Stilgherrian » andrew bartlett

Politics & Technology Forum videos & tweets

Stilgherrian — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:36:45 +0000

Until I get time to write my essay about last week’s Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra, you can relive it on your own.

Thanks to Microsoft’s Nick Hodge, you can view videos of Matt Bai’s keynote address, Panel 1 on Blogging, social networks, political movements and the media with Annabel Crabb, Peter Black and Mark Textor, and Panel 2 on Politics 2.0: information technology and the future of political campaigning with Joe Hockey, Senator Andrew Bartlett, Senator Kate Lundy and Antony Green.

You can also trawl back through the Twitter stream using Summize.com. There’s a lot of material, though, so unless you’re a complete political junkie and want to read through it while listening to the discussions you may want to wait for my essay.

[Disclosure: I was in Canberra as a guest of Microsoft.]

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In Canberra!

Stilgherrian — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:03:29 +0000

As previously warned, I’m in Canberra for tomorrow’s Politics & Technology Forum as a guest of that little husband-and-wife firm called Microsoft.

I’ve repeated the programme below, but right now my head is spinning with ideas. PubCamp Sydney was bad enough, what with conversations coming left, right and centre. And I watched the Twitter stream from Melbourne’s event yesterday — and I’m still processing the thoughts.

But this…!

My Twitter stream will use the hashtag #poltech and you’ll be able to track everything at Summize.com.

Meanwhile, tonight I’ll be reading, thinking and pondering over a quiet drink courtesy of that minibar over there [points]. If I have any amazing insights I’ll let you know.

I may even so an impromptu Stilgherrian Live Alpha later this evening. Watch Twitter for the announcement.

Politics & Technology Forum Programme

Keynote: Matt Bai, political writer for the New York Times magazine.

Panel 1: “Blogging, social networks, political movements and the media”, with Brett Solomon from GetUp!; Annabel Crabb from the Sydney Morning Herald; Peter Black from QUT; spin doctor Mark Textor of Crosby Textor, who ran the Howard government’s failed re-election campaign; and the editor of Crikey Jonathan Green.

Panel 2: “Politics 2.0: information technology and the future of political campaigning”, with Joe Hockey, the Liberal member for North Sydney; Senator Andrew Bartlett of the Australian Democrats; Labor Senator Kate Lundy (ACT); and election analyst extraordinaire Antony Green.

[P.S. Is Matt Bai the person to whom someone first said "kthxbai"?]

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Oh dear, I’m going to Canberra…

Stilgherrian — Mon, 26 May 2008 23:09:15 +0000

… for Australia’s inaugural Politics & Technology Forum on 25 June. It’s being sponsored by Microsoft, and I’m going as their guest. Apparently I continue to fool them.

The keynote is by Matt Bai, political writer for the New York Times magazine, followed by two panel discussions.

Panel 1 is on “Blogging, social networks, political movements and the media”, with Brett Solomon from GetUp!; Annabel Crabb from the Sydney Morning Herald; Peter Black from QUT; spin doctor Mark Textor of Crosby Textor, who ran the Howard government’s failed re-election campaign; and the editor of Crikey Jonathan Green. It’ll be nice to finally meet my editor!

Panel 2 is “Politics 2.0: information technology and the future of political campaigning”, with Joe Hockey, the Liberal member for North Sydney; Senator Andrew Bartlett of the Australian Democrats; Labor Senator Kate Lundy (ACT); and election analyst extraordinaire Antony Green. Very scary indeed.

At this stage it looks like I’ll be heading to Canberra on 24 June and staying overnight. If this is of interest, please register as a stalker in the usual way.

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Internet censorship dumbness

Stilgherrian — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:24:16 +0000

The Rudd government’s plan to force ISP’s to provide a “clean feed” of the Internet free of pornography and “inappropriate material” (whatever that might be) has already generated plenty of informed criticism. However what worries me more is Senator Stephen Conroy’s disgustingly disingenuous framing of the debate.

Labor makes no apologies to those who argue that any regulation of the Internet is like going down the Chinese road. If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.

As usual, Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett hits the nail on the head, and makes my point for me.

No free speech advocate that I know of advocates such absolute freedom as to defend the provision of child pornography… But the fact it is already illegal shows just how dishonest Conroy’s statement is.

The government’s proposal is not about child pornography at all, which is already seriously illegal online and offline. It is about legal pornography and other ‘inappropriate’ material.

The arguments against this clean-feed idea are simple: it won’t work, and it opens up an unacceptable risk of further government intrusion into our freedom to communicate.

As Senator Bartlett continues:

The catch-all nature of the term ‘inappropriate’ gives me concern. I have little faith that the current government will prove much better than governments everywhere, and be unable to resist the urge to continually increase the scope of what they try to control…

As with every aspect of the measure, until the full details are known its impossible to judge. However, comments like Conroy’s make it much harder to be confident that the government is doing anything other than populist pandering, putting up a feel-good measure which will have no practical impact but create the illusion of doing something effective. Such ineffective actions can even cause harm by lulling parents into a false sense of security, thinking that the internet their kids are accessing at home is effectively filtered when it probably won’t be.

A “clean feed” is impossible. There’s only two ways to identify and block “bad stuff”. Both approaches are used in spam filtering and that’s 100% effective, right? Right.

You have a list of where the bad stuff comes from and block those sites. This appears to be the method being proposed. But with new websites going online every minute, and with the ability to “spread the word” in every child’s hands, a list of “bad” sites can’t possibly be kept up to date.
You look at the content “live” and try to determine whether it’s good or bad on the fly. However trying to identify “inappropriate” material automatically generates too many false positives. Legitimate material would be blocked by accident. Unacceptable.

In any event, simple tools already exist to circumvent filters like this. They’ll be adapted and available to every Australian child within hours of these filters going live.

The question to ask is “Why is Conroy framing this debate so harshly?”

I doubt it’s because he’s stupid, because so far he’s shown every sign of intelligence. Is it because he’s one of the “union thugs” John Howard warned us about? If so, it’s time for him to learn a more nuanced debating style. But surely he’s been around long enough to learn a bit of subtlety?

I reckon Tim Dunlop has the answer: Stephen Conroy is Labor’s numbers man in the Senate.

The government is ultimately going to have to deal with a Senate that includes the likes of Family First. That party’s Senator Fielding has already commented upon the filtering proposal saying, “Australian families want more [internet protection] and deserve more than they are currently getting, and this is a real test for the Rudd Government.” It is not beyond the realms of possibility that this is all a sop to Family First in order to garner their support in other matters. Real politik, in other words.

With legislation to come first, then trials supposedly happening later this year, that gives plenty of time for Family First to agree to something simpler to implement before the trials turn out (surprise!) to be a failure.

Maybe Senator Conroy is even deliberately making the proposal so outrageous that it will be shot down.

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Rediscovering the language of moderation

Stilgherrian — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 23:20:16 +0000

I’m a big fan of joined-up thinking. You know, not just looking at each individual piece, but looking at how they fit together (or not) and what that tells us about The Big Picture. But there doesn’t seem to be much joined-up thinking in contemporary Australian politics.

Take, for example, “economic management”. Senator Andrew Bartlett wrote about this very point yesterday:

The battle for bragging rights about which party is supposedly the best economic manager is faintly ludicrous, given that both sides at various times have made a point of emphasising how similar their basic tax and economic policies are to the other – with the partial exception of workplace relations. The posturing about supposedly conservative good economic management is even more absurd – and indeed somewhat alarming – when one realises that these almost identical economic policies are neither conservative nor even very coherent.

Yes. I don’t understand how these facts all fit into one coherent picture:

Lots of money coming in from big mining boom.
Schools, hospitals, roads, trains, ports all in need of “urgent” fixes.
Reserve Bank worried about inflationary measures.
$34 billion in tax cuts! Spend, spend, spend!

Bartlett quotes a piece from George Megalogenis in The Australian which ends:

The task for Australia’s political class is to rediscover the language of moderation. Leadership at this stage of a 17-year growth cycle means telling voters that they can’t have it all.

But how do you tell Howard’s Battlers, the Kath & Kims of Australia, they they can’t have it all, and that the world isn’t just about them repeating the mantra of “I want! I want!”? The answers, it seems, is that you don’t. You just stay in your state of denial and hope for the best.

The Coalition launches its re-election campaign today — yes, I know that the entire year so far therefore has not been a campaign, just some sort of cheese grater. So it’ll be interesting to see whether they’ll propose a coherent plan for Australia’s future that actually addresses these core economic issues. My money is on the “No” vote for that one.

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PodCamp Perth 2007: Social Media and the Federal Election

Stilgherrian — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:24:05 +0000

Here’s a video of my presentation from PodCamp Perth 2007.

Thanks to Stewart Greenhill for the video work. As Stephen says:

I’ve put them on Viddler because it supports long videos and has some nifty tagging and commenting features. Feel free to be social: if you see something fun or interesting just click on the green “+” button and add a comment. That way, if people don’t have time to watch the whole thing at least we can check out the highlights. If you see the word “PROGRESSIVE” in the bottom left, click on it to switch to STREAMING mode. You can skip to any point in the movie by clicking in the seek bar, or on a comment point.

Alas, the very end is missing thanks to a flat camera battery. Mind you, Stephen wasn’t the only one to “experience technical difficulties”.

[Update 15 January 2007: I believe I have a complete audio recording of the session. If there's enough interest I'll combine it with my slides and this video, and/or generate a transcript.]

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2007: The (Second) Last TV Election

Stilgherrian — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:11:08 +0000

The next time someone says we’re experiencing Australia’s “first Internet election” or our “first YouTube election”, slap them. Slap them very hard.

Our politicians only see the Internet and the emerging social media as a different kind of TV. YouTube is a place to post commercials, MySpace and Facebook for media releases. Their use of social media is so clueless that geeks attending PodCamp in Perth this Saturday were laughing.

Far from this being the “first Internet election”, it’s more like the The Last Television Election. Maybe the second-last.

Mainstream media was all a-flutter over the recursive TV ad of Howard watching Rudd watching Howard. Why?

It was posted on YouTube. Big deal. Any 13-year-old with a computer can do that.
It was posted within 24 hours of Rudd’s advert. Again, big deal. TV current affairs crews turn around little movies every afternoon.

As of 9am yesterday morning, it had been viewed 20,754 times. The other YouTube videos from LiberalParty07 have around 2,000 views or fewer. Pathetic.

By comparison, Sydney-based Cyrius01’s satire Bennelong Time had 31,702 views: 50% more. An ordinary citizen, with no help from a political party, has a bigger impact than the PM and his team.

The Internet is still a sideshow. The real political hit comes when they’re reported by mainstream media like ABC News with 1.2 million viewers, or even Lateline at a quarter of a million.

The problem with the politicians’ use of social media? They completely miss the basic concept: it’s about conversation.

They’re still locked into a centrally-planned one-way industrial age media model, talking at the public with a broadcast message. Political strategies are still crafted like the Soviet economy of 1948.

John Howard’s MySpace page is a disaster. “About Me” is a copy-and-paste Liberal media release. There are no blog posts, no comments. It’s his presence on the biggest social network site, but nobody’s home. The only personal fact is that he’s 68 — reminding MySpace’s youthful audience that he’s “old”.

Kevin Rudd’s isn’t much better. At least there’s content, but still nothing you couldn’t discover from the ALP website.

The only federal politician who gets it is Senator Andrew Bartlett. He’s been blogging for three years. His MySpace page reveals his music and film tastes. He was a drummer in a goth band. You get to know the man and, like him or not, at least you can form an opinion. A shame he probably won’t survive the election.

[Note: This is a slightly-edited version of an article I wrote yesterday for Crikey, building on a piece I wrote last week.]

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Politicians and Social Media: a catalogue of cluelessness

Stilgherrian — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:03:37 +0000

I’ll be in Perth on 27–28 October for PodCamp, the New Media Community UnConference, where I’m presenting a session on Social Media and the Federal Election.

While my first visit to Perth will be fun enough, I’m also enjoying researching my presentation. Australian politicians really don’t have a clue about this stuff.

Starting at the top of the food chain, John Howard’s MySpace profile is a disaster. The screenshot (right) records how it looked this morning — with a a broken rectangle obscuring part of the photo and adverts for the Labor party. Click for the full-size version.

MySpace is the world’s largest and best-known social media operation. Yet this profile doesn’t have anything to offer apart from a recycled media release. No blog entries. Not even any personal information beyond Howard’s age — reminding MySpace’s relatively youthful audience that he’s “old”.

How could John Howard’s personal profile not even mention cricket? If a profile contains even less information than we already know, why would we bother reading it? Why would we bother coming back?

At the other end of the spectrum — in more ways than one! — is Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett.

He’s been blogging at The Bartlett Diaries since August 2004, and his fresh, personal style provides an engaging look behind the scenes in Canberra.

Senator Bartlett’s MySpace profile is a real profile.

OK, it still looks crap. That’s MySpace for you. But we learn that he listens to Joy Division and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He likes movies like Brazil and Team America: World Police. He’s adding blog entries, some of which are from only a few days ago. He’s making a real connection with people and, most importantly, giving them a reason to come back.

John Howard has 9 MySpace friends — one of whom is “Tom”, everybody’s default friend. Senator Bartlett has 718.

Unfortunately, most Australian politicians use social media like John Howard, not Andrew Bartlett.

I’ll be adding further thoughts over the next week as I prepare for PodCamp. But meanwhile, some questions for you:

What do you think of politicians’ attempts to use social media like MySpace, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and podcasts?
Does it matter to you if politicians reveal more of their personal world? Does it help or hinder their political goals?
Have you seen any efforts by politicians which are either particularly good or particularly bad?
Does any of this affect your vote? No, really.

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Tagged! 5 favourite feeds

Stilgherrian — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:46:58 +0000

Oh dear, Zhasper tagged me with one of those “tell us your 5 favourite feeds” memes. At least it wasn’t “5 things you may not know about me,” or I’d be forced to emulate Hugh MacLeod’s sarcastic reply. OK, here we go…

Actually, I’m going to give you two sets of five. My really favourite feeds are from people unlikely to play this game, but I’m sure to read them every day.

Gaping Void, Hugh McLeod’s insightful cartoons drawn on the back of business cards. I also appreciate his observations on blog-led business marketing. I should also mention Indexed in this context, even though it’s not quite a must-read yet.
Freakonomics, the blog of the book of the same name.
I agree with Zhasper that The Bartlett Diaries is a fine political blog.
Josh Spear spends his days cruising around to see what’s cool. Lucky him.
Crikey. OK, I cheated. It’s an email newsletter, not an RSS feed. Sue me.

On a more personal note:

If I don’t start with Out to Space and Pong’s Flickr feed, I’ll be in serious trouble.
My friend and colleague Zern Liew’s Eicolab, even if he does have a rant against Apple today.
Man About Town, a personal blog by my friend Richard Watts in Melbourne — always an eclectic mix of personal anecdotes and arts reviews. I’d never reveal so much of my, erm, vices!
The Other Andrew’s delightfully-written personal observations would continue to fascinate me, even if I hadn’t know him for years.
Bad Language by Matthew Stibbe is my daily fix of writing about writing.

Now, your responses please! And if you’re reading this but haven’t been tagged, I’d love to hear from you anyway. Post a comment! You know you want to!