Take it to the hole!

My friend Cikku was working on an assignment titled 'The magical properties of Mandrakes and their Economical Effect on Small Island States'.

In order to back up his arguments he was surfing the web (internet for some) while listening to an online radio station.

He decided on a local station and read up about Mandrakes while listening to the latest Eminem hit from the film 'Eighth Mile'.

Eminem is one of his favourite artists and he stopped reading to focus on the song. After the last bars faded away Cikku pointed out that DJ Jonathan Abel was one of his favourites because of the good selection of music he played at which point I mentioned that Jonathan is a good friend of mine. In fact he happens to share the same employer as myself (we both teach at De La Salle College).

Cikku 's curiosity got the better of him and instead of Mandrakes he typed in Jonathan Abel in a search engine and was soon directed to the website of his favourite radio station.

As he browsed through the site he was very disappointed to find that of all the DJ's profiled on the website, Abel was not there.

In a huff, he decided he would send an email to the website requesting that his favourite DJ, Jonathan Abel, be featured on the website. He also explained that he expected professional organisations to keep their websites properly updated.

Great drink but...

I did some surfing of my own this week and came upon the website of the sponsors of the National League: Kinnie. Much to my chagrin I found that while parts of the site referring to basketball were updated others were sadly a year old.

This year's league started on November 10, 2001 and comes to an end on May 5, 2002. Furthermore, the website stated "Kinnie sponsors the Don Ross Kinnie School of Basketball" when my friend Don only just returned from a long sojourn in the United States and was not running the school at all!

Do not despair! The World Wide Web has not suddenly fallen behind the times, indeed, the official website of the Malta Basketball Association is not only regularly updated but has also taken a new look.

Take a visit to www.mba.org.mt and one is greeted with a more professional, user-friendly site marred only by what I consider to be a bad choice of font in the masthead.

Since I am hardly an expert, I suppose I should leave it to you to judge for yourselves. Mark Victor Camilleri, webmaster of the site, must be lauded for his efforts.

About marketing and stuff

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and a man I have featured several times in my column, was recently quoted as saying: "We've become very good at providing a great in-arena experience because we work so hard at it. We don't allow any excuses for our game presentation not improving every single day.

"This ranges from finding new ways to entertain our fans to the type of merchandise we sell, to the music and videos we play, to the painted fans who get in free for every game and provide our own little version of Duke's Cameron Crazies."

In describing how the Dallas Mavericks turned from a franchise no-one wanted to talk about to one of the top franchises in the US he simply explained that rather than sell the basketball they decided to sell fun.

Perhaps the MBA could take a leaf out of his book and make the whole basketball experience more entertaining.

In the recent All Star event organised by Maltahoops, the public present reacted positively to the decoration of Ta' Qali and the presence of a mascot.

Some form of half-time entertainment could be provided, and the general appearance of the pavilion could improve, in this way more people would be attracted to watch the games, which have undoubtedly provided a lot of excitement this season.

If the games do not do enough to attract the crowds we have to look at the overall package offered to spectators... how about it?