Editorial Jan 2022

The wonderful thing about owning a website is what feels like an incredible slow pace of progress!

Starting this thing up at the end of what was a bloody awful year, let us be honest, was not imbuing the process with the best of timing. Still, slow but steady wins the race and the time taken over December and early January has been spent in testing, editing, playing, begging for news and content, talking and quite a lot of revising the model. Tweaks, changes, learning the code, understanding the website dynamics and how it all works and then breaking it because one doesn’t understand how it all works, putting it back together again and so forth and so on.

It takes time. But we are getting there and every day it becomes a little easier, if somewhat a little more confusing at the enormous complexities and sophistication that drives the online world. It is a far cry from the “hello world” text of the first websites that popped up when using Netscape Navigator (hands up those who remember using that!).

And as with all things time equates to money. The exercise is not cheap and with Covid having done incalculable damage to many industries the overall pot of cash that sloshes around the economy has not grown. Whilst some has found its way to the hands of those undeserving of it and created overnight millionaires, government taxation without compensation runs amok and makes all of our lives harder than they were before. Resilience and growing the economy are part and parcel of what as society we all have to do now and how an industry such as ours contributes becomes incredibly important.

Ours is an industry of joy and entertainment. Every moment spent with wonder at learning something new on our smartphones, having a deep belly laugh at something funny, enjoying a return to music that we haven’t heard for a while on the car radio or simply closing ones eyes and being taken into a musical soundstage of near perfection IS as much a part of the human condition as anything else. We must never, ever lose sight of it and we must bring as much of it to as many people as possible, especially now.

As we spool up now in 2022, if you hear of something you think we need to cover, let us know about it. editor@avnews.co.za is the place to send it. We value feedback and encourage you to engage with us – social media will be coming as soon as possible. Sigh. More technical challenges to surmount, but if it gets us closer to you, our fellow tech and speaker nutcases, our tribe, then it’s worth it!

You’ll note that I am using the Sonor speaker image for my tag this month. Joel has been around the block for many years and I have always had the greatest of respect for Roy Witelson of Sonor for his persistence, his belief in his art and in his progress over the years. What a local success story Sonor has been and we hope to bring you many more. We have talent here, making superb product, easily able to compete on any stage and isn’t that truly wonderful?