Latest news with #Alexanders
Time Out
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The most common baby name in every London borough
You can tell a lot about a person from on their name. Did they have hippyish parents who named them after something in the natural world, like Rain, or Apple? Are they following a long family tradition of being named after their great-great-great grandfather? Or perhaps, does their name reveal which London borough were they born in? Each year the Office of National Statistics (ONS) releases the data on the country's most popular baby names from the previous year. The results from 2024 have just been unveiled – here's what parents in London were naming their sprogs in 2024. Last year, parents in Camden, Kensington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Kingston and Wandsworth were all naming their little girls Olivia, while in Barking & Dagenham, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Southwark and more, the most common girls' name was Amelia. Fourteen London boroughs were topped by Amelias in 2024, double from seven the year before. For boys, the most popular boys name across the city was Muhammad, with that name taking the top spot in Barking & Dagenham, Croydon, Ealing, Hounslow, Newham, Redbridge and Waltham Forest. But parents in Barnet, Enfield, Greenwich, Hammersmith & Fulham, Haringey, Kensington & Chelsea, Wandsworth and more were most likely to call their boys Alexander. Alexanders climbed the ranks in 2024 after only topping one London borough in 2023, now growing to eight. In Hackney Sarah made a comeback for girls, while the most common boys' name was Moshe. For Islington, the number one name was Emily for girls, and Henry or Oliver for boys. Leo was the most popular name for baby boys in Camden, while most of the girls in Barnet were named Maya. Meanwhile Noah seems to have fallen out of trend: in 2022 Noah was the most popular boys' name in 13 London boroughs, dropping to nine in 2023. However in 2024 Noah didn't top any locations, though it did come second overall. Most popular baby names for each London borough Barking & Dagenham – Amelia / Muhammad Barnet – Maya / Alexander Bexley – Grace / Harry Brent – Maria / Adam Bromley – Emily / Oliver Camden – Olivia / Leo Croydon – Amelia / Muhammad Ealing – Amelia / Muhammad Enfield – Amelia / Alexander Greenwich – Amelia / Alexander Hackney – Sarah / Moshe Hammersmith & Fulham – Isabella / Alexander Haringey – Amelia / Alexander Harrow – Sofia / David Havering – Olivia / Oliver Hillingdon – Amelia / Harry Hounslow – Amelia / Muhammad Islington – Emily / Henry or Oliver Kensington & Chelsea – Olivia / Alexander Kingston – Olivia / Oliver Lambeth – Olivia / Daniel Lewisham – Olivia / Daniel Merton – Amelia / Oliver Newham – Amelia / Muhammad Redbridge – Amelia / Muhammad Richmond – Sophie / Oliver Southwark – Amelia / David Sutton – Amelia / Joshua Tower Hamlets – Maryam / Mohammed Waltham Forest – Amelia or Sophia / Muhammad Wandsworth – Olivia / Alexander Westminster – Sophia / Alexander Rare white storks are coming back to London after being extinct for 600 years.
The Citizen
23-06-2025
- Sport
- The Citizen
Local bowling talent shows their mettle
VANDERBIJLPARK – The Vanderbijl Bowling Club has reason to celebrate after a historic and thrilling performance at the Sedibeng Open Masters tournament, held on June 14 and 15 at Iscor Bowls Club. This prestigious tournament, considered the crown jewel of district bowls, featured 12 elite men and women competing in a singles format across five games per section. The top players then faced off in Sunday's finals. In a nailbiting finish, Lauren Coetzee edged out 16-year-old Amber Alexanders 21–20 in the women's final, with the final bowl on the end securing her the gold. Alexanders, a rising junior from Vanderbijl, made history as the youngest female finalist ever. Bronze medals went to fellow junior Sonya Fourie and Annemarie Victor. The men's Masters also saw Vanderbijl talent rise to the top. Seasoned player Barend Steyn claimed gold, with Lourens Badenhorst taking silver. Joggie Viljoen and Morné Kretscher earned bronze medals. The club is also proud of Alexanders and Badenhorst, who earlier this year clinched bronze in the District Mixed Pairs competition held in May. Vanderbijl Bowling Club expressed its gratitude to Iscor Bowls Club for hosting a memorable event. For more information on how to become involved in bowling, contact Chris Kruyshaar on 079 517 4665. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Scoop
10-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Marketing Agencies Urged To Pivot As Meta Moves Toward Fully Automated Advertising By 2026
Press Release – Alexanders Digital Marketing Agencies that once focused on deliverables like social posts and Google Ads are now being challenged to step into a new role: strategic enablers (helping clients convert leads into customers). With Meta announcing its ambition to fully automate advertising campaigns by 2026 using artificial intelligence, social media marketing agencies are quaking in their boots, and being urged to rethink their role in a fast-evolving digital landscape. According to a recent Reuters report, Meta is investing heavily in AI systems that will plan, purchase, and optimise ad campaigns with minimal human input, generating 30-40% better results at 10% of the cost, which could potentially wipe out much of the creative industry around social. The announcement signals a dramatic acceleration toward a future where media buying, and ad creative are machine-led. This shift is already being felt across the industry. AI tools like ChatGPT, Canva, and Meta's own Advantage+ are allowing small and mid-sized businesses to produce marketing content and run campaigns in-house, reducing their reliance on traditional agencies for execution. 'Clients no longer need an agency to write every post, design every banner, or set up every ad campaign,' said Rachel Alexander, founder of Alexanders, Christchurch's first digital marketing agency. 'They have Canva, ChatGPT, HeyGen, MidJourney & Meta automation. What they need now is someone to help them make sense of it all,' she said. Agencies that once focused on deliverables like social posts and Google Ads are now being challenged to step into a new role: strategic enablers (helping clients convert leads into customers). A recent YouTube vlog 'Meta just killed the creative industry: The 2026 Automation Apocalypse' by Julia McCoy, CEO at First Movers & AI thought leader, describes this well. 'Agencies must pivot from being tactical executors to strategic advisors, bringing clarity, structure, and prioritisation to an increasingly overwhelming landscape,' said McCoy. 'Business marketers need to think of their agency as a marketing generalist doctor: diagnosing weak points, recommending tailored treatments, and coaching internal teams through implementation,' said Alexander. With many SMEs building internal marketing teams and experimenting with DIY tools, the opportunity for agencies lies in offering higher-value services such as sales enablement, CRM integration, AI content workflows, and conversion strategy. 'It's less about deliverables, more about direction. Less about content calendars, more about conversion journeys…The marketing agency of the future is less like a factory and more like a consultancy,' said McCoy. Alexander said she is mindful, but not anxious, because we've always been a hybrid between a marketing consultancy and marketing agency. For New Zealand agencies looking to adapt, this means embracing AI, not competing with it and reasserting their value as interpreters, integrators, and insight-driven advisors. 'AI has been disruptive technology but being agile is the key to success. It's helped us survive for 28 years. Time to pivot again!,' said Alexander.
Scoop
10-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Marketing Agencies Urged To Pivot As Meta Moves Toward Fully Automated Advertising By 2026
With Meta announcing its ambition to fully automate advertising campaigns by 2026 using artificial intelligence, social media marketing agencies are quaking in their boots, and being urged to rethink their role in a fast-evolving digital landscape. According to a recent Reuters report, Meta is investing heavily in AI systems that will plan, purchase, and optimise ad campaigns with minimal human input, generating 30-40% better results at 10% of the cost, which could potentially wipe out much of the creative industry around social. The announcement signals a dramatic acceleration toward a future where media buying, and ad creative are machine-led. This shift is already being felt across the industry. AI tools like ChatGPT, Canva, and Meta's own Advantage+ are allowing small and mid-sized businesses to produce marketing content and run campaigns in-house, reducing their reliance on traditional agencies for execution. "Clients no longer need an agency to write every post, design every banner, or set up every ad campaign," said Rachel Alexander, founder of Alexanders, Christchurch's first digital marketing agency."They have Canva, ChatGPT, HeyGen, MidJourney & Meta automation. What they need now is someone to help them make sense of it all,' she said. Agencies that once focused on deliverables like social posts and Google Ads are now being challenged to step into a new role: strategic enablers (helping clients convert leads into customers). A recent YouTube vlog 'Meta just killed the creative industry: The 2026 Automation Apocalypse' by Julia McCoy, CEO at First Movers & AI thought leader, describes this well. 'Agencies must pivot from being tactical executors to strategic advisors, bringing clarity, structure, and prioritisation to an increasingly overwhelming landscape,' said McCoy. 'Business marketers need to think of their agency as a marketing generalist doctor: diagnosing weak points, recommending tailored treatments, and coaching internal teams through implementation,' said Alexander. With many SMEs building internal marketing teams and experimenting with DIY tools, the opportunity for agencies lies in offering higher-value services such as sales enablement, CRM integration, AI content workflows, and conversion strategy. 'It's less about deliverables, more about direction. Less about content calendars, more about conversion journeys…The marketing agency of the future is less like a factory and more like a consultancy,' said McCoy. Alexander said she is mindful, but not anxious, because we've always been a hybrid between a marketing consultancy and marketing agency. For New Zealand agencies looking to adapt, this means embracing AI, not competing with it and reasserting their value as interpreters, integrators, and insight-driven advisors. 'AI has been disruptive technology but being agile is the key to success. It's helped us survive for 28 years. Time to pivot again!," said Alexander.
Time of India
20-05-2025
- Time of India
Rise of AGI: Danger of humanity entering the first stage of Kübler-Ross model for terminal diseases
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and her colleagues proposed that when a person faces an inevitable tragedy, the psychological phases he goes through are typically denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (in that order). When I look at the way we are treating the arrival of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), I sense that we have entered the first stage of denial, and that is probably a very dangerous situation, as we may end up failing to act when we can, and we may regret it very shortly. Though it has still not percolated all the way upto the bottom of the pyramid, most of these who are working in close proximity of AGI have realised that it has reached the zone of unpredictability; not in terms of what it can do, but in terms of what its owners will make it do. The biggest mistake we are making today is imagining that AGI is a global phenomenon that will evolve democratically because it will be subjected to market forces, i.e., the choices we humans make while living. Truth is, AGI is neither global nor democratic. AGI is raw power and it is available only to a handful of people. We may still carry on making H/Bollywood movies where a genius kid will save the world, the real life is showing very little evidence of that to happen. AGI has and AGI shall usher in the era of THE BIG, as AGI lacks the limitations that being BIG traditionally brought to the table. AGI transcends the generalist-specialist divide, as it can be 'everything', ranging from advising a gardener on how to protect her French beans from aphid attack and (if need be, simultaneously) guide a drone to locate a human being an a battlefield and terminate him. Thus AGI can replace every human expertise, and it is slowly dawning upon some of us that the process has already started. When Microsoft lays off 6000 humans from their jobs, it is just a small beginning. Soon the masters of AGI will come for every job that requires a highly trained and thus expensive human being. As the cull will start from the top, humans are unlikely to have a revolution, as the bottom of the pyramid, the traditional fodder for any revolution will benefit from the new economics that AGI will lead to. Though my sympathies are with the doctors, engineers, lawyers and other experts who will face the first wave of the cull, it is least of my worries. AGI will change the world economics, and may even lead to a major economic collapse, but that is not half as scary as the more plausible deployment of AGI that we may end up having due to a small group of people controlling it. What scares me is the fact that AGI is a source of power, and those who understand how the world works know that money has no real value when one has the power. This means that AGI owners may initially deploy AGI to make money, but soon they will go for the bigger game, i.e., the game of controlling humanity. Lets recognise that humanity has produced Alexanders and Genghis Khans even when it was not actually possible to control the world even if you win it. With the rise of AGI, the limitation of not-being-able-to-control-the- world is also gone, making it a very attractive idea for a (most probably male) member of a species that is designed to try and rise higher and higher in the social hierarchy. With the wars raging across the planet and powerful nations getting a chance to deploy autonomous weapons and learning from the experiment, training and weaponisation of AGI is obviously on the fast track now. It is this arms race that is probably keeping ambitions at bay, but there is no doubt that, even as I write, ideas of ruling the world are passing through a few brains and may be even discussed in war rooms somewhere on this planet. Humanity did see something similar with arrival of Atom Bomb amongst us, but the way Bomb worked was a bit too diabolical and horrible for it to allow USA to go for direct world dominance, and soon that edge was lost with many other nations making the required scientific breakthrough and go nuclear. Weaponisation of AGI is similar to Atom Bomb in terms of disruption, and it may find power balance the way nuclear power did, but my concern is that AGI differs in how world dominance acquired via AGI will look like, making it worth a try. The masters of AGI can take over the world first through financial and manufacturing disruption, and then go for the kill by taking on the armed resistance if any. And from that point onwards humanity will enter into an unprecedented situation. AGI driven domination will allow its masters to track every individual human and prevent humans to build a collective with a critical mass required for successful revolution. With the current distribution of AGI empowerment, it looks very difficult that we can escape this fate, but the first step towards liberation is to wake up to the reality. If AGI is to live alongside us, it needs to be recognised as a natural product (as we did with genetic information) and make it impossible to patent or monetise it. This may slow down the growth dramatically and return AGI to the academies (where it actually belongs) but if it is not done, we will soon have to enter the second phase, i.e., anger. And then it will be a downhill journey with no way to stop. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
