Meijert
Meyer was born in 1970 in the 10th month and day 20, 16:20 in the afternoon.
Slight play on numbers (and numbers and Meijert has always gone together :) )
The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras had an interesting take on what numbers could really mean, he said you have to add each of the digits that represent a single concept together till you have only one. I.e.
19 (the century) 1+9 = 10, 1+0 = 1 a new beginning
70 (the year) 7+0 = 7 a spiritual, wise or analytical person, it is also the 7th letter of the alphabet G
10 (the month) 1+0 = 1 a new beginning
20 (the day) 2+0 = 2 a teacher also the 20th letter of the alphabet T
16 (the hour) 1+6 = 7 a spiritual person
20 (the minute) 2+0 = 2 a teacher
Three ideas … new beginning , spiritual or want to make a positive difference and teacher
One curious thing is the repetition of 7 and 20 … G and T
Or maybe on my 7th birthday I was going to acquire a T
They say that a child only really gains his consciousness at the age of 7
From a helpless baby to someone who can make their own decisions … This is a gradual process and as my mother never stopped telling anyone she spoke to, to the day of her death, I was different even then.
When I woke in hospital the first time, as passionately relayed by my mother, I only opened one eye as if only a part of me was here and waiting for full consciousness.
Funny though … when I turned 7, our pappy died (my amazing grandpa - the softest kindest person I ever knew) and he gave me my name, but when signing his death certificate my mother realized that she had his name wrong when giving it to me … and immediately, officially changed my name to meijert … I got my T when I turned 7 and as a bonus gift the y in the middle became a smiley face ij or my customary way of talking with a :) at the end … I always loved smiling and loved the effect it had … most of the time …
And something changed … I wanted to make a difference … things were not as kind as I wished the man (m) experienced (e) with a smile (ij) that he wants to have an effect (e) in reality (r) as a teacher (t) of kindness.
M e i j e r t arrived and decided he wants to help.
After national service I wanted to know everything about everything, thrusting for knowledge. I studied everything I could afford to pay for earning a degree at Unisa in Logic and Philosophy, doing some odd jobs and finally ending up at a training company writing course material … somewhat controversial … as most of the time … changing briefs to what I believed was needed, often met with opposition but mostly understanding and appreciated :) … I always believed I was born with a golden spoon … I could talk a bit … and though from the start a paradigm shift … things generally worked when I did them, and I never experienced people not wanting me around.
I was disappointed though so often nobody understood what I was really doing even though it worked … and they always wanted to change it without understanding … I wanted to play my way …
This was my start … I started my own training company with friends and colleagues who believed … Rubicon was our name … we wanted to help people cross their Rubicon and be who they could be. I was adamant we either make a difference or not play. Horrible business idea … I never understood if all the right things happened why would money be the measure.
Amongst others one of my proudest moments was having my heroes (I was born a block away from the largest cathedral of its kind in the southern hemisphere at that stage, a place where the altar was green and the priests wear blue - in Pretoria, rugby was a religion :) and Loftus mmm) the Blue bulls rugby team, gave me and my team a weekend to help. They were in disarray with players and coaches having public tiffs, no results on the field and no real identity … The mighty Northern Transvaal Rugby Union was no more and the Blue bulls had to find an identity. My moment was a week after their course with us and they became from nowhere the only team to beat the British and Irish Lions in South Africa in 1997. Ruben and Joost please rest in peace … you were amazing.
My other great day was when unexpectedly I was called into the Head Office of human resources at Airports Company, after they just turned the company around from disaster. I knew I made a controversial play and they might not have liked it, but instead of a lecture they handed me, out of the blue, a medal with their logo, and on the back, inscribed were the words “meijert, you made a difference”. I was a very emotional young man.
I withdrew when money became the decider and my role made no sense to me anymore.
I was so baffled, even when people see the way … so often … they still walk away. I was tired and remembered my old friend … the day I discovered a computer :)
Let's retreat to possibly one of my greatest days as a child … the big difference when in Popular mechanics of 1979 (I was 9) they had on the cover a new product … a personal computer … o my G … can you imagine … I just could not stop thinking … imagine I could have a computer all to myself … and 3 years later … one day my dad (what a man!) came home and dropped a flier on the kitchen table … the Commodore 64 … a real personal computer … was available to buy. Wow … I knew there was no way we could ever afford that … remember meijert might have been shy but I observed and listened often as my dad and mom were debating in the kitchen when we kids were all asleep about where the food could possibly come from. When my dad saw me and my eldest sister gushing with excitement … imagine one day we could … he said “well meijert, if you really want it, why don’t you go get it out of the back of the car” … I knew the cost he had to pay, but what a day … What a man!
So, I was tired of people not moving … what if … a computer … mmm … playing the first computer had it’s disappointments … in my head I had this thing that could answer every question no teacher could ever give me … but that was just in stories, the computers I could lay my hands on were dumb … they only did what they were programmed to do … but after the people realisation I had a thought.
I started a new company … I was going to build thinking software … Software Intellection was born.
I build a Customer Relationship Management product that did things a bit differently and could on the fly define workflows for any process that could be live the next day and provided dashboards of what to do next per role per person and immediately with direct integration (even to unintegrated machines via human minimum input) show exactly all limbo time and bottlenecks … etc.
I built what in my mind was the first, I ever knew software, that could beat the Turing Test, an AI driven Client for the largest bank then in South Africa (FNB) that simulated a real client adapting to exactly what the Teller was having difficulty learning in handling with a Customer. This Customer was created on the fly with all documentation required (or missing) to open an account with an emotional matrix specifically to push the specific teller and measure how they improve. This would then be introduced to tellers as real customers.
I build a software product that could be built and configured purely via data to handle anything from project management to resource management etc.
I also consulted quite widely for big corporations as a troubleshooting software developer / industrial psychology resource to solve those problems that everyone else gave up on … all on the basis of software that thinks.
But after realizing that no matter what I built it was never going to be used the way I designed it, no matter if there was a way that could solve things … It was a paradigm shift and people were not ready. The problem was the foundations … artificial scarcity economy … if every transaction has to be a zero sum … if every transaction has to start with a minus … if it is designed to be too little so that it can have value … if there can even be a thought that we could replace value with costs … create financial trade systems that are so expensive that you could have rather given a family electricity for a month than the cost of a single transaction … people were always going to be desperate … People are not going to follow their heart and soul when they don’t have food … the divide between the have and have nots are always going to grow.
We need a new foundation.
Meijert had some work to do and for the last 10 years I built a foundation. a Foundation like everything else I ever built that wishes to ask … if I can show this will make a difference … even prove it … can we for a while forget to just promote an artificial scarcity economy (make profit) and rather measure the extent to which we move the human race forward.
Meijert though has always been shy … he has tested lots of paradigms and quietly always at his own cost build and tested the effect … until lately as CEO of Celbux I have tried to show this foundation … we have build a fully controllable economy (we can make sure that money can only be used for what it was intended - i.e. if someone says they want to build a house they can only use the money given for building a house) in South Africa (a country with both a heavily regulated banking sector for the first world part and an informal economy that has no access to financial services to the worst degree) where you can create Spendboxes (vouchers or digital envelopes) that facilitate turning money into value (food, accommodation, real world stuff) at most formal merchants (KFC, McDonalds, Shoprite Checkers, Pick n Pay, Dischem. Clicks, Takealot, etc.) but also at most Informal's (people selling pap on the side of the road) used by more than a million users (primarily the bottom of the pyramid - people with no other way to eat), we have traded more than 45 million …
Trejiem
Trejiem was the other side, Meijert was shy and just observed, Trejiem was invisible and planned.
Trejiem is that being Meijert always wished he was … he was the one who won (but invisibly). I could never let anyone know about Trejiem … the idea that I wanted to make a difference and somehow always believed I could … as long as no-one knew. I could turn my name backwards and be anything I wanted … Clark Kent could in fact be Superman as long as no-one knew.
I had an Avatar … the spirit of air … elemental … I could make a difference … I was Trejiem.
This was the time for Trejiem (invisibly of course)
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