Category: Personal

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Announcing the Return of “The 9pm Edict”

Screenshots from The 9 O'Clock Resurrection progress videos: click for YouTube playlistMy crowdfunding project, The 9 O’Clock Resurrection, has been successful. We have resurrected the finest goat-oriented political and social commentary podcast in the galaxy, The 9pm Edict. Haha. What have we done?

What we’ve done is fund two episodes for May.

First up, “The 9pm Shire”, by which I mean Sutherland Shire in Sydney’s southern suburbs. Our Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison, said last month:

“I get so much encouragement when I walk through Cronulla mall, go down the beach, or up to Miranda Fair… On Australia Day we were at the fireworks at Cronulla and I was walking through the crowd and people were coming up to me to say ‘g’day’ and encourage me and congratulate me on what we had done so far, and basically saying ‘keep giving it to ’em and don’t back down’.”

He said residents weren’t against immigration or asylum-seekers but wanted a process that was done “the right way”.

That episode is being recorded this Saturday 3 May, and should be posted on Sunday 4 May.

And because I’m in San Francisco and San Jose later this month, the following episode will be “The 9pm Caltrain” — the Caltrain being the train that runs through that part of the world. That episode should be posted on Tuesday 20 May.

I’ve recorded an announcement, which you can listen to below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe automatically in iTunes, or on SoundCloud.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:02 — 5.1MB)

If you’d like to comment on this (non-)episode — or suggest people, places or things that I should check out — please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

You can also check out the progress videos I made on the YouTube playlist.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

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Finalist in the Optus IT Journalism Awards

Lizzies logoI am somewhat pleased to be a finalist in two categories of the Optus IT Journalism Awards, often called “The Lizzies” because the awards take the form of a lizard — or at least they used to.

Mind you, I’m not all that hopeful of winning.

In the category “Best Columnist”, I’m up against the redoubtable David Braue, who’s won before — as well as Adam Turner, Alex Kidman, Angus Kidman, Ashton Mills, Brett Winterford, John Davidson, Josh Taylor and Luke Hopewell.

My entry had to include four written pieces, so I chose these, all from my ZDNet Australia column, The Full Tilt:

And in the category “Best Audio Program”, my podcast Corrupted Nerds is up against Marc Fennell’s Download This Show, which won last year, and Patrick Gray’s Risky Business, which has won several times before that — as well as ABC Radio National’s Future Tense, Gadget Grill, Naked Geeks, Tech Daily with Andy Wells, and Technology Tuesday with Angus Kidman (which I’ve had to link to with a Google search because there doesn’t seem to be a separate feed for it).

My entry had to include one episode, so I chose Conversations 4: Will the cloud run out of steam?

Click through for the full list of finalists. The winners will be announced at a booze-addled event next Friday night, 9 May 2014.

[Update 11 May 2014: I didn’t win either of these categories. As expected, Marc Fennell’s Download This Show won Best Audio Program, and ZDNet Australia senior journalist Josh Taylor won best columnist. I’ll post the full list of winners once the official version becomes available, but until then here’s Angus Kidman’s unofficial list.]

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The 9 O’Clock Resurrection hits Target 1

Screenshots from The 9 O'Clock Resurrection progress videos: click for YouTube playlistMy project to resurrect The 9pm Edict reached the initial target on Saturday — thank you — but there’s a few minutes left, so I’m hoping that we might get something up beyond that.

Here’s how things looked as we started the day today.

Chart of progress in The 9 O'Clock Resurrection

The upper line shows the total commitments so far, and where that line ends up at 0847 AEST today will determine what happens in May.

The lower line shows just the cumulative subscriptions, and where that ends up will provide the starting-point for crowdfunding June’s budget.

I’ll run another Pozible campaign around the third week of May, probably ending around 21 May. That will set the production pool for June — that is, the subscriptions continuing from this campaign, plus any new subscriptions, plus any one-off pledges. However I’ll also be investigating other ways to organise the subscriptions and perhaps some commercial sponsorship.

I’ll post a brief update once the Pozible campaign finishes this morning, and a longer explainer tonight.

Meanwhile you can watch my daily progress videos, which ceased on the weekend because I was distracted by a computer rebuild.

[Update 1110 AEST: The final total raised for the May production pool was $1082, so that’s two episodes confirmed for the month. We “only” have $304 in ongoing subscriptions, which isn’t quite enough to fund podcasts in June — yet. There will be further fundraising before then, so stay tuned. I’m currently feeling quite confident that I can build on this base — but I’ll have more on that tonight.]

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Returning after computer grief

I hate these little “sorry I’m late with everything” notes, but I am late with everything — because I ended up in software upgrade hell over the weekend, and that took away two days of my life. But I’m back, and most of those problems have been dealt with.

What I can tell you quickly is that my Pozible campaign has been successful, and The 9pm Edict podcast will be returning. There’s funding committed for at least two episodes in May, but there’s still just under 11 hours left in the crowdfunding campaign so there may be more.

There will definitely be an update before lunchtime tomorrow, Tuesday.

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The 9 O’Clock Resurrection halfway to Target 1

Screenshots from The 9 O'Clock Resurrection progress videos 2 and 3: click for YouTube playlistMy project to resurrect The 9pm Edict has reached the halfway mark on its way to the initial target — but comments from some supporters have led me to believe that I need to better explain the funding model.

I’m establishing a monthly funding, planning and production cycle for the podcast.

The current Pozible project is the first of what will be continuing monthly fundraising campaigns. When it ends on 29 April, I’ll know how much money is in the production pool for May — that’s all the one-off contributions plus the first month of the subscriptions. I’ll then be able to lock in the production schedule for that month.

Here’s how things looked as we started the day today.

Continue reading “The 9 O’Clock Resurrection halfway to Target 1”

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Announcing (belatedly) The 9 O’Clock Resurrection

Screenshot from The 9 O'Clock Resurrection video for Day 1I’ve decided that my podcast The 9pm Edict should be a thing again, and so yesterday morning I launched a Pozible crowdfunding campaign entitled The 9 O’Clock Resurrection to make it happen.

This post is “belatedly” because it’s already more than a day since I launched the campaign, and already people’s commitments are more than a third of the way to the initial target, which is to fund two episodes in May. Thank you.

I’d really like to do the podcast weekly, however, and beyond May. So that’ll mean more funding than the initial target, and more of the supporters to commit to a monthly subscription. It’s much the same model as that used by community broadcasters here in Australia, or public broadcasters in the US, as I said when I spoke about my first Pozible campaign on ABC Radio National’s Media Report.

This new Pozible campaign runs until 29 April. I’ll be making a video each day to report progress. The first is watchable on YouTube, and the rest will appear in the YouTube playlist, and I’ll figure out some other methods tomorrow.

Continue reading “Announcing (belatedly) The 9 O’Clock Resurrection”