Stilgherrian – Page 170

05 April 2015

It’s time to turn around the Revenue Ship, and fast

I knew the first three months of 2015 had been bad for business — or at least my little patch of business — but I hadn’t realised it was this bad. Turns out it was my second-worst quarter in more than four years! Drastic action and ruthless decisions are required.

Yes, this is another of my occasional thinking-aloud reflections on my personal circumstances. If you don’t like this sort of thing, then stop reading now. Read this instead.

Still with me? Lovely.

Yesterday I updated my “media objects” chart, which counts how many things I’ve created for each media outlet, regardless of relative complexity or what income was generated. It serves as a handy proxy for revenue — because certain revenue figures are confidential.

It’s a depressing image. At best, Q1 of 2015 was no worse than Q1 of the previous year, but overall it’s still a picture of decline. Literally depressing, in fact, because I’ve left in a couple of health-related markers that I was using to analyse something else.

Back at the end of 2012, I’d tried to inject a little more strategy into the way I ran the business side of making media. This and other charts were some of the tools I created, last updated in February 2014. It’s fair to say that I haven’t really developed any kind of strategy out of the information in those charts, and this new chart illustrates the results from doing that nothing. Go me.

This chart doesn’t reflect certain positives, however. There’s now crowdsourced funding for The 9pm Edict podcast. I also do some minor work for the University of Technology Sydney, and I consult on some other media projects too. There’s also fragmentary revenue from the legacy clients of my IT business.

But I do need to raise my income levels back to something more like they were a few years ago. The next step is to do something about it. And that has been the nature of my ponderings across this Easter long weekend.

02 April 201525 January 2019

Announcing “The 9pm Intermission”

Ah yeah, hello. Careful listeners will have noticed that there hasn’t been an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast since early March. And it’s now early April. Sorry about that.

I had most of the pre-production done for an episode on 24 March, and then I got a cold, and then five days later much of what I’d written had become… obsolete as time passed.

So fuck time, basically. In fact, fuck most of physics, because physics does nothing but get in the way of doing anything truly interesting in this world. And fuck science generally.

02 April 2015

Talking Bitcoin’s blockchain on 2SER’s The Wire

The Wire logo On Monday I recorded an interview on Bitcoin’s secret sauce, the blockchain, with The Wire, the current affairs program for Australia’s community radio network produced by 2SER in Sydney. It went to air that night as past their story Blockchains to the rescue?

It was only a couple of years ago that Bitcoin was taking the world by storm — the price rocketing by hundreds of percent. Since then, however, it has fallen into obscurity, with less and less companies accepting it as payment. But even if Bitcoin does not make it as a full fledged currency, the technology behind it may find a place elsewhere.

Journalist Josh Nicholas also spoke with Professor David Glance, Director of University of Western Australia’s Centre for Software Practice. The narrative contrasts my enthusiasm, for want of a better work, with Glance’s scepticism. That’s probably down to the questions asked and the editing, because I suspect our views are actually much the same.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.6MB)

The audio is Â©2015 2SER-FM 107.3. It’s also available at The Wire program website — that’s exactly the same as what you can hear here, it’s just that the audio file here has my branding — and you can also listen to the entire episode.

22 March 2015

Weekly Wrap 250: Melbourne abbreviated, and derp

My week of Monday 16 to Sunday 22 March 2015 didn’t quite go to plan, but the changes were mostly just irritations.

As mentioned last week, I had planned to stay on in Melbourne for a few days, but a closer look at the budget made it clear that wasn’t possible. And then my return flight on Thursday was delayed, for two reasons. One, Melbourne Airport’s air traffic control tower was evacuated for some reason, putting a spanner in the works. Two, just as my plane was finally about to leave, a passenger fell ill, and we had to wait until an ambulance arrived.

Still, I gathered plenty of information in Melbourne, and bits and pieces of it will turn up in various writings on the coming weeks.

Articles

Australia’s data-retention debate hits Derpcon Zero, ZDNet Australia, 18 March 2015.

Podcasts

None. The next episode of The 9pm Edict will be on Tuesday 24 March.

5at5

There were only two editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday and Wednesday. The gap in the early part of the week was because I was busy, and in the latter part of the week because I had trouble getting a clean data link to TinyLetter for some reason. You should subscribe, you know.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

From Tuesday through Thursday, I was at the Cisco Live event in Melbourne, as Cisco’s guest. They covered my flights from Sydney, airport transfers, two nights accommodation at the Crown Metropol, food and drink during the conference, and dinner at Bistro Guillaume. Regarding the last, the food and wine was excellent. I had the charcuterie plate, Berkshire pork belly served with picked cabbage and apple salad, and the cheese platter. Etihad Stadium also provided food and drinks for the attending journalists and analysts after we toured their new technical facilities.

The Week Ahead

It’s going to be another busy one, at least in the first half of the week.

On Monday, I’ll be doing most of the production for an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast, as well as the laundry, as well as administrivia.

On Tuesday, I’ll be taking the train to Sydney for a lunchtime briefing by Oracle on the cloud and big data. I’m wondering if anything has actually changed with them things. I’ll also be preparing my entries for the IT Journalism Awards, also known as The Lizzies, and dealing with a few errands.

On Wednesday, I’m heading in to Sydney again for the Rewind/Fast Forward conference. The program seems interesting, and I think I’ll ge getting plenty of usable material there too.

On Thursday and Friday, I’ll be writing a column for ZDNet Australia, writing something else, and working on the much-delayed ebook — though I haven’t locked those activities into specific timeslots yet.

The weekend is unplanned, but Saturday will of course include the NSW state election.

[Photo: VH-VUE touches down in Melbourne. VH-VUE is a Boeing 737 Next Gen, and on 17 March 2015 it was flying Virgin Australia flight VA834 SYD-MEL. While it was a rainy day, most of the vertical streaks in this image are from the crinkled window treatment.]

15 March 201517 March 2015

Weekly Wrap 249: A snake, a seal and some aeroplanes

My week of Monday 9 to Sunday 15 March 2015 wasn’t quite as hectic as last week, but that was deliberate.

I even managed to fit in my planned visit to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) on Saturday — a journey that necessitated four hours of train travel there, and another four hours back. I’ve uploaded a rough cut of the photos I took. The full-resolution images will be uploaded in due course.

I also encountered animals. On Wednesday, I met the Sydney Harbour Seal. That’s it pictured above. And last weekend — on Sunday, but after I’d already posted the Weekly Wrap — I met a young Eastern Brown Snake (Pseudonaja textilis) on the pathway near Wentworth Falls railway station. Here’s a picture.

Articles

It’s time to disrupt the disruptor pop culture, Australia, ZDNet Australia, 10 March 2015.

There’s also a feature story still working its way through the production pipeline at ZDNet Australia.

Podcasts

None. The next episode of The 9pm Edict will be on Tuesday 24 March.

5at5

There were five editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. You should subscribe, you know.

Media Appearances

None. They seem to come in bursts.

Corporate Largesse

On Wednesday, I went to MuleSoft’s press lunch in the Trawler Room at Wolfies Restaurant, Circular Quay. The food was excellent, as always. I had the creamy fish, mussel, leek and potato chowder finished with prawn oil followed by the twice-cooked pork belly, braised lentils, buttered savoy cabbage and cider apple relish.

The Week Ahead

It’s going to be a busy one, and Monday will be the calm before the storm — a day of communication, planning, and doing the laundry, with a break at 1130 to interview someone via the telephone.

On Tuesday, I’ll be taking the train to Sydney and then flying to Melbourne for the Cisco LIVE event. Tuesday’s agenda includes a tour of Etihad Stadium, which presumably uses plenty of Cisco technology in its operations, followed by cocktails, followed by dinner. Wednesday is a day full of press conferences and keynote presentations and panel discussions, followed by cocktails, followed by dinner. Thursday sees more keynote presentations and panel discussions, plus interviews, but mercifully no more cocktails. ~~I’m not sure what I’m doing on Thursday night, so feel free to offer suggestions.~~ I’ll be flying back on Thursday evening.

~~I’m staying on in Melbourne for the rest of the week.~~

On Friday, I’ll be having a few work-related meetings, and will be “available for drinks” in the late afternoon and evening. Details TBA. On Saturday, I’m having lunch and drinks with some old friends. From Saturday evening through to late Sunday afternoon, well, I’m open to suggestions. I’ll be flying back to Sydney on Sunday night, and presumably then returning to Wentworth Falls to collapse.

Update 17 March 2015: It turns out that staying on in Melbourne is beyond this month’s budget. Friday through Sunday is currently unplanned.

[Photo: The Sydney Harbour Seal, photographed on 11 March 2015. I don’t know why this one seal, which has taken to sunning itself on the steps near the Sydney Opera House, has captured so much attention.]