On Monday evening you can listen to me in Katoomba

This coming Monday 4 June, I’m leading a discussion entitled Surviving and thriving as a freelancer in a globalised market for Publish! Blue Mountains, “a non-profit association of the region’s top creative and publishing professionals”.

The event is subtitled “How to avoid being outsourced to the lowest bidder (or worse still, a robot!)”

Radical changes will hit a freelancer’s world over the next two years or so as we move to a globalised marketplace. Firstly there is the rapid rise of internet-enabled outsourcing through sites like Freelancer.com, allowing projects to be advertised globally and often awarded to the lowest bidder who may be in a country where $10 is a decent day’s wage.

Secondly, increasingly sophisticated and intelligent automated systems are now taking over many tasks that historically required human creative input. Just in the writing field alone, we already have US college sports coverage written completely by computer.

Where will this technology (and the marketplace driving it) take us? And what can we creatives do to ensure we’re not replaced by cut-price doppelgangers and robo-scribes?

The discussion will be held at Clarendon Guesthouse, 68 Lurline St, Katoomba from 5.30 to 7.00pm. My guest speaker slot and the open discussion runs from from 5.45 to 6.30pm, with drinks and networking to follow. It’s free, but you should RSVP to connect@publishbluemountains.com.au. The bar will be open.

Weekly Wrap 88: Mist, media and the joys of Optus

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 6 to Sunday 12 February 2012 — and yes, it’s being posted very late.

No excuses, no explanations. I hope to find the time for a more reflective post soon.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 124, “Society 5: our democratic digital future”. With two billion people now online, we should probably start thinking about the kind of world we want to create. Enter the Society 5 project. Co-founder Will Grant explains while his colleague Pia Waugh recuperates silently.
  • The 9pm Edict episode 17A, which covers the depressingly tight-sphinctered Melbourne suburb of Prahran and its inhabitants’ predilection to torture their dogs. Plus other stuff.

Articles

  • Sport has to think outside the box, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 2012. It’s an opinion piece about the Federal Court’s ruling that the Optus TV Now service is a legal form of time-shifting a television program.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. This will certainly change for the current week.

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: Katoomba in the mist. It’s hard to believe that this photo was taken in late summer, but this was Katoomba’s main street just a week ago. Mind you, this strange weather does lead to glorious views like this morning’s view from my bed.]