The wonderful Marcus Westbury, creator of the TV series Not Quite Art (amongst any other achievements) now has a web presence at www.marcuswestbury.net. Enjoy.
Australia 2020 sumissions close 5pm today
While there’s probably a thousand things I should be doing for my little business, at least part of today will focus on the Australia 2020 Summit because submissions close at 5pm today, AEST.
I find the process odd. While I well understand the need to prevent the summit delegates being overwhelmed, there’s a limit of 500 words on each submission — but also a ban on photographs and other images. Sometimes a diagram could explain things much more effectively, but no this time.
My main challenge, though, is going to be coming up with one clear message for my 500 words. There’s so many things which could be said…
Ranting in the Sunday Age
Following my semi-snarky review of ABC Playback in Crikey last week, journalist Melinda Houston thought I might have something valuable to say for her piece in Melbourne’s Sunday Age yesterday. Apparently I did, ‘cos my quote led the piece, and there was a slab of me later.
The article opened thusly:
“I SUSPECT many people who have had extremely successful careers in television are baffled by what’s happening now,” says former broadcaster and now new media consultant Stilgherrian (yes, just the single name — very 21st century). “They need to spend an afternoon with a bunch of 15-year-olds.”
The self-confessed uber-geek is one of a coterie of middle-aged men who have lost patience with traditional broadcasting. But if he was 15, or even 25, he’d be the norm. Rumours of the death of television may be exaggerated, but there’s no doubt it’s taken a hit.
It’s worth reading the entire article, because it’s a good summary of how the Internet is affecting TV, aimed at a mainstream audience. However I’ll quote my own bits here, just in case Fairfax decide to take it offline one day.
My first posts at Topic 9
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.
[Update 17 February 2010: The website at topic9.com.au has been killed. For the moment, I’ve linked to the pages at the Internet Archive.]
Australia 2020 rejection letter finally arrives
This morning I finally received a letter (pictured) telling me that I hadn’t been selected for the Australia 2020 Summit. Gosh. I’d already figured that out from not being on the published lists of those who were going.
Apart from the rather late arrival of the news and the traditional passive-voice bureaucratic writing style, there’s two interesting points about this letter.
- I left the “title” field of the nomination form blank, since I don’t use them. I think titles like “Mr”, “Miss”, “Mrs”, “Ms” etc are an archaic way of labelling people. Nevertheless they felt compelled to use “Mr/s”, even though I had filled in the gender field.
- The official website said that people who applied via email, like me, would receive an email reply. They can’t even follow their own published procedure.
I really am trying to find good-news stories about the Summit, I really am…
Apple becomes biggest music retailer in US
Apple is now the number one music retailer in the US, surpassing Wal-Mart in January 2008. Apple now sells 19% of all recorded music in the US, Wal-Mart 15%, Best Buy 13% and Amazon 6%. Hat-tip to Daring Fireball.