Live Blog: NICTA Techfest 2009

NICTA Techfest 2009 logo

Today NICTA is showcasing its latest ICT research and development at Techfest 2009 — and I’ll be liveblogging it right here.

NICTA is Australia’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Centre of Excellence. It focuses on research which can then be commercialised in areas including biomedical and life sciences; intelligent transport systems; safety and security; environmental management; mobile systems and services; and software infrastructure.

The keynote is being given by Dr Ya-Qin Zhang, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft and Chairman of the Microsoft China R&D Group. I’ll be covering that if nothing else.

I’m not sure if the rest of the day is formal presentations (which I’ll liveblog) or a series of meet-and-greets and show-and-tells (which I’ll cover as best I can).

Bookmark this page and come back. We’ll start at about 11am Sydney time live from Australian Technology Park in Sydney.

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Live Blog: The Tangled Web in Sydney

Photograph of fibre optics

My friends over at newmatilda.com have been running a series of public forums on Internet regulation. The Sydney forum is this coming Tuesday 5 May. I’ll be liveblogging it right here.

As newmatilda.com explains:

The Federal Government’s proposal to block websites with a mandatory filter or “clean feed” has drawn vocal opposition from the online community, who are concerned about its impact on civil liberties as well as on the technical functionality of the internet. Meanwhile, many people are unaware of the proposal and its potential impact on their day to day lives.

Speakers are Fiona Patten from The Australian Sex Party, Geordie Guy from Electronic Frontiers Australia and Kerry Graham from Inspire Foundation. It’s chaired by David Vaile, head of UNSW’s Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre.

As a preview, you might like to read about last week’s forum in Melbourne or watch the video, or listen to the Brisbane one.

Bookmark this page, ‘cos the liveblog will start here at around 6pm Sydney time on 5 May. [Update 6 May 2008, 3pm: The session is complete, and I’ve fixed the spelling and added a few links.]

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Live Blog: Politics & Technology Forum 2009

Photograph of Joe Trippi

This Thursday 26 February I’m liveblogging from Microsoft’s second Politics and Technology Forum in Canberra. This year’s theme is “Campaigning Online”.

Keynote speaker is Joe Trippi (pictured), heralded as the man who reinvented political campaigning thanks to his work on many US campaigns for the Democrats, and author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything. He’s also a political analyst with MSNBC and much more, as his Wikipedia entry or Twitter stream reveal.

The political panellists are federal Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull (who tweets as @TurnbullMalcolm) and Labor’s Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, who’s been pushing for better government use of technology for some time.

Our MC is Mark Pesce, who himself has covered similar topics in presentations like Hyperpolitics, American Style.

Bookmark this page, ‘cos the liveblog will start here at around 8.45am Canberra time on 26 February.

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