Tag: canberra

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Weekly Wrap 301: Canberra, with quite a few cybers

The End of Summer: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 7 to Sunday 13 March 2016 was another moderately steady improvement, in both productivity and mood. I am moderately pleased.

The Canberra trip went well, as you’ll see immediately below, but it was also exhausting. The rest of the week was therefore relatively quiet.

If you follow my Twitter stream, you already know all of this, and more.

Articles

Both of these articles are derived from material presented at the Australian Internet Industry Association (AIIA) Navigating Privacy and Security Summit on Tuesday.

Podcasts

None. I know you’ve heard this before, but I do want to wrap up that episode of The 9pm Edict podcast very soon. See below.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

The Week Ahead

On Monday, I’m heading a few kilometres up the Great Western Highway to Leura for part of Tech Leaders, namely a keynote by Labor’s communications spokesperson Jason Clare, and then reporting on same for ZDNet. I’ll probably have lunch in Katoomba after that.

I then plan to spend the rest of the week working on three geek-for-hire projects that have fallen behind schedule, and catching up a big chunk of that bookkeeping for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

That said, I hope to make the day trip to Sydney one day for a medical appointment and various errands. I’m also looking at doing that episode of The 9pm Edict podcast one evening. And I should probably write a ZDNet column in there somewhere too.

I can’t make final arrangements until Monday afternoon, however, and I need to keep the pace reasonable, so stay tuned for details.

Further Ahead

The following two weeks are the two short weeks either side of the Easter long weekend, and will mostly be an extension of the plan just described.

I then plan to be in Canberra on 12-14 April for the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) Conference. The trick will be organising travel and accommodation.

I’ll definitely be on the Gold Coast on 24-27 May for the AusCERT Cyber Security Conference.

[Photo: The End of Summer. These are the colours of an Australian summer, as you can also see from last week’s photo — and we’ve had a long one this year. Photographed from VA654 on final approach to Canberra airport (CBR) on 7 March 2016.]

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Weekly Wrap 179: A very Kaspersky Canberra, with stress

Canberra sunrise: click to embiggenMy week Monday 4 to Sunday 10 November 2013 was another busy one, but I survived.

Once more the Weekly Wrap has been hideously delayed, so it’ll just be the facts.

A key part of the week was my trip to Canberra, mainly to cover the speech by Eugene Kaspersky to the National Press Club, but also to squeeze in some meetings with other people while I was there. Kaspersky seems to have dominated my media output for the week.

Podcasts

  • Corrupted Nerds: Conversations 8, being a chat about electronic voting with Dr Vanessa Teague from the University of Melbourne. If you think e-voting is the cure for electoral fraud and mistakes, you’d better listen.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Thursday I went to the National Press Cub in Canberra to hear Eugene Kaspersky’s address. I was a guest at the Kaspersky Lab table, and they paid for my flights from Sydney. I paid for my own accommodation because the Kaspersky thing itself could have been a day trip.

[Photo: Canberra sunrise, photographed from Rydges Lakeside Canberra hotel on 7 November 2013.]

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Visiting Canberra to hear Eugene Kaspersky

Digitally manipulated image of Eugene Kaspersky: click for podcastI’m headed to Canberra this week to hear Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive officer and chairman of Kaspersky Lab, speak at the National Press Club on Thursday 7 November.

It’ll be an interesting event.

When I last spoke with Kaspersky in May — you can listen to that conversation now, because it became the first episode of the Corrupted Nerds: Conversations podcast — it was before Edward Snowden’s revelations began. Before “all of the cybers” changed from being something of interest only to a few specialist technology and national security writers into front page news around the world.

Actually, I’ll embed it here so you don’t even have to click through.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/115103814″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

I suspect that the kinds of questions asked by the insular and largely Canberra-bound press gallery journalists will be as revealing of the state of play as the words of the Russian information security star himself — and he knows how to work the media.

Kaspersky is speaking at the NPC at lunchtime on Thursday, immediately after which I’ll be reporting on it for ZDNet Australia. But I’ll be in Canberra from early Wednesday afternoon through until Friday afternoon, so if you want or need to catch up, do let me know.

Disclosure: I am travelling to Canberra as the guest of Kaspersky Lab.

[Photo: Eugene Kaspersky speaking at CeBIT Australia 2012. Original photo by CeBIT Australia, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC-BY) license. Digital manipulation by Stilgherrian.]

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Linux.conf.au coverage trimmed: January a writing write-off

So my January was a bit of a failure. I didn’t do much reassessment of the journalism and other writing I do. The cancellation of the Patch Monday podcast and my Linux.conf.au coverage killed off income. And I spent too much money. Sigh.

If you’re not interested in my personal thought processes, skip this post. I know I would.

Linux.conf.au first. While I did think about ways to generate funding for coverage at the same level as last year, the time was too short. If I got to Canberra somehow, I could still pitch stories to editors as usual, but cashflows were tight. Then Pia Waugh invited me to interview Sir Tim Berners-Lee for iiNet as part of their sponsorship of the TBL Down Under Tour. Two nights accommodation were offered. So hey, I went to Canberra for a couple days.

I ended up filing just one story. Instead of a solid income-generating week to counteract the December-January slump, it was a loss-maker.

Want a picture? I’ve added January to my chart of stories written, and I’ve changed the title to “media objects” because I’ve added the Patch Monday podcast to the ZDNet total. I’ve also added a mysterious black line. The recent slump is clear.

Chart of media objects produced 2011-2013

So, the current status of my thinking-about-writing thing since my last update?

Continue reading “Linux.conf.au coverage trimmed: January a writing write-off”

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Weekly Wrap 139: Canberra, Linux, alcohol and the web

Vietnam War Memorial, Canberra: click to embiggenThe week of Monday 28 January to Sunday 3 February 2013 started quietly, was ridiculously chaotic in the middle, and then went back to quiet at the end.

I decided to take advantage of the Australia Day holiday weekend and catch up on sleep rather that stress too much about getting to Linux.conf.au from Monday.

But I did fly to Canberra on Wednesday, eventually. More about that tomorrow. I spent Thursday and Friday at the conference. More about that tomorrow too.

On Saturday I made my first ever visit to the Australian War Memorial, taking a few photos along the way. Impressed.

Podcasts

None.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Thursday I recorded a video interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the web, along with Australian internet bloke Simon Hackett and British actor, comedian and writer Robert Llewellyn. This was a project for iiNet, and the video will appear on the website some time in the coming week has finally appeared.
  • On Friday I was interviewed by a journalist from Radio 2SER’s program on the media, The Fourth Estate, but it’s for next week’s episode so I’ll link to it then.

Corporate Largesse

Still none. Something must be very wrong in the world.

The Week Ahead

As far as I can tell, it’ll just be a plod-through week of writing, most of it spent at Wentworth Falls. After the chaos of the last two weeks, that’ll be welcome.

I’ll also return to the near-daily blog posting that I had going there for a while. Probably.

[Photo: Vietnam War Memorial, Anzac Parade, Canberra. I was particularly impressed with this memorial, especially the imagery and the wall of quotes, as well as the true colours of Australia nearby.]

[Update 25 February 2013: Added link to Sir Tim Berners-Lee interview.]