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On 20 July 2011 Morne du Toit and his family celebrated a moment to cherish as his doctor informed him that after 4 months of chemotherapy there were no traces of Hodgkin’s lymphoma remaining in his system.
To celebrate with his MiX family Morne carved his way through an enormous cake. The sugar rush was almost as exhilarating as hearing the good news and we are all ecstatic for Morne who has been a real role model throughout his recovery period. Never has he uttered a complaint nor become despondent, keeping his focus on what mattered most – making sure he came through well for his, and his families sake.
Our message to Morne is this: Life is like the hair on top of your head; sometimes short, sometimes long. Glad we can say in your case there is no correlation to your own hair. ☺
Congratulations and keep fighting.
For a few short but magical hours the Upper Eastside Hotel in Woodstock was the center of the wine universe as the 2011 Nederburg Auction Public Tastings dazzled wine lovers with 19 exclusive and fine wines to taste.
Showing their appreciation for fine wines, Cedric, Sabine, Gavin and Christina at the Nederburg Auction Public Tastings.
With MiX Stellenbosch offices situated in the heart of the Winelands it is no surprise that MiX was well represented at this memorable occasion. Gavin Harvett, Christina Harvett, Sabine Klisch and Cedric Jones were there to enjoy an evening of indulgence with some of the best wines the local wine industry has to offer.
Guests made their way through the tasting schedule in style as they were treated to wines representing various varietals, vineyards and cultivars. The tasting was led by Cape Wine Master Bennie Howard and guests got the opportunity to taste, amongst others, a 2004 Syrah from Marcel de Reuck, an elegant 2005 Merlot from De Grendel, Le Bonheur’s acclaimed Prima 2001, and a 2005 Nederburg Private Bin Eminence, the beautiful dessert wine produced by 2011’s Platter’s SA Wine Guide Winery of the Year.
In true fashion MiX’ers set high standards in all areas and of course our very own wine experts we asked some questions.
See Gavin and Cedric being interviewed below.
MiX Telematics has teamed up with Habitat for Humanity and sponsored the building of a house in Mfuleni, a township located around 30 km outside of Cape Town. The lucky homeowner to receive the house will be Mgqomo Nondalele, a 50-year-old unemployed father of three.
Habitat for Humanity South Africa is a non-profit housing organisation that seeks to provide simple, decent and affordable housing to communities throughout the world. HFHSA has been actively building in S.A since 1996 and to date 2818 houses have been constructed across 34 communities. HFHSA aim to facilitate community development through education and training phases.
We didn’t stop with sponsoring but for the past 4 days, we have had teams of 13 people helping build the house every day.
On Friday 8 October, the Bureau Technical Internal and Response Centre teams enjoyed time out in the sun on a team building event in the V&A Waterfront.
These two teams are responsible for the first and second line support to customers, internal department and technicians. They are also responsible for the programming of all stock prior to shipment, testing and rekitting of returned stock and are used to long shifts and continuous pressure and high demands.
It was great to see them relaxing on the Spirit of Victoria for a change, a yacht that is a traditionally designed 58ft gaff rigged schooner. She has been operating from the Waterfront since 1991 and has become one of the most recognisable charter boats in South Africa.
Her distinctive gaff rig with red brick brown sails and her pleasing lines make her also most videoed and photographed. She flies the Jolly Roger from her main mast and is also known as the “Waterfront Pirate boat “. There is nothing for “show”, this is a real sailing boat with real sails and sailors.
We had great fun and for many it was a first time experience on a sailboat but unfortunately some of the sailing angles did not accommodate with some of the team members (see if you can spot them in the team photo)
The team building event was organized to show our appreciation for the effort that was put in by the two teams with the roll-out of some large projects that required many hours of hard work.
Today is Casual Day in South Africa where you can donate R10, grab a sticker and dress up for laughs and raise money for people with disabilities.
Our people are fully into the spirit of Casual Day and have dressed up to different themes chosen by the teams.
Are you dressing up for Casual Day 2010?
Sam originally posted this on her blog: Inevitable
My job search is over – and luckily for me I found my new company fairly quickly
About a month ago during one of our weekly Marketing team meetings, our Manager, Sabine bought up that National Women’s Day is around the corner. I thought, cool, public holiday = sleep late, chill, sleep and chill again. “Where are we going to have it?” were the next words out of her mouth. Some planning, a new venue and some great prizes later and it all turned into this mornings event.
National Women’s Day may have been on Monday 9 August but we invited all the women working at the Stellenbosch office to a morning breakfast at Stellenbosch Lodge. As our glorious ladies started arriving, they were given a warm drink to start on a very chilly Cape Town morning. With everyone in their seats, our Marketing Director, Cath Lewis took the spot by the fireplace and introduced everyone to the 2nd MiX Telematics Women’s Day event.
With breakfast finished, we got onto the important part: the lucky draw. We were able to receive 3 goodie bags from Discovery, 3 vouchers from Stellenbosch Lodge which included a Spa treatment, breakfast for two and a 2 night stay. The last gift was a glamourous pair of gloss black oversized Pradas courtesy from the awesome Sunglass Hut’s Wedaad, whose phone call on Friday really happily surprised me. Guess there is a reason why I (and a lot of people I know) show support into brands that put an effort into their customers.
Cath wrote a post a while back called ‘Thoughts on MiX’ to which I mentioned that I was thinking about writing something similar, especially from the new kid on the block. Ideas like innovation, never a dull moment, passion – a very important aspect to work, in my opinion and lastly the way they value the company culture, which has rolled over to the very talented staff. There is this value on the people that work here which makes it great like a big family (full of Apple fanboys & girls), always wanting the best for you when they’re not too busy creating new innovative products and solutions for their customers.
The winners of the prizes were:
It started back in 2001 when I was first introduced to the FM product range whilst working for BHI International. I can clearly remember the 3m x 3m server room and dealing with queries relating to the reports, server up time, mail distribution lists, installations, 1st line and 2nd line troubleshooting, maintenance scheduling, month end reports and even jumping in my 1300cc Tazz (with no aircon) and driving around the country (incl. Botswana and Namibia) to install FM equipment and Fuel Monitoring devices. You name it I did it, Customer Relations, Technician, Project Deployment, Sales, IT sometimes all of them in the same day. Thinking back, it was fun wearing so many hats.
The concept was great, the FM98 software, which was access database driven, we used at that stage was designed as a standalone system with local databases. The clients we were dealing with at that time had branches nationally and required consolidated reporting which was not possible using individual databases for each branch. Bones Hewitt designed an intranet solution whereby the information was hosted in a single database and was published via an intranet HTML web site back to the various branches. This system called Fleet Online is what I first experienced the ‘Bureau’ concept on.
Hardware included FM100 and FM200 plus units with external modems and GPS modules and lot’s of wires and no GPRS. Compare that with today’s units.
Time passed and before I knew it the potential was realized internationally to provide Fleet Management Bureau services to clients. I started with MiX Telematics, then called Control Instruments, in 2003 and that was the birth of the MiX Telematics Bureau Service as we know it today. It started with only two of us reporting to Catherine Lewis and yes, still wearing many hats, however this soon changed as once the ball started rolling there was nothing stopping it. Soon we had Helpdesk agents, Second Line troubleshooting team, Accounting Department, IT guy, Customer Relationship Managers, and yes me, at least wearing less hats.
In 2005 I decided that it was time to satisfy my entrepreneurial spirit as I previously owned my own business for 8 years and had the yearning to do it again. Unfortunately things did not work out and in 2007 I was back at MiX Telematics. I was surprised to see how the Bureau and company had grown. We had new offices, cool systems processes, people and most important lots of clients. This was exciting and all I saw walking back in the front door as Technical Manager was challenges (lots of them), and that is what gets me up in the morning.
It’s been two and a half years and been great. In one way I regret leaving for the two years but in another I think I gained a lot of wisdom and perspective during the time that I was not here. But with all these challenges comes high demands, long working hours plus attempting to add some formal education to compliment my experience degree obtained on the streets. The toughest challenge off all is balancing work, study, family – spending time with my 3 year old daughter and wife - and own time but somehow I survive thanks to support from management and my family.
This is a great place to be, never-ending challenges and an environment that changes so rapidly, it’s like opening a new book every morning.
I was delighted to find out Cord International had won the dealer competition and even more thrilled to find out I was able to come to Cape Town too.
I have always wanted to visit Africa so this was an amazing opportunity and because of the World Cup, there was a lot of media coverage in the UK about the townships in South Africa.
We had been given such an amazing prize and opportunity that I wanted to give something back. I wanted to help in at least some little way with a township project. Sabine at MiX Telematics put me in touch with Laura Ndukwana who has grown up in Gugulethu – one of the largest townships in Cape Town with a population of over a million. Laura runs a Jazz Cafe from her home in Gugulethu and in the morning she turns it into a breakfast club. She invites 26 local children into her home and feeds them breakfast from leftovers donated by local restuarants. For some of these children this will be their only meal of the day.
I asked Laura how I could help? She said that the children could do with new shoes as those that had shoes, had ones that were falling apart. Through friends, family and colleagues, I raised R3,500 and after we were given the children’s shoe size list, we bought all 26 children new shoes. For a very special little 3-year-old boy – who’s mother has AIDS and Meningitis and is ill himself – we bought some clothes.
The experience was emotional and incredibly enlightening. The children were so grateful for the shoes but we were so grateful for the experience and to Laura for inviting us into her community. The children and the people of Gugulethu have so little, yet the community spirit was palpable - something that many ‘developed’ countries and communities have lost.
Laura is an incredibly strong and inspirational woman and she and those children have not left our thoughts since. I plan to come back to Cape Town next year and see my friends in Gugulethu.
Thank you to all at MiX Telematics for an incredible trip and making us feel so welcome. I have fallen head-over-heels in love with South Africa!
Sinead Penn
You can see more images from the Gugulethu visit on our Facebook page
A great compilation of the MiX Telematics Stellenbosch staff in Cape Town performing the Diski dance
