I’m heading to Melbourne this week to cover IBM’s Pulse 11 for ZDNet Australia. The event runs 27 to 28 July at the Crown Promenade, although I’ll be flying down late Tuesday afternoon and returning on Friday.

“Pulse is your premier event for accessing the solutions and expertise that can help your organisation transform the way it designs, delivers and manages business services,” says the promo material in a sentence remarkably free of concrete nouns. About eight pars in you’ll discover that it’s about things like managing cloud services and making sure your IT systems are secure and compliant with regulations.

I simply do not understand this corporate aversion to being specific.

It’s my first trip to Melbourne in about five years, so I’m looking forward to it. I’ll have a little free time on Thursday afternoon and evening, so do feel free to make suggestions.

I’m attending Pulse 11 as a guest of IBM.

He writes:

So far around 400,000 hectares have been burned.

Although the fires are burning in an area between 150 and 200km north-east of the city, they’re casting a smoky haze over Melbourne. You can smell it, even indoors, and despite the pollution in the CBD.

It’s like God’s fired up his pot-belly stove.

The Age is collecting further smog photos too.