Doing Business in Sandton, August 2021

Welcome!

Welcome to the Megaplex Business Booster Newsletter as advertised in our longstanding Newsletter: "Shopping in Sandton".  This short monthly bulletin will give you quick tips that can make your business more profitable, more robust, and less likely to bankrupt you.

You are receiving this because you subscribed, or because your business in Sandton or Bryanston appears on the megaplex.co.za website.  We have ways you can benefit from this.

Want to jazz up your posts in WhatsApp or Telegram?  See the tip below,

Thinking about others even in these perilous times?  Good for you.  How do you make sure your efforts –or money– have the most impact?  See our main article on Effective Altruism below.

Are you an Engineer?  Like to turbo-charge your use of Microsoft Excel?  Below is a self-paced on-line course that may help.

Finally, POPIA is still live and dangerous!  Get prepared for when the Information Regulator gets its act together.

Tip: Bold and Italics in WhatsApp and Telegram

In WhatsApp you put text between asterisks (**) to *bold*, and between _underscores_ to italicize.

Telegram is different: on a PC, you bold with Ctrl+B and do italics with Ctrl+I as you would in any Windows program. On Android it is two asterisks at start and end for bold, and two underscores at each end for italics. **Like this** __and this__.

Effective Altruism

Most of us want to make a difference. We see suffering, injustice and death, and want to do something about them in the brief time we have on earth. But working out what that ‘something’ is, let alone actually doing it, can be difficult and disheartening.

Effective altruism is a response to this. It is a research field which uses high-quality evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to help as much as possible. It is also a community of people taking these answers seriously.  Focusing their efforts on the most promising solutions to the world's most pressing problems.

Many attempts to do good fail, but the best ones are exceptional.

It’s also important to work on the right problems.

The media often focuses on negative stories. But in many ways, the world is getting better. Concerted efforts to improve the world have already had phenomenal success. The number of people living under the World Bank’s poverty line has more than halved since 1990. The Cold War saw thousands of nuclear weapons, but none were used. In recent centuries we have criminalized slavery, dramatically decreased the oppression of women, and, in many countries, done a great deal to secure the rights of people who are gay, bi, trans, or queer.

Many problems remain. There are so many that we need to think carefully about which ones we should prioritize.

The cause that you choose to work on is a big factor in how much good you can do. If you choose a cause where it’s not possible to help many, or where there just aren’t good ways to solve the problems, you will significantly limit the impact you can have.

But, if you choose a cause where you can provide a lot of help, using tested solutions, you may have an enormous impact.

Many people want to do good, but have already chosen a cause before they do any research. If we do that, we may overlook the most important problems of our time. Most interventions seem to have low impact, so we’re likely to focus on something is ineffective. We can do more good if we carefully consider many causes, rather than stopping at the first one we're drawn to.

Read more here.

Calling our Engineers!

Do you see Microsoft Excel as merely a toy for accountants?

Are you aware of the sheer power you have at your fingertips?

Not only does Excel have all basic mathematical functions, it has advanced statistical functions, matrix manipulation, charts, and much more.  Are you, as an engineer and scientist, using it to the full?  Are you aware of how much it can do?

Start using Excel to its full potential as an engineering and scientific tool.  On the

Excel for Engineers Self-Paced Online Course

Many of us are self-taught and have gaps in our knowledge.  Fill those gaps on the self-paced online training at any time: All the information that you get on the two-day live personal class, plus more. At a fraction of the cost, and an introductory price!

We will also be running the live version again soon.  email us for dates.

POPI Act (POPIA) Links...

The Protection of Personal Information Act went live on 1 July 2021.  Here's a free course that tells you what the law says –in plain English. It's as long as a typical evening seminar, but online: Free Online POPI Act Training.

There is an inexpensive approach to data privacy compliance.  Join Peter online this Wednesday, at 8 pm. Invest 60 minutes this week. Never face a civil servant probing your POPI compliance.

🎯 Click here to join us online at 8 pm TONIGHT (or Next Wednesday) for answers to POPI for small business.

Here's a follow-on course, at a massive discount, that tells you how to get POPI compliant,

All the best from Rick at megaplex.co.za,

the World's most helpful website for shops in Sandton.

To view other issues of the newsletter, click these links (same page):
2019: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November,
2020: January, February, March, April, May (there was a gap during lockdown)
2021: May, June, July
Subscribe here or locate another period.