by cameron | Oct 3, 2006 | Melbourne, Melbourne's Leaders, Podcast
Today I’m kicking off a new series of shows that I’m calling ‘Melbourne’s Top Dogs’. I’m going to approach Melbourne’s leading business people and government leaders and try to discover a little bit about what makes them tick.
This first interview is with Mr Geoff Lord.
A quick bio:
After a business education at Melbourne universities, Geoff Lord joined Ford in the 1960s and moved to Elders in the 1970s, where he became a key lieutenant to John Elliott. In 1985, he formed Elders Resources and built it to a market capitalisation of $1.5 billion by acquiring assets such as forestry businesses in New Zealand. He is currently chairman of the Australian soccer club Melbourne Victory, Chairman of UXC Limited, Australia’s largest technology solutions company, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of his private investment vehicle Belgravia Group, and also sits on the board of many other companies.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts. Thanks to our sponsors Wardy IT and Direct TV!
by cameron | Oct 3, 2006 | Podcast, Uncategorized
Podshow’s recent 2nd round of $15m financing raises the question again as to what The Podcast Network (TPN) is worth. I have no real metrics to measure TPN v Podshow other than Alexa. I know it isn’t very reliable, but it’s all I have.
So far Podshow have raised $24 million and TPN has been funded 100% out of Banco de Cameroni (that’s me, in case you are wondering).
Here’s the Alexa graph for TPN (in blue) vs Podshow (in red) for the last three months.
That puts Podshow, on average, about 2.0 – 3.0 times our reach? So, let’s say Calacanis is right and "To raise this money they must have had a $35-60M pre-money valuation.". Does that mean TPN is valued at a third of that? Let’s say at the low end it’s $10m?
John Furrier and Robert Scoble at Podtech.net have been doing great over the last few months as well. The Podshow investment (or was it the Podcast Expo?) spiked them big time last week. Here’s the graph comparing TPN to Podtech:
Last March John raised $5.5m which would place Podtech’s pre-money valuation back then at about $7 – 12m. TPN was tracking neck and neck with Alexa until last week’s spike. Again, on the low end (and we’ll wait to see when they announce their series B), that puts TPN at about $7m.
Where’s Ben Barren when I need him? He’s the guru at this kind of stuff. Ben, set me straight before I go buy a C-21 on spec.
by cameron | Oct 3, 2006 | Uncategorized
I got an email this morning advising me that the 13th Annual AIMIA Awards was now open to entries and suggesting I should enter TPN. A quick read of the terms and conditions of entry brings up this: "You must be an AIMIA Business, Corporate, Associate or Student member to enter the awards." The price to become a small business member? $660 + GST. The awards claim to be "Celebrating the very best in digital content innovation across all genres and interactive media platforms, the AIMIA Awards showcase the industry’s finest" but I’m not sure this is legitimate. I can’t afford to spend $660 on being a member. So TPN can’t even apply. I’m sure there are other Aussie internet start-ups which would find better ways to spend their $660 as well. If I’d raised Podshow-style $24 million, then perhaps I could afford it. Sounds to me like the "awards" are a thinly-disguised membership recruiting and funding drive.
by cameron | Oct 2, 2006 | Podcast, Uncategorized
Kevin and Jason have uploaded another episode (finally!) of the "Treading Lightly" podcast which is pretty good timing considering my recent rant about wanting TPN to do more to promote "An Inconvenient Truth". In this episode the boys talk in some detail about Integral Energy’s green power options and purchasing other peoples green options. I learned a lot. Maybe they could get someone from Integral onto a future episode to talk about the take up of green energy in Australia?
by cameron | Oct 1, 2006 | Podcast
Last week Dave “The Lifekludger” Wallace and Mike “The Fang” Seyfang, the hosts of TPN’s Extraordinary Everyday Lives podcast, had me on as a guest to discuss how I deal with stress and cope with upheaval. All three of us have had an interesting year with a variety of personal and professional challenges and we talk about how we coped. Then one of my kids hurt himself and I had to dash, but I think we covered some interesting stuff. As it’s in line with some previous shows I’ve done over the last couple of months, I thought it might be worth throwing into the G’Day World feed (apologies to anyone already subscribed to the EEL show who will get it twice). If you like the focus of the show, subscribe to the regular EEL feed for future Dave & Mike shows.
by cameron | Oct 1, 2006 | free will, Podcast, Uncategorized
Two lifehacks I’ve found useful to share with you today.
1. THE BOX.
Have you ever had something that you are obsessing over and it takes up all of your mental and emotional energy? It might be a problem you are facing, a mistake you made, someone you’ve lost, hunger pains or even a pain in your back. I’m a pretty obsessive personality. I *like* being obsessed. Being obsessive has certain negative associations in our society but, as I always say, the difference between a considered fanatic and an eccentric is just how much money you have. After spending the first ten years of my adult life fighting my genetics, I finally decided to accept them and build on top of them, use them to my advantage if I can. That said, there are times when my obsessions aren’t productive. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. When I realize one of my obsessions is stopping me from moving on with my life, here’s what I do. I put it in The Box. It’s a simple little mental exercise whereby I mentally gather up all of the items associated with the obsession and put in into a solid, lead-lined safe. Then I lock the safe and store it away in one of the back compartments of my mind, like the Ark at the end of Indy 1. Then, whenever a thought associated with the obsession pops into my head (because, as you know, you can’t stop these thoughts from happening as there is no free will. If you don’t believe me yet, listen to G’Day World podcast #155), I just say "put it in The Box". And the energy (what is the definition of that again?) that the thought has seems to lessen. That’s not saying it completely disappears, but it diminishes and, over time, will drift into the background. Remember: put it in The Box.
2. THE STOPWATCH.
I learned this one from Merlin Mann’s excellent “(10+2)*5†productivity hack but it has a range of other uses. Again, even when I’m using The Box to store away something that I need to forget about, going completely cold turkey is frakkin hard. So I’ll allow myself to think about the thing inside the box for a couple of minutes a few times every hour. I use a stopwatch (if I’m working at my PC I use this excellent little app) and set it for ten minutes. I make a deal with myself that I will ignore the urge to open the box for ten minutes and, for that ten minutes, I will work on something important. Then, when the alarm of the stopwatch goes off, I allow myself 2 minutes to think about the thing inside The Box. Then, reset the stopwatch for another ten minutes, and get back to work. Eventually I can lift the time on the watch to 15, 20 and 30 minutes. Then a whole hour will go past before I remember I need to visit The Box.
by cameron | Sep 30, 2006 | climate change, Uncategorized
I just saw Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” at my local cinema and it had a huge impact on me. I started asking myself what we could do at TPN to help promote the film. We’ve got ~300,000 listeners and I want to do what I can to help spread the word. The obvious way is to place an ad for it on each of our shows. I’m going to start doing it and I’ve invited my TPN co-hosts to join me.
Other things each of you can do:
by cameron | Sep 28, 2006 | free will, Podcast
Check out our new sponsors Wardy IT and Direct TV!
Yesterday my mate Shane Williamson in Sydney skyped me (long time listeners might remember him from G’Day World #3) and then he conferenced in our mate Brenton Perry (who was on G’Day World #132) at home in Texas. Shane, Brenton and I all used to work in the same team at Microsoft back in ’98. The conversation quickly centered around the definition of “energy” and string theory and then morphed into a debate about free will. As I had Skylook running it automatically got recorded and I thought the conversation was interesting and you might all enjoy it. The sound quality isn’t the best (due to the fact that I was sitting on my $25 USB headset on the desktop (which has a fan which sounds like a Boeing engine) but it’s okay if you can ignore the background buzz and occasional echo. I bring you into the conversation about 20 minutes in.
The G’Day World Theme Song: “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts, America’s baddest rock n’ roll band!
by cameron | Sep 27, 2006 | Brisbane, Podcast
Check out our new sponsors Wardy IT and Direct TV!
Paull Young is a young whippersnapper PR guy in Brisbane who is one of Australia’s most active PR blogger/podcasters. I chatted with him recently about PR blogging and podcasting.
The G’Day World Theme Song: “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts, America’s baddest rock n’ roll band!
by cameron | Sep 27, 2006 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
Okay, I know this is kind of sad, but…. I’m batching it this weekend and I’m looking for something to do in Melbourne on a Friday and Saturday night. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to entertain myself. What should I do? Here’s what I like:
- weird shit
- good jazz
- good rock
- arty shit
- watching weird ass people
Suggestions? Anyone up for a poker night at my house?
