Better coffee will win

I love coffee.

Six years ago I used to drink three cups of instant coffee in a working day. It was all I knew, and it seemed to be the perfect companion to an 11-hour work day. Ignorance is bliss, right?

Then there was the fateful day. Vida E opened near our offices and I order a single shot, flat white to go. Heaven. It was unlike any coffee I had tasted before. And so started a daily ritual of passing by Vida on the way to work to collect my cup of wake up.

As Vida expanded, it was plain to see that they had a very deliberate store placement strategy. They found Seattle coffee shops, and other competitors, and opened up right next to them. They beat Seattle and other competitors with an in-store experience unlike anything coffee drinkers had experienced before. Their energetic baristas, who would refer to all women as "my lady" and all men as "senoir", as well as their tasty brew won the day. In so doing, I believe they kickstarted a coffee culture in South Africa that was worthy of the success story they became known for.

Since then, I've followed the smell of freshly made coffee to Monmouth in Borough Market, London, Raglan Roast in New Zealand, Sant' Eustachio in Rome, and more. In Cape Town i've enjoyed Origin, Tribe, Rosetta, Deluxe and others. Woolworths cafe makes a pretty mean cup too. I love trying coffee from different shops.

And now, i've fallen out of love with my first love. Vida, it's not me - it's you.

Your energetic baristas remain. The vibe of your stores is still as great as it was when they first opened. But the quality of your coffee is seriously lacking. I'm not the only customer who notices. And your original competitors, Seattle, know it too.

I went to get my morning cup from Seattle in Cavendish square yesterday. In contrast to when Vida first opened next to this Seattle, the queue at Seattle now runs out the door. This is not a once-off occurrence. This has been the same scene I have seen while coming down the escalators at Cavendish square for the past 4 months. 

Yesterday, I decided to snap a photo of the queue at Seattle. Exhibit A:

And 20 meters away, while not empty, the queue at Vida was just one person deep. Again, I snapped a photo of an all too familiar scene. Exhibit B:

How has Vida lost its place to Seattle - the same competitor it crushed so many years ago?

I'm no coffee analyst, but as a customer I believe the answer is very simple.

Quality.

Vida built a brand off the back of quality coffee and an extraordinary in-store customer experience. At some point, in their recent history, they decided to cut quality. This immediately turns the early adopters away, and then they focus on the early and late majorities, as described by the innovation adoption lifecycle, illustrated below:

And while the early and late majorities may not care about quality as much as the early adopters did, the evidence of 1-person deep queues at their store in Cavendish Square, compared with Seattle's overflowing queue, would tell a different story: the early and late majorities care very much about quality coffee.

Dear Vida, please re-think the quality of your product. You've done so much for coffee culture in South Africa. Please don't peddle mediocre brew. Mediocre quality never wins in the long term.

Dear Seattle, please keep your quality high. My Saturday morning's depend on it. I hope you have other competitors who try to win on quality. This way the customer will keep on winning. And you'll have a long and prosperous business.

The power of learning analytics

At GetSmarter, we will educate 7,000+ students on semester-long university-endorsed online short courses in 2014. Learners spend between 60 and 100 hours learning on these programmes, which has them working through several learning activities every week. At GetSmarter we call these groupings of learning activities ‘work units’, and each weekly module has several work units.

One advantage of the online learning environment over the classroom is that almost every learning activity can be tracked. We know when learners log in, when they post questions, when they watch video lectures and how much of the video lecture they watch, how long it takes for Faculty to answer learner questions, and so much more. We can also link student performance on assignments to the content they consumed. If we see a trend with students watching a particular lecture and then completing an optional exercise, for example, and then doing really well on a specific learning outcome, we can start to piece together what sort of teaching content is performing the best. This is like being able to audit specific teaching activities for their impact on student performance! This is very powerful when you think about all the potential uses of these learning analytics and how they can help us improve teaching.

Suffice to say we can build a great picture of each and every learner’s engagement with their course by looking at their personal learner analytics.

One of the key challenges in distance education is learner motivation. Learners may lag behind early in the course and never catch up. In our online learning environment, we have diagnostic tools that help us determine if a learner may be at risk - for example, we can use data to determine if a learner hasn’t prepared sufficiently for an assignment. The result? We can intervene with an email or a telephone call to highlight the potential risk, and help the learner course correct.

I mention telephone because an automated email to remind them to submit their assignment on time can only do so much for a learner’s motivation. But a telephone call, from a well-trained course coach who genuinely cares about that learner’s progress - that’s an administrative intervention that impacts positively on learner motivation. You can imagine the learner’s response to the telephone call: “Wow, someone is watching me. And they’re friendly and patient on the telephone. I get the sense that they care about me and my progress. I think i’ll clear my schedule tomorrow afternoon to catch up on my course work”.

We’re undergoing a significant upgrade of our learner coaching function at GetSmarter. Rob Paddock, our Chief Academic Officer, shared our latest coaching dashboards with me earlier this week. I’m excited to share these  screenshots with you below.

Here’s a photo of one of our coaches using his new dashboard to identify a student who is falling behind:

Here are four screenshots of the dashboards he’s using. I've blurred out the student details to protect their privacy. I can’t wait to see these dashboards evolve over the next six months.

Then and now. A milestone in the journey that is GetSmarter.

Today we launched our new and improved website. #YesPlease!

The launch marks an important milestone in our journey. Three years ago, our marketing and IT competency comprised of a handful of people. We were young, ambitious, and full of potential. And we had just enough talent, at the time, to build a website that "did the job". Heck, I did the graphic design for the site!

Today, our marketing team consists of 35 people. Our Systems and Technology team consists of 10 people. We've been privileged to have incredibly talented individuals join our team. We now have specialist designers, specialist channel marketers, usability experts, front-end web specialists, back-end web specialists, web analysts, analytics specialists, infrastructure specialists, talented project managers, and incredible thought leaders in the disciplines of Technology and Marketing. And in contrast to three years ago, I had nothing to do with the development or launch of our new site. There are far more talented people than me doing this now.

Our new website signals a new era for GetSmarter - one built on the minds of our ever-expanding, incredibly talented team. I'm proud to be associated with this team, the team that will drive us towards our 10-year goal of having more impact than UNISA!

Onwards and upwards.

Here's our new site: http://www.getsmarter.co.za

And here are two screenshots of "then", and "now".

Interviewed by IamYoungpreneur

My brother, Rob, and I were interviewed by IamYoungpreneur last year. It was a really fun interview to do, and I think they produced a great 8-minute clip.

We talk about how we started GetSmarter, some of the lessons we have learned over the past 6 years, and some of our plans for the future.

Lala kahle, Madiba

The first time I heard the words "lala gahle" was as a 5-year-old when my grandmother (known as "Gogo" to me and my siblings) put me to bed at night. She grew up on a farm in Zululand in what is now Kwa-Zulu Natal, and spoke Zulu before she could speak English. After quizzing her on the meaning of the foreign bed-time message,  she explained that she was wishing for us to sleep or rest well, just as her Zulu nanny had done for her when she was young. 

This post is titled "Lala kahle" as Madiba was born to a Xhosa clan and kahle is the Xhosa equivalent of the Zulu gahle. 

I've felt a lot of emotion today. Since waking to the news of Mandela's passing, he's dominated my thoughts. I got to work early and stuck up the poster (below) of his iconic face at the entrance to our office block. We put up a live-stream of a Mandela tribute to run all day and emailed the GetSmarter team to wish them well during the period of national mourning. Productivity is at an all-time low, but it doesn't matter. Today is a day like no other.

I found myself thinking about everything that is good in my life. I called my wife to tell her I love her. My mother phoned and I lingered a little longer than usual on the call. People in the office are more understanding, more tolerant today than they usually are. I get a sense of deep unity across the world's social networks today.

And the day after his departure it feels wrong to be thinking about anything other than what is incredibly good in our lives. What we can be thankful for. Such is the impact of Nelson Mandela's life.

Madiba, your example of what it means to be a great man will live with me forever. I hope it lives with others too - specifically our country's leaders, but equally importantly anyone who dares to achieve greatness. 

Sleep well, Madiba.

Lala kahle.

P.S. Nando's said it well: