Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
Stilgherrian’s links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009:
See what happens when you don’t curate your links for ten days, during which time there’s a conference which generates a bazillion things to link to? Sigh.
This is such a huge batch of links that I’ll start them over the fold. They’re not all about Media140 Sydney, trust me.
Continue reading “Links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009”
I’ll be at the Media140 Sydney conference all day Thursday and Friday. If you’re not going, you can still watch everything on the live stream.
I’m taking part in a panel starting at 5pm Thursday, Sydney time: Do Journos Do it Better? Journalists in SocMedia Communities. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m hoping this moves beyond the stale “bloggers vs journalists” (non-)debate.
My fellow panellists are freelance journalist, columnist and blogger Mia Freedman; new media consultant and recovering journalist Bronwen Clune; Valerio Veo, who heads up online news and current affairs at SBS; social media consultant Laurel Papworth; and late addition Dr Lawrie Zion from La Trobe University.
The moderator is Julian Morrow, co-founder of The Chaser, so I suspect they’re looking for a lighter, end-of-day discussion — particularly as there’s a more serious-looking panel earlier in the day called Social Media: Death or Salvation of Professional Journalism?
(I’m not sure why it can’t be both, death and transformation, but still… every headline has to be a binary opposite to turn it into winners and losers. Sigh.)
My own 5-minute rant is summarised in this tweet:
Who cares if journos do It better if It is outdated and no-one wants It? Whatever “It” is. Journalism ain’t newspapers, radio or TV.
Yes, it’s quite deliberate that “It” is capitalised.
The Twitter hashtag is #media140, and I daresay I’ll be posting snippets as it all unfolds. Stay, as they say, tuned.
The reprobates in the photo are me and my fellow panellists at forthcoming the Media140 Sydney conference, where we’ve been given the topic “Do Journos Do it Better? Journalists in SocMedia Communities.” Look out, folks!
From left to right, that’s freelance journalist, columnist and blogger Mia Freedman; new media consultant and recovering journalist Bronwen Clune; Valerio Veo, who heads up online news and current affairs at SBS; social media consultant Laurel Papworth; and me.
Now I’m hoping the discussion doesn’t degenerate back into those tedious bloggers versus journalists arguments from last year. Certainly by year’s end they seemed to have faded. And we do seem to have a more switched-on panel. But we’ll see.
Actually the full conference program looks good, with everyone from ABC managing director Mark Scott and Crikey editor Jonathan Green to… oh, look for yourself.
Media140 Sydney is on 5 and 6 November 2009 at the ABC’s Eugene Goossens’ Hall in Ultimo. Early-bird bookings at $145 close today have been extended to 5 October.
Saturday 27 June 2009. This isn’t exactly the world’s newest Boeing 767-300ER, and there’s slightly too much pubic hair in the toilets. Breakfast is being served, and my stupidly-expensive Moleskine notebook is filling up with notes about the Parable of the Quartered Donkey.
That’s quartered as in hanged, drawn and quartered.
I’m the donkey.
The smiling Kenya Airways staff go about their business of bread rolls and bitter coffee en route from Bangkok to Nairobi, where I’ll change for my flight to Dar es Salaam. I wake from a brief period of something vaguely approximating sleep to the realisation that Project TOTO has one significant flaw: multiple goals, with conflicting requirements.
Something deep in my gut says this is going to be a problem.
Flash forward to today. It’s only two weeks since I arrived in Tanzania and a week since I left again, but the world is eager to analyse the project’s “success” or “failure”. We already have Laurel Papworth’s Stilgherrian: Wherefor art thou, bloggers? (which has triggered some excellent discussion) and Fi Bendall’s Sharing the knowledge: How NGOs can benefit from online consumer awareness.
Both articles are well worth reading. Both highlight what I think is a serious problem: short-term thinking.
Continue reading “Breakfast over Mogadishu: fear at (almost) 36,000 feet”
Here’s my 5-minute presentation from WebForward@CeBIT last week, on the importance of authenticity when using social media for business.
It’s recorded on a Nokia N80 phone by Mike Seyfang so it’s a bit rough, but you’ll get the content. You’ll also hear me swear a few times because, well, that’s apparently what I’m now expected to do.
One key theme is that if businesses try to micro-manage every aspect of the communication between their employees and the rest of the world — denying that there are mistakes, or that some people don’t like them — they’ll end up becoming paranoid psychotics. I hope to expand upon that in due course.
Mike also recorded the presentations from my co-panellists Hugo Ortega, Kate Carruthers and Nick Hodge, but not Laurel Papworth for some reason.
I did see a “proper” video camera on the day, so I think CeBIT will place higher-resolution video online in due course. I’ll let you know if and when that happens.
[Update 22 March 2014: Since the Qik video service will cease to exist on 30 April 2014, I’ve embedded a YouTube copy of that video instead.]
Last year I told CeBIT to FOAD after I’d been underwhelmed in 2007. They said thank you, and issued me with a discount code and a media pass. This year they’ve invited me to participate in a panel at WebForward@CeBIT. That means I can offer two random scroungers deserving readers a cheap ticket.
CeBIT is the big IT trade show thingy running 12 to 14 May, with a bunch of conference streams attached. WebForward@CeBIT is one of them.
On 14 May I’ll be joining my colleagues Laurel Papworth, Kate Carruthers, Nick Hodge, Hugo Ortega (who I don’t think I’ve met) and chairman Jye Smith to discuss how you can “Capitalise on Social Media for Business”.
Because I’m a panellist, I get two tickets to the full 2-day conference at a discounted price of $178 + GST instead of the listed $1295 + GST.
If you’d like one of these discounted tickets, make your case by 9am Sydney time on Wednesday 6 May. Explain why you’re deserving, and I’ll pick the two scams reasons I like.
If you miss out, you can still save $160 off the on-site registration price by using the promotional code stilwebca09. You’ll need to insert the code when prompted during on-line registration at www.mycebit.com.au.