for?

Any form, really: find a story, fact, figures, article or book you like, then add your own ‘spin’, or personal angle, and email it to me for publication. Our aim is to make blog readers ToingToing! as they read.

Q. What does ToingToing mean?

I coined the term ToingToing (it rhymes with BoingBoing) to describe the rousing sound made by an item of knowledge we’ve understood and internalised, as it gets stored in our brain. ToingToing is a cognitive triumph.

ToingToing is a placeholder. According to Wikipedia, “Placeholder names are words that can refer to objects or people whose names are either irrelevant or unknown in the context which it is being discussed.” So, Whatchamacallit and Whatshisname are placeholder names, as are gizmo, Joe Bloggs, zillion and umpteen. (Go to Wikipedia for a fascinating discussion about placeholders.)

Check, for example, this riddle:

You are trapped in a room. The room has only two doors. Through the first door there is a room constructed from magnifying glass. The blazing hot sun instantly fries anything or anyone that enters. Through the second door there is a fire-breathing dragon. How can you escape?

Answer: Wait until night time and then leave through the first door. (ToingToing!! Did you feel it!?)

Q. Who am I?

Rudy Nadler-Nir. I have been passionately immersed in the interactive world for 22 years.

Notable stomping grounds: GM, client experience (aka CRM) for Internet Africa, founding member of leading portal iafrica.com and strategic director for advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather’s OgilvyInteractive.

Sweetspots: search engines (as semantic networks, how to write content for best optimisation, using search engines to assess trends, needs, expectations, pressure points and general Zeitgeist.)

Occasionally I teach, lecture and guide training workshops around the country, as well as write and comment extensively on a variety of socio-digital / MarkCom (Marketing as Communication) subjects. I have a Master’s degree in Adult Education and am researching digital communities, with special emphasis on the way young adults use cellphones, for my PhD.

Cape Town based since 1984, married and father of two, I am MarkCom manager for documentation automation experts Korbitec, this, however, is my personal blog.

Q. What’s the philosophy behind ToingToing?

Here are a few relevant pointers:

Learn at leisure
“The Latin word schola, which gives us modern English words like ‘school,’ ‘scholar’ and ‘scholarship,’ originally meant ‘learned leisure’ or ‘leisure devoted to learning.’ A real university is one that says ‘no’ to the mad rush of the routine world long enough to allow space for the big questions: Why am I here? Where am I going?” From Teaching for Eternity, by Darryl Tippens. Found at http://www.acu.edu/alumni/acu-today/spring99/second-glance.html, last accessed 04/06/07.

Knowledge-currency, as in…
“Knowledge…is consequential. Knowledge currency is social currency on steroids. Thus it is value currency,” (Tim Sanders, Love is the Killer App, p.67). While I am not a huge admirer of Sanders, I support one element of his theory completely – people who share knowledge generously will do so to their own – as well as to others’ – advantage. Articles, papers, reviews, letters sent to the media, opinion pieces, important links moans, grumbles, quips, complaints, praises (embedded in a few explanatory paragraphs), poems, short stories, movies scripts, ideas – all are welcome here. Don’t forget to add your name or nickname, and (this is optional) add a few words about yourself with a link to your own blog or website.

Can I Contribute?
Go ahead, make my day!

Special thanks to TL for this beautiful e-plek and to Kim Horne for the design.