My week of Monday 10 to Sunday 16 November 2014 was very, very busy. I had very little sleep, and I’m exhausted.
Apart from all the events and media activity you see listed here, I ended up doing the long commute, almost two hours from Wentworth Falls to Sydney and two hours back, every day from Tuesday to Friday.
Normally I’d have stayed in Sydney, but hotels were largely booked out. Apart from the usual November conference season, there was also the massive World Parks Congress and many refugees escaping the G20 lockdown in Brisbane.
There was literally nothing available in my price range — well, apart from backpacker accommodation, but that’s not a good fit with having to get up early and concentrate on media work. There’s only so much enjoyment one can wring out of listening to drunken unkempt foreigners porking each other all night.
Podcasts
- “The 9pm Words, what even are they?”, being episode 32 of The 9pm Edict, 10 November 2014. It’s about words. And other things.
- Graham Cluley sings “The AntiVirus Industry Song”, 13 November 2014. Not really a podcast, but a video I was involved in producing. Security industry star Graham Cluley presented the keynote at the Association of anti-Virus Asia Researchers (AVAR) conference in Sydney this week, and it included this not-exactly-excellent rendition of a song he’d written. Auckland-based journalist Juha Saarinen caught most of it on video, and I had the full audio, so we put it together. The video was also published at The New Zealand Herald.
Articles
- Australian government Drupal-based CMS goes live, ZDNet Australia, 11 November 2014.
- Chinese smartphone maker Huawei wants a piece of Apple’s pie, Crikey, 12 November 2014.
5at5
There were editions of the 5at5 email newsletter on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. Why not subscribe so you receive them all?
Media Appearances
None.
Corporate Largesse
- On Tuesday, I went to a briefing on govCMS by Acquia and the Australian government’s chief technical officer, John Sheridan, at Prime Restaurant in Sydney, where of course they paid for the food and drink. It was this briefing that led to the ZDNet story.
- Also on Tuesday, I went to the launch of the Huawei Ascend Mate7 smartphone at The Star casino. Food, drink etc. That led to the Crikey story. I now have a Mate7 evaluation unit which, we were told, doesn’t need to be returned, on a Vodafone SIM, as well as a t-shirt.
- Also on Tuesday, I went to the launch of Audible’s “#ListenUp, Australia” campaign, a promotion which allows you to get three free audio books by Australian authors, at Luxe Studios in Darlinghurst. Food, drink etc, and also a card telling me how I can get a free Audible service membership.
- On Wednesday, I had coffee with the good people from Recognition PR. They paid for the coffee.
- From Wednesday evening through to Friday, I was covering the aforementioned AVAR conference at the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney. Food, drink etc. Media objects have yet to be extruded.
The Week Ahead
It’s another busy one…
On Monday I’m heading to Sydney to cover the International Association of Privacy Professionals ANZ (iappANZ) annual summit, and on Tuesday I’ll be writing about same.
The rest of the week includes a TV spot on ABC News24 at 1615 AEDT on Thursday, as well as my usual ZDNet Australia column, plus initial work on a ZDNet feature, a Crikey story and some other bits and pieces.
The weekend is once again unplanned.
[Photo: Darling Harbour at dusk, with the rapidly-rising Barangaroo development on the right, photographed on 11 November 2014.]