We seem to be doing the 'improbable' all the time at MyShtetl.co.za, the Everything for Everyone Jewish South African website... But 'impossible' take a little longer. It has taken ten months to develop this site to where it is now, and it will take until 2010 to complete it.
There are a host of further expansions and additions coming to MyShtetl.co.za. And for every step we take, we would like to consult the community. Tell us what you want. On existing and planned sections. This website is produced by South African Jewry, for South African Jewry. That means you. So, please, tell us what you want at
info@myshtetl.co.za
Existing sections - Priority number one is to fully populate all existing sections of MyShtetl.co.za. For example, we believe we now list around 75% of SA Jewish Organisations, divided into 10 categories. We would like to reach 99% very soon.
Competitions - Our launch competition will see us give away 29 great prizes, including a R10,000 Pick n Pay shopping voucher, worth over R40,000! The six-week cycle culminates with a “final” live draw on 24 September. We already have a great prize pool lined up for the follow-on competitions. Details shortly. Good luck in the first cycle.
Discussion forums - MyShtetl.co.za is highly inter-active. Any registered user can open a discussion forum. Users and visitors alike can comment on the forums. We are talking to several people who have offered to host and post on discussion forums. If you would like to participate contact
katza@avusa.co.za. Tell us what you want.
Cape Town - The intention had been to launch Jo'burg on 11 August and roll out with Cape Town by October. At the 11th hour we decided that, despite (very) stretched resources, we would try and incorporate Cape Town for the launch. Time and resources limited our ability to deliver this well, and it is priority to get Cape Town properly on-board asap.
Donations - MyShtetl.co.za plans to be the single broadest source of information for Jewish welfare and charitable organisations shortly. We are developing a module to allow users and visitors to make regular tzedaka offerings directly to a host of organisations. Watch for it.
Jobs - MyShtetl.co.za will shortly be carrying the biggest range of job adverts targeted at the Jewish community. We hope to associate with several of the larger role players. Our jobs section will be operated for us by Avusa Media associates Career Junction. It will allow community job-seekers to register and be linked up with community employers.
MyShtetlHOOD.co.za - we will be rolling out our youth site, MyShtetlHOOD.co.za, shortly. Actually, it will be 2 sites - broadly targeted at 6-12 year-olds and 12-18s. What would you like to see in these sites? Tell us.
Classifieds - We would like to see our wonderful and extremely powerful classified engine to be running on full steam. Users can post adverts for free, as often as they like. We hope it will become the place where the community informs itself, and holds it garage sales. Tell us what you want.
Rest of SA/Southern Africa - By December 2009 we would like to have rolled MyShtetl.co.za out to the rest of South Africa. By Pesach, we would like to list all Jewish facilities in the entire region that is covered by any SA Jewish organisation. Several orgs such as the UOS serve constituencies beyond SA's borders.
Podcasts - MyShtetl.co.za will soon be running a series of compelling interviews by one of SA's top Jewish radio hosts. These podcasts will allow users and visitors to the site to listen as they surf the website.
Archives - we are inaugurating our archiving system - which allow for all content placed on the site to always be available and accessible. For example, we plan to put up three to five new video clips a week. All those selected clips that have run will be catalogued and filed for users to access virtually forever.
Blogs - All MyShtetl.co.za users are entitled to start their own blogs. We hope that there are those of you who will avail yourselves of this opportunity to communicate. See Josh Hovsha's Parsha of the week from Israel - Words of extreme wisdom. Tell us what you want. Please note that we do not edit bloggers who are drunken spellers and/or grammatically-challenged.
Weekly laugh podcast - give us a few weeks and we will be bringing you a little weekly laugh. Legendary Jewish, Jewish joke-teller Len K is our man on this one. They will be posted every Monday morning (with all the previous ones archived). Be the first to hear it and you'll have the pleasure of telling it.
Explosion of Jewish orgs - We have been overwhelmed by the explosion of support we have had from Jewish orgs of all sorts. We are assessing the impact this will have on the further development of the site. An example is the huge support of the Women's orgs. We'll add a special space for the ladies soon. They are wired and organise on the net - 21st century dames with dinosaurs for guys! Tell us what you want.
Expats - MyShtetl.co.za presently provides for communication between locals and expat communities. What we need right now is to find expats in countries like Oz, Canada, the US, Israel and other communities out there to send us news back home. You can now get all the local community news on MyShtetl.co.za. We would like to hear from you guys out there too.
Research - Leveraging on the research machinery of our franchisor, Avusa Media, MyShtetl.co.za is presently engaged in a major research project to get proper statistics on the community. It seems universally accepted that the community is bigger, maybe considerable, than was previously thought. Watch out for our up-coming series of fascinating stories on "Who are We?" as soon as the results of the research are in.
Digital maps - This is under development. Stage 1 will work soon - it will offer either map or satellite photo views of Cape Town and Jo'burg (with Sea Point and Norwood at the epicentres). Users will be able to take GPOS co-ordinates or print direction instructions. Stage 2 will add kosher and Jewish places, both on our on-site maps and on Garmin and TomTom GPS systems. This is being developed in association with Avusa Media associate MapIT - which also provides maps to GPS providers.
Weather - we will shortly switch on our targeted community weather block. Finally, in a society of mediocrity, MyShtetl.co.za will give you YOUR weather. For Joburg, that means the north-eastern suburbs. For Cape Town, Sea Point and Claremont. We plan to give you present and forecast weather for these pinpointed areas.
Downloads - Registered users of MyShtetl.co.za have access to what will be a fast-growing database of free high quality downloads. These include clip-art, graphics, cell phone ringtones, etc. Please bear with us. We have developed hundreds of these. But we have discovered that it is very time consuming to catalogue and place these on the site - so keep watching the downloads grow as we upload more every week. Tell us what you want.
Greeting cards - once we have populated our downloads adequately, the same development team will get to work building the best and easiest free greeting card service on the web. It will be developed for the SA community. Cool cards, like to send overseas: "Happy birthday. Missing your biltong, Anchovette and boere rusks? Don't Chalish. Visit us soon!". Watch for this exciting resource.
Music Publication - Avusa associate company Gallo is the biggest publisher of music in Africa. We are hoping to leverage on this to publish some of the magnificent musicians we have in the community. Just look at the quality of the guys on the Simcha circuit.
Additional Services - MyShtetl.co.za will be providing various sponsored and subscribed community services which will start rolling out after Yomtov.
