Stilgherrian » topic 9

My first posts at Topic 9

Stilgherrian — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:44:23 +0000

I’ve started posting things over at Topic 9, the website I set up for my contributions to the Australia 2020 Summit and beyond. Illness prevented me going to BarCampSydney 3 on the weekend, so the question What can we do here? is still open. I’ve also posted a list of the delegates to the governance topic, and a summary of the starter questions in the topic area’s official background paper.

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The problem with changing what you do…

Stilgherrian — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:21:52 +0000

… is that if you want to do a New Thing, you have to choose an Old Thing to stop doing. Otherwise you run out of hours in the day. And that doesn’t work.

I’ve written before how I’m starting a business called Skank Media, and the new Topic 9 website is the first project out of the starting gate. Certainly since the beginning of this year I’ve been spending more time writing too: 133 posts in January 2008 compared with just 16 a year before. I’ve spent more time in dialogs online too, re-establishing links with my community.

What’s the Old Thing that’s stopped?

I’ve been getting less sleep, certainly. And less exercise. But I’ve also been doing less work for my “old” business, Prussia.Net — and therein lies a problem. Prussia.Net is what generates the income.

Oops.

Yes, cashflows are down. And because I wanted to change Prussia.Net itself, that change process takes more time of its own too. Some client projects are running terribly late. I even lost a wonderful long-term client a few weeks ago because I couldn’t dedicate enough time to their change process.

Big Oops.

So for me, today’s the day I start sorting out that chronological challenge. Here’s how I’ll proceed…

Since Prussia.Net pays the bills (and there’s plenty of bills to be paid) I’ll tackle that business first and sort out the timelines for the rest of this month. Then I’ll see how much time that leaves for Topic 9 in the two weeks until the Australia 2020 Summit. Once I know that magic number of X hours, at BarCampSydney 3 this weekend I’ll talk to people and figure out how I can best spend that time doing something about the Summit. I think that’s the right strategy because presumably I should exercise my geek skills as best I can — and fellow geeks can make good suggestions.

That means I’ll definitely be at BarCampSydney on Sunday. I’ve even written an explanation over at Topic 9.

Whaddyareckon, folks?

[Note: This post was very much me "thinking aloud". I figured that if I had to explain it all to you, then I'd be forced to get it clear in my own head. That's been a valuable technique -- but do you want to see this sort of post?]

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Topic 9 website finally launched!

Stilgherrian — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:20:41 +0000

I’ve finally launched the website for my adventures to the Australia 2020 Summit and beyond: Topic 9 at topic9.com.au.

It’s pretty sparse to begin with, and I’m not quite sure exactly what I’ll be doing there — so suggestions are more than welcome. Some thoughts so far are:

Gathering links to everyone else’s writing about this topic area for the Summit.
Articles on people or ideas on how government could work in the future.
Interviews with the delegates before they hit Canberra.
Act as a central point of contact for whatever media coverage we can generate out of the summit, whether I go or not.

I certainly need to spice up the design a bit. I’ve kept the Tarski theme as used on this website and Skank Media for consistency, but it needs a tad more differentiation. soon, my precious ones, soon…

Any other ideas?

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Topic 9 to discuss Australia 2020 Summit’s government topic

Stilgherrian — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:28:42 +0000

I’ve just registered the Internet domain topic9.com.au, where I’ll set up a blog to discuss topic number 9 of the Australia 2020 Summit: “The future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, a more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.”

I won’t have time to do anything with it until (probably) tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, can you suggest people who might be interesting contributors?