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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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Quote of the Day, 18 June 2008

Stilgherrian — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:17:29 +0000

Such a fuss over new version of the Firefox web browser today and Apple opening a new shop in Sydney tomorrow! The feral goldfish are all a’flutter, feeling left out if they don’t have the latest news this very second. Thank the gods for Richard Chirgwin.

In a discussion about how digital rights management will affect sales of Vista, he writes:

The actual adoption of Windows-based broadcast TV recording among mainstream users is pitifully small. It’s easier in every way for Joe Sixpack to buy a black box hard disk recorder.

Hence, although in many ways I think Vista is a dead duck anyway, DNR flagging won’t change its future one way or the other…

I can’t get the excitement about media centres, myself. Quite simply, why would I rearrange the house or run cables just to hook the TV to the computer, when I can put the recorder where the TV is?

PC-based Media Centres, whether Apple or Microsoft or Linux, have a specific target market: people for whom getting this sort of crap to work creates a sense of achievement which serves as a surrogate for the ability to do things that are actually useful…

Hear hear!

In a follow-up, Avi Miller said:

I challenge you to find an HD-PVR with the same functionality, size and form of the Mac Mini.

“Challenge”, eh?

Yes, let’s issue “challenges” about arbitrary mixes of functionality in a particularly-shaped black (or, in this case, white) box. Lets “challenge” someone to find something that isn’t a Mac Mini that looks like (has the “form” of) a Mac Mini.

As first glance, this looks like precisely the kind of techno-macho-wank that Richard was talking about.

Running water and sewerage, people, then health care and education… and then perhaps we can worry about what shape the digital TV recorder is…

[Update 8.40am: Avi Miller writes: "Sorry, I seem to have misplaced the in the original email. My reply was intended to be the exact techno-macho-wank previously implied." Ah, irony! Such a tricky beast...]

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Links for 01 June 2008 through 02 June 2008

del.icio.us — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:56:30 +0000

My links for 01 June 2008 through 02 June 2008, gathered semi-automatically:

The Twitter backchannel | Memex 1.1: A explanation of why Eurovision is the perfect Twitter event. This bookmark is dedicated to Mark Pesce.
Virtually on parity | Steven Poole: Magnificent deconstruction of how Microsoft re-wrote an article about "misunderstood" features in Windows Vista.
Alternative boondoggles | Charlie’s Diary: If the $523B to $3T spent on the Iraq War was put to some useful purpose, what could it achieve? Interesting suggestions, and trolls in the comments are dealt with swiftly.

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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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Heaps o’tweets from ReMIX 08

Stilgherrian — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:45:20 +0000

I’ve been Twittering fairly extensively from ReMIX 08. While it’s easy enough to follow my Twitter feed, you can get a mix of everyone’s tweets from the conference at hashtags.org or Twemes. The second one has all of my tweets.

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What I’m doing for ReMIX 08

Stilgherrian — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:05:33 +0000

Tomorrow is the first day of my three geek-intensive days this week: Microsoft ReMIX 08, where they’ll be pimping their new technologies for making web stuff. I now have a plan!

I won’t copy what mainstream media folks do: either puff pieces extolling the wond’rousness of all things Microsoft or stories about how someone else did the same thing years ago, depending on how much of their advertising comes from Microsoft. Instead, I’ll see what I can learn from the assembled geeks about the state of their world — vox pops of some kind.

I’ve also booked a one-on-one interview with Tim Aidlin, a “Design Evangelist” in Microsoft’s Web Innovations Team. But rather than focussing on Microsoft’s new geek tools I’ll be exploring his worldview.

I’ve borrowed a Canon HV20 digital video camera for the week (thanks Garth!) so you’ll see at least some of the results on Thursday night’s Stilgherrian Live Alpha. Everything will be put online in some form, eventually.

For live updates during the conference, follow my Twitter feed.

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How will I cope with the looming Geek Week?

Stilgherrian — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:32:54 +0000

Next week is packed! How can I get the best value out of CeBIT Sydney and the associated Transaction 2.0 conference, as well as Microsoft’s ReMIX 08? What should I record or broadcast? What should I write about?

CeBIT was always on my agenda. Despite being disappointing last year and despite annoying me with a flood of email, it’s still the biggest IT trade show in Australia. It’s worth going just to see who’s confidently spending money on promotion, if nothing else.

I’ll be touring the trade show floor on Wednesday 21 May. If you want to meet up, let me know. Maybe I should even do a Stilgherrian Live Alpha from the bloggers media room? Whaddyathink?

If you still haven’t organised your free pass, you can register online using my promotion code: stilcs08.

On Thursday 22 May I’ll be at Transaction 2.0, with an interesting set of speakers. Again, it’s a matter of choosing the priorities. Who should I talk to? Should I pick a fight with Jason Calacanis?

But I kick off the Geek Week on Tuesday 20 May with ReMIX 08, where Microsoft says I’ll “experience all that is new in Silverlight 2, Expression 2, IE8, Live and a host of other great web technologies… You will also see how local Australian innovators are creating the next generation of engaging websites and unprecedented user experiences for the web.”

Provided they build it with Microsoft’s tools, of course.

That’s unfair. Microsoft is changing. It’ll be interesting to hear what they’re up to.

Now my only challenge is working out how all this fits into one week, while still leaving room to do some billable hours for clients.

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More Thoughts on Twitter

Stilgherrian — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:21:05 +0000

Weird. I was thinking that today I might write about how I’ve been using Twitter recently, and I’ve just found myself writing in its defence.

Over on the Link mailing list were talking about Microsoft’s new Live Mesh when I noted:

It’s been interesting to watch the vastly different reaction here on Link with the (mostly) very positive reaction amongst the alpha geeks in my circle of friends on Twitter.

There, the reaction is all “When can I get a Mac version?” and “How can I hook this into X technology?” and about exploring the possibilities — what can be achieved. Here on Link, the reaction is often negative, “How can it go wrong?”, “Where do you sue?”.

Both reactions are necessary to provide a balanced response to a new technology. How to we get them to meet?

Systems administrator Craig Sanders was quick to respond, and I must admit I found his response to be almost a stereotype — something I later dubbed “old man syndrome”.

Craig wrote:

yes, well, there’s your explanation.

gross, but mostly accurate, generalisation follows:

Twitter is the lowest form of blogging, with everything worthwhile about blogging removed, and all the most annoying things about instant messaging added.

it is basically just an avenue for vacuous people to instantly spew every trivial thought that flitters through their minds. people don’t need more communications tools. they need to learn how to shut up. and how to think before opening their mouths.

learning to think before forming an opinion would be a good idea too. but that’s probably way too much to hope for, i’ll settle for people learning how to shut up.

My reply [slightly edited for the web rather than email]:

I don’t know how much you look at what’s been written about human communication, Craig, but this is just plain wrong. The VAST majority of human communication is what you’d call “trivial thoughts” — the constant stream of social bonding that holds any group together. It’s MEANT to be ephemeral, since it’s about the now.

I’ve written specifically on this, and there’s an excellent little Canadian video…

This ephemeral communication is how we explore and solidify our own thoughts and beliefs. We DO say what comes into our heads. And then we monitor the reactions of those around us and decide whether we need to modify our thoughts or not. All Twitter does is put that constant chatter onto teh interwebs, so it can happen at a distance.

I must admit, all I’m detecting here is “old man syndrome”: that the new tool to do this task is “bad”, ‘cos there’s on “old” tool which you may use for this task. Or is that off the mark?

I don’t mean that particularly personally. I had much the same reaction to Twitter until I actually used it to stay in touch with some of my friends and colleagues. Some of them, as you’ll see from the comments on my blog post, still have that belief.

I think the reaction is akin to the parents of teenagers in 1960s American sitcoms, wondering what their kids were doing on the phone “all the time”. The answer is “forming and maintaining their network of friends, their social connections and their group bond with their peers, using different methods from their parents”.

I also observed that “Opinion-forming is a group activity”.

I reckon Twitter has hit a sweet spot in terms of message size, immediacy, accessibility and so on. Now all they need do is figure out some sort of business model to pay for it — because currently someone’s haemorrhaging money to make it possible.

[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh's cartoons published online, it's free to use.]

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Note to Harvey Norman

Stilgherrian — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:19:47 +0000

Dear Harvey Norman: When you sell someone a new computer and tell them that “everything’s on there”, please explain that you’ve only dumped a copy of their old hard drive onto it, and that it’s still a few hours’ work to download and install software, put data in the right place and generally configure things. You might also like to explain that the “student and teacher” editions of Microsoft Office you’re trying to push aren’t actually able to be used by people running a commercial business.

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Who owns what on the Internet

Stilgherrian — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:02:56 +0000

Amy Webb (now there’s an aptonym!) has updated her diagram of who owns the new media landscape. It’s also available as a PDF file.

Coming soon, a widget and RSS feed to help you track acquisitions and mergers in media.

I must admit, I’d much rather see this sort of data presented as a directed graph of ownership relationships, rather than simple lists — something like this diagram. The size of the nodes could represent the companies’ market capitalisation, and width of the lines the percentage ownership or something.

Still, it’s a handy-enough reference.

Hat-Tip to Lee Hopkins.

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Even better commentary on Microsoft/Yahoo! merger

Stilgherrian — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:33:41 +0000

My commentary on a Microsoft/Yahoo! merger was sarcastic, but Fake Steve Jobs has even better visual imagery. “The Borg-Yahoo merger won’t work. Here’s why. It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.” And “Imagine a circus act in which two enormous, clumsy, awkward elephants that don’t really like each other are supposed to mate while riding on skateboards.” Hat-tip to Mark Pesce.

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Message to Microsoft: You can’t buy cool

Stilgherrian — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 03:45:29 +0000

My commentary on Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo! has been published in Crikey. ~~It’s behind the paywall, but a free trial is available. I’ll write a public piece tomorrow.~~

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Bill’s last day at Microsoft

Stilgherrian — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:14:06 +0000

This video about Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft would be even funnier if it wasn’t for Bono’s pathetic attempt at relevance. Still, nice to see Mr Gates manages to self-promote to the very end.

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2007: Social media goes mainstream (except for business and politics)

Stilgherrian — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 11:36:46 +0000

If 2006 was the year of Web 2.0 then 2007 is the year of social media. For individuals anyway. Australian businesses and politicians generally don’t “get it”.

Social media is mainstream. Two million Australians have Facebook pages and 3.5 million read blogs. MSN Messenger has 7 million users here, and even Ja’mie King says “I’ll MSN u 2nite” without explanation.

But few businesses use social media. Why? I suspect there’s two reasons, apart from an endemic inability to adapt and change. One is about the tools, the other is about business culture.

So far most social media tools have come from start-ups with funny names like Flickr and Twitter and YouTube. Media reports of the Next Big Thing are usually pitched as “look what those weird young folk are doing”. When the Next Big Thing becomes mainstream, the media ADHD attention span has moved on. So the impression is that it’s all a plaything for kiddies.

The second problem is that social media goes against the grain of how most businesses operate.

Back before the federal election, I said that politicians only see social media as a kind of TV, another outlet for their centrally-planned Soviet-style “campaigns”. Businesses have the same problem. They see 2 million Australians on Facebook and want to push their advertising at them. They see the social media websites as just another advertising medium to buy into.

That misses the point. Social media is about conversation.

Businesses are very bad at conversation.

Business usually want to pretend everything’s always perfect, and control all communication so it’s “on brand”.

As a result, when they try working with social media they tend to take one of two fundamentally wrong approaches.

They act like boors at a party, loudly parroting their brand message without actually participating in the conversation. No matter what’s being said around them, they hold up a sign with their logo and shout “Product X will make you trim and sexy.” Or whatever.
They set up their own private conversation forum — and then edit out anything negative.

Either way, people soon stop listening.

The first problem might be solved when social media tools come from mainstream providers like Microsoft. Windows Live Writer, a free blogging tool for Windows, kicks that off.

Interestingly, Microsoft itself is encouraging their staff to write blogs. Their corporate blogging policy isn’t 45 pages of legalese but a simple set of bullet points.

The second problem is harder, because it means businesses themselves need to change to embrace honesty, transparency and authenticity of communication.

Even Microsoft recognises this is a generational change. As one young employee said, “The old guard is highly competitive, the new guard is more collaborative… It’ll be at least another decade before the outside world starts recognizing the change that’s currently happening internally.”

Coincidentally, Hugh MacLeod has written about this very issue only today, in a piece about what’s starting to be called The New Marketing. His key points for me are:

3. The most important asset in The New Marketing is “having something worth talking about”. This makes certain marketing people squeamish. A lot of us grew up in an era of flashy commercials for rather uninspiring products, and something in our DNA makes us believe that’s the proper way to go about things.

4. If I had one big insight from the last year, is how The New Marketing has everything to do with how your product or service acts as a “Social Object“. Kudos to Jyri Engestrom for turning me on to it.

And:

10. Why is it so hard to explain The New Marketing to large companies? Because the people who work there are simply not prepared to relinquish the idea of control. Live by metrics, die by metrics etc.

The “mass media” of the industrial age allowed you to mass-produce your message for… well, the masses. The “social media” of the post-industrial age allow you to hold many, individual conversations, en masse.

Disclosure: Some of the ideas in this article emerged during a geek dinner where Microsoft paid the bill. This is an expanded version of an article originally written for Crikey.