About

[This is written in the third person to make it easier for you to copy if you're writing about me. For further background, see my LinkedIn profile, or the 2008 or 2006 versions of this page. Or look around this website. Or just ask. — Stilgherrian]

Stilgherrian is writer, broadcaster and consultant usually based in Sydney, Australia. He covers the intersection of technology, politics and the media for ZDNet Australia, Crikey, Technology Spectator, CSO Online, the ABC’s Drum Opinion, his own website and others.

Having majored in computing science, used online services heavily since the mid-1980s, and worked as a network administrator, Stilgherrian is particularly interested in the big-picture issues of how new communication and collaboration technologies are changing the way we work, play, socialise and organise our world

Stilgherrian presents ZDNet Australia’s podcast Patch Monday and his own The 9pm Edict, is a regular on the podcast A Series of Tubes, and produced audio programs for Telstra and IBM Asia-Pacific before the word “podcast” came into use.

Stilgherrian isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade. His style is mercurial, quick-wittedly flipping between playful and provocative. He’s sometimes offensive, often insightful, and always entertaining.

He’s also one of Australia’s most prolific and (according to NEWS.com.au) “interesting” users of the social messaging service Twitter.

Stilgherrian has only one name. It’s not a pseudonym or alias. It’s pronounced: Stil-GAIR-ee-un. Listen to the Quicktime or MP3 versions. Most people just call him “Stil” for short.

Stilgherrian’s early life was shaped by a stark contrast: growing up poor on a dairy farm south of Adelaide but, thanks to a scholarship, attending an elite private school in the city, Prince Alfred College.

“That experience sharply focussed my understanding of hypocrisy and the arbitrary nature of power and status,” he says. “I got an excellent education, but psychologically it was hell.”

After studying computing science and linguistics at the University of Adelaide, Stilgherrian became a broadcaster, first with Radio 5UV (now Radio Adelaide) and then as a producer and presenter with ABC Radio. He built a loyal cult following in Adelaide’s dance music, techno and hip-hop scenes in the early 1990s as presenter of the Triple J program Club Escape and publisher of The CORE magazine before becoming station manager at community broadcaster Three D Radio.

He served on the boards of the AIDS Council of South Australia and the South Australian Community Broadcasters Association.

Stilgherrian moved to Sydney in 1995 and managed to survive nine months in a chaotic start-up of the first dot-com boom, Big Hand Asia Pacific, part of the Fairfax media empire and no relation to BigHand Digital Dictation. Since then he has worked freelance as a geek for hire and on various media projects.

[Photo: Stilgherrian, ©2009 Trinn (’Pong) Suwannapha. Please ask before using it.]