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6 Things Companies Must Consider When Diversifying Their Workforce

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Team-Building and Inclusion

Before trying to diversify any workplace, make sure that your mostly homogeneous workforce will cooperate in the process. A person’s religion, sexuality, race or creed should not be an issue with co-workers when projects are to be done. The best way to break the ice and build trust and understanding is through team-building exercises. Find time to make team-building a priority for current and incoming staff.

Profile of group diverse business people working together.

Create a Tolerant Workplace

One of the most important things an organization must do is ensure its culture and hiring practices will support the recruitment of diverse workers. Look at job descriptions and images on communication materials, and review the interviewing process that you currently have. These things will help carry the ideas of diversity, and they will make candidates feel confident that your company is committed to them.

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Collaboration Over Competition: Young Entrepreneur Uses Partnerships to Launch Major YouTube Network

One African startup is ditching competition and encouraging collaboration as it embarks on a quest to become South Africa’s largest YouTube network.

Andrew Simelane, CEO and co-founder of the digital content marketing and media agency Black Nation Media, doesn’t sound like your typical entrepreneur.

Most emerging entrepreneurs immediately start identifying and targeting the competition as they launch a grueling battle over space in the market and shared consumers.

Simelane, on the other hand, is hoping to find success by focusing on collaboration, and it’s a strategy that has already proven to be quite effective for the 26-year-old entrepreneur.

The University of Johannesburg public relations and communications graduate launched Black Nation Media back in 2010 with his brother Thulasizwe.

It was their way of trying to get into the audio visual industry, but their plans for the company have skyrocketed since then.

“My parents couldn’t afford to pay for an audio visual course I wanted to do at the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (AFDA), so I decided to buy some equipment that would get me started in the industry,” Simelane told htxh.africa. “That’s when my brother joined me and came up with the idea for Black Nation Media.”

What was initially a plan to teach himself how to use certain equipment so he could seek employment for other companies turned into a quickly growing business.

Simelane, his brother and another business partner, Vukosi Manganyi, started producing videos for promotional efforts.

It didn’t take long before others were hopping on board and asking the group to produce videos for their businesses as well.

“We have grown exponentially over the years, and now have office space in JoziHub,” Simelane said. “We do content for campaigns, promotions, events and competitions, which is distributed across various digital platforms for desktop and smartphone users.”

The group, which has grown to include 11 team members, has worked on major projects including a lookbook for Adidas Originals and various music videos for African artists.

Successful media agencies are far from uncommon in Africa, but what makes Simelane’s company stand out is its focus on using digital platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.

“We create content and use it as a platform for brands to market themselves,” he added. “Our focus is on YouTube and other online platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. We also have an online publication called Black Nation Magazine, targeted at young Black consumers.”

Major YouTube networks are extremely common in the U.S. but not so much throughout African countries.

Black Nation hopes to grow throughout South Africa before expanding to other African countries to become one of the largest YouTube networks on the continent.

In 2014, the company kick-started this mission with its Johannesburg YouTube Content Creators Network, which aims to create a YouTube community based in the city.

Simelane hopes to establish a multi-channel network incubator that will host up to 15 members of the network.

That’s a key part of the business model for the budding entrepreneurs — working together instead of fighting over media space.

“We have formed a few partnerships around the country, one of them is with Creative Nestlings, a company based in Cape Town, which means we get to grow our brand in such places by working with these guys and they can do the same here in Joburg,” he explained. “… I don’t believe in competition, I think if startups collaborated, we could get a lot more done on this continent, that’s how we function as a company.”

Simelane is also looking for young creatives to partner with, not only for the sake of his own brand but to also show them that they can make money from their creative endeavors.

“I think it’s time creatives knew it’s possible to make money from what we do and make the industry lucrative,” he said.

With a possible partnership brewing with another network in Ghana, Simelane believes the company’s reach could expand well beyond South Africa over the next five years. In fact, his content just might start reaching overseas.

“We’re also in talks with a distribution company in the U.S. which wants to distribute our content to the youth market in the States,” he added.

 

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Cybercriminals Put Unusual Twist on Spyware Scam by Utilizing In-Game Voice App

Cybercriminals have always found interesting ways to target gamers, but a new spyware scam is putting a new twist on the usual methods to steal vital information from its victims.

Most cybercriminals hoping to target gamers use fake copies of new games or faux in-game items to weasel their way into snatching personal, private information from unsuspecting gamers.

This time around, however, an anonymous scammer is using fake in-game voice applications as a tool of deception.

Malware Labs discovered a spyware scheme that tricks users into thinking they are downloading a popular in-game voice app.

With the use of a poorly constructed faux website filled with grammatical errors, the scammers get overzealous gamers to click a link that they believe will allow them to download Razer Comms software, Engadget reports.

This redirects the scammer’s victims to a script that immediately starts working to snatch log-in information and other important private information.

The good news here is that this approach certainly isn’t a more effective one.

There are many red flags, such as the previously mentioned poorly constructed faux page that would alert many gamers that something isn’t quite right.

So far, there aren’t any indications that this scam has reached a massive scale, but it is opening some people’s eyes to the different ways tech-savvy scammers can gain access to the very information that most people hope to protect at all costs.

 

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5 Things About Video Games Some Nerds Wish They Could Eliminate

As a gamer, I’ve spent a lot of time and money on games. I live and breathe these games. I’ll continue to support this market, but I want a few things in return:

This list was originally published by Anissa Hanley at Black Nerd Problems

Don’t Try to Fool Me With Your False Advertising

I get excited when I see a commercial or trailer for a new game. The first thing I critique is how clean the graphics are. Then how awesome the storyline is. Now, I get really pissed when I see a trailer that looks like this:

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And the game really looks like this:

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Ad agencies only seem to show the cutscenes from the game when advertising it and not the actual gameplay. Sometimes, they’ll portray a game in a way that has nothing to do with its aesthetic and falsely advertises it. This happens mostly with mobile games. Stop trying to fool us, WE’RE ON TO YOU!

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One Girl’s Journey of Learning to Embrace Her ‘Nerdiness’

I spent more years than I’d like to admit being … myself. If you know me, you’d know that means an amalgamation of bad jokes, lame interests and awkward encounters. This also at one point included anime, video games (“Spyro the Dragon” to be exact), tinkering around with my mini toy microscope and spending all of my free time daydreaming about my alternate life as a mermaid.

In 2006 when high school struck, I realized that there was no room for anything I was remotely interested in. It seemed the only thing anyone really cared about were “jams,” basketball and trap music (which, of course, differed from my musical tastes at the time). As much as I don’t like publicly confessing, I had only recently been introduced to R&B and hip-hop in middle school, and still went pretty hard for bands and movie soundtracks (shout out to Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer).

I didn’t realize it wasn’t cool for my then-15-year-old self to rush home after school to binge watch the Family Channel. I didn’t know mimicking Tyler Perry’s Madea character in public was actually embarrassing. I sure as hell didn’t realize openly admitting I had read each line in the entire Twilight series, but had never opened up a Harry Potter book, was considered social suicide.

The thought never crossed my mind that there might be other brown-skinned girls in the world who’d, like me, seen all the Lord of the Rings movies and attempted to learn how to speak Elvish in The Fellowship. For the longest time, I’d accredited my borderline nerdish tendencies to my older half-brother, who introduced me to the wonderful world of sci-fi, fantasy and alternative Christian rock. In fact, up until then, I’d tried my hardest to hide my secret love for these things under an urbanite blanket of social acceptance. But as they say, all that is done in the darkness [of my basement] would surely come to light.

Now here was my dilemma. I was always under the impression that there was a specific type of nerd. The ones who got good grades, were a part of the science clubs, spoke to no one unless it revolved around schoolwork, and were the apple of their parents’/teachers’ eyes. No one ever mentioned to me that you could be neither of these things and still feel the effects of “nerdom.” I was almost never compatible with any of my peers and never fit in with anyone. My grades weren’t high enough for the geek squad, but good enough to be scrutinized by the more popular crowd. I felt like an outsider when I tried to join my school’s business club run almost entirely by students of East-Indian descent. To the Black kids, I was much too alternative to sit at their table. And for my brownies, I quite simply did not make the cut.

Read more from Lindsey Addawoo at Black Girl Nerds

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6 High-Paying Jobs for Introverted Black Nerds

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Astronomer

Salary: Up to $96,000+

Becoming an astronomer is a very long and arduous process. One must earn a doctorate degree and pay a lot of dues. Astronomers study the stars, planets, celestial bodies and how space operates as a whole. They monitor satellites and observe the night sky. Astronomy makes use of mathematics, chemistry, quantum mechanics and other science disciplines.

Supinfocom / Supinfogame / ISD / Groupe formation de la CCIV. Valenciennes

Digital Game Developer

Salary: Up to $200,000

These software developers spend long hours looking at a computer screen. They must know 3-D animation, math, science and computer science to have a career like this. They must also love long hours and video games.

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Apple Weaning Users Off Google for Good? ‘Apple Search’ Rumors Explode Online

Apple Search engine rumors

Google is one tech giant that seems to have its hand in everything, but most people know the major brand as the king of search engines. Apple, however, could be shaking things up a bit.

Cult of Mac recently spotted a job ad online that made reference to an Apple service that the general public isn’t privy to just yet.

The job summary said this project manager would need to work on a “search platform supporting hundreds of millions of users” and would “play a part in revolutionizing how people use their computers and mobile devices.”

For many people, this news suggests that Apple is on the brink of releasing its own search engine that would go head-to-head with Google.

That could likely be a disastrous business move on Apple’s behalf since Google has made it clear that nobody is willing to walk away from the established search engine that millions have become familiar with in order to use a newer search engine.

Apple has been known to make well-calculated, strategic moves, and trying to dominate the search engine space just wouldn’t make sense for the reigning king of mobile devices.

What would make sense, however, would be to get its own iPhone, iPad and Mac users weaned off Google for good now that the company has been getting into the mobile device space itself.

As Engadget writer Aaron Souppouris explains, Apple has already been taking steps toward Google independence after it removed YouTube and Google Maps from its set of default iOS apps.

Having its own search engine on all Apple devices would definitely be another step toward Google independence and could possibly drag down Google’s market share.

When Mozilla removed Google as its default search provider, Google’s market share took a serious hit, according to StatCounter.

That move caused the number of Firefox users who use Google to drop from 82 percent to 64 percent.

There is no telling how many people would be weaned off Google if their Apple products worked on a default Apple search engine.

The only problem is, many Apple consumers aren’t too hopeful about the possible search engine thanks to constant frustrations with Siri and Apple Maps.

“I hope the people who are working on the apple search are not the same people who worked on apple maps because if they are there will be a lot of people getting really lost and won’t be seen again,” one Engadget reader wrote.

Other comments said Apple’s map application was “awful” and slammed Siri as “useless.”

Either way, it’s important to note that Apple has made no comments about the possible search engine and for now Apple Search is nothing more than an intriguing rumor.

If Apple Search isn’t already in the works, however, there is a chance that the rumors could give the tech giant a great new idea.

After all, the two tech giants are no strangers to competing with each other, especially now that they are both working to dominate the “smartwatch” business.