Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum 2011 videos

I should have posted this a few days back, but the videos from the Microsoft Politics and Technology Forum 2011 in Canberra have been posted at GovTech, the Microsoft Australia Government Affairs Blog.

For some reason the audio quality on these recordings is rubbish. I’ll let you know if better versions are ever posted.

The keynote was given by leading UK political blogger Iain Dale. The other panellists were Senator Kate Lundy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister; Joe Hockey MP, Shadow Treasurer; Dr Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro; and yours truly. The moderator was Mark Pesce.

You can also listen to my interview with Iain Dale, should you be so inclined.

Continue reading “Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum 2011 videos”

Talking the cloud on ABC Radio Darwin 105.7

Apple wins again, it seems. They launch their iCloud service, and for the masses it’s the first time they’ve encountered cloud computing. So on Friday I ended up talking the cloud with Kate O’Toole on ABC Radio Darwin 105.7.

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, of course, but given that I provide my time for free and they don’t make the effort to make it available online, it’s only reasonable that I put it here and plug Kate O’Toole’s excellent program.

Weekly Wrap 52

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week featured a trip to Canberra for the Microsoft Politics and Technology Forum.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

  • The Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum probably counts as one of these, but I’ll post links when there are links to link to.

Corporate Largesse

  • This doesn’t really count as largesse, because I was actually working on the discussion panel as the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum, but Microsoft paid for my transport to Canberra, accommodation at the Hyatt Canberra Hotel, and a lovely dinner at Mezzalira Ristorante.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Bombardier Q400 aircraft at Sydney airport, the one I took to Canberra on Tuesday.]

Early flight to Canberra

A brief reminder: I’m about to head to Canberra for a couple of days. This morning I’ll be at the University of Canberra for the seminar Privacy and security in a connected world: anonymity, data loss, tracking and the social web, being organised by their new Centre for Internet Safety. And then tomorrow morning I’ll be at Parliament House for the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum. I do have some free time in the afternoons if you want to catch up.

Iain Dale on politics, Twitter, radio and authenticity

Earlier this evening I recorded this interview with Iain Dale, who’s keynoting the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra on 1 June. He’s one of the UK’s leading political bloggers, a former Conservative Party politician, publisher of Total Politics magazine and host of the evening show on London’s LBC Radio — amongst other things.

I’d originally intended to use a slab of this in the Patch Monday podcast I do for ZDNet Australia, but it’s not really about technology. Our conversation did touch upon the way political parties use social media such as blogs and Twitter — or, really, why they don’t. But we also covered the attraction of broadcast radio as medium and why it’ll survive, authenticity and much more. So I decided to post the entire recording here as a podcast.

I began by asking Dale about a piece he wrote for The Guardian earlier this month, Is this really the death of political blogging? It turns out the headline is misleading.

For more on Iain Dale, read his Wikipedia entry or follow him on Twitter.

I’ve been thinking of doing a more podcasts of interviews along the lines of this one — not necessarily about politics or technology but whatever strikes my fancy. Indeed, I created the blog post category Conversations for this purpose, although so far I’ve only used it to post random audio I’ve been involved with. What do you think?

Weekly Wrap 51

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week returned to something a little more normal after the crazy fortnight of travel and conference coverage.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 89, “Stuxnet, routing hacks and a seized iPad”, based on material connected with the AusCERT Conference on information security. Security analyst Eric Byers warns of imminent Son of Stuxnet copycat malware. APNIC chief scientist Geoff Huston warns of the security problem in the internet’s routing protocols. And a whole bunch of people talk about the demonstration of a Facebook hack that led, eventually, to the arrest of a journalist.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • I was part of the first ZDNet Tough Talk panel discussion, recorded on video at the AusCERT information security conference, along with Longhaus and Business Aspect board member Sam Higgins, IBRS analyst James Turner, NetWitness chief security officer Eddie Schwartz and Kaspersky CEO Eugene Kaspersky. The moderator was ZDNet Australia’s editorial director Brian Haverty. The topic was: Is cloud secure enough for business? I still haven’t watched it yet. What do you think?
  • On Wednesday I was interviewed by ABC Radio 891 Adelaide about changes to the internet’s top-level domain names. I can post the audio here should you care.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I attended a briefing on various information security issues hosted by Sourcefire. They served a light breakfast and handed out a notebook and a toy pig.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.