Blade Runner – The Final Cut
If you’re in Melbourne, why not come along to this screening of Blade Runner – The Final Cut with a few of us on Friday Nov 16?
Register here.
G’DAY WORLD #300 – The End Of Season Three and James Masini from Hippo
Well folks, here we are, 300 episodes and 3 years in, and I’m just getting warmed up! However, with a new year of G’Day World comes a new format, a new topic and a new question which demands The Cam’s attention – what are you doing on a daily basis to make the world a better place? As you’ll hear in today’s show, that is going to be my focus in the Year Four of G’Day World and TPN.
Also on today’s show, I’ve got a recording from MODM 7 where Simon Chen and I chatted with James Masini, 24-year-old Melbourne entrepreneur and founder of Hippo, an online job board to 15 – 24 year-olds. There’s a lot of background noise and we were standing too far away from the mics, but it’s audible and a great story. I hope you don’t mind the low quality. I was using the new Blue Snowball and Macbook for the first time and over-estimated it’s ability to pick us up amid the noise.
Speaking about my new Macbook Pro – it was sponsored by the awesome folks at Global1Training who are also sponsoring my interview from a few months ago with Dr John Demartini. If you didn’t hear that show, I highly recommend it, especially if you’re feeling like you could be getting a little more out of your life. Demartini has some great tips for asking yourself the right questions.
Thanks to everyone who has supported the show over the last three years – I’ve had the time of my life. Three years making this shit for a living. It should almost be illegal.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
TPN now has a HQ in Second Life! If you’ve never spent any time in SL, jump in, go to TPN HQ (by clicking this link) and add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends (that’s me). I’d be happy to show you around and help you find your SL legs.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
You can show your love by buying me stuff from my Amazon wish list.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
- Subscribe to TPN::G’day World by Email
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- If you use another aggregator, grab our RSS feed here.
- If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this description in Wikipedia.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
Senator On-Line – I Have My Doubts
I have been hearing a bit lately about “Senator On-Line“, Australia’s first internet based political party. The way it works is this: is a SOL candidate gets elected to the Senate, they will put up a website for every Bill being presented to the Senate, covering the arguments for and against the Bill, and then we all get to vote on it. They commit to voting in the Senate in line with how the majority vote on their site.
Can it work? Are we ready for this kind of participatory democracy? How much time would you be willing to spend each week learning about Bills in front of the Senate? I think it’s a huge step for democracy and something that should be completely supported. This could be the beginning of the end of “voting along party lines” and politicians promising one thing during the campaign and then reversing their position once they are elected. The public are truly in control of how SOL votes, Bill by Bill.
I’ll be fascinated to see how this works and how many people are really willing to participate in how their country is run. I wonder if SOL have a candidate running in my electorate?
They have a Facebook group as well.
The founder of SOL is Berge Der Sarkissian. A quick search on BDS brings up his less-than-perfect track record.
From ASIC’s site October 16 2002
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has accepted an enforceable undertaking from Mr Berge Anthony Der Sarkissian, a former proper authority holder.
Mr Der Sarkissian offered the enforceable undertaking following an ASIC investigation into suspected breaches of the Corporations Act relating to the Telstra 2 Public Share Offer.
As a result of ASIC’s investigation, ASIC formed a view that between August 1999 and October 1999, Mr Der Sarkissian was involved in making 420 applications for Telstra 2 Instalment Receipts (T2IR) using names that may have been contrived.
Further, ASIC was concerned that Mr Der Sarkissian caused 26 transfers of T2IR’s from names that may have been contrived to another person who was associated with DB Management Pty Ltd, in order for these T2IR’s to be sold in the future for the benefit of the company.
ASIC was concerned that Mr Der Sarkissian had engaged in conduct that was misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive, in respect of his dealings in the T2IR’s. ASIC was concerned that Mr Der Sarkissian may not in the future, perform his duties as a representative of a dealer or an investment adviser, efficiently, honestly and fairly.
To his credit (and very Web 2.0 of him), BDS seems to be up-front about the incident, for on his personal website he says:
I was wrong to have made multiple applications in order to get a better allocation in T2 than I otherwise might have got. This poor decision had significant costs and embarrassment. More than the personal humiliation was the shame I felt for causing embarrassment to my wife and children.
I regret the decision I made, I remain embarrassed about it and I am sorry for it.
Throwing out a mea culpa once you’ve been caught and punished isn’t really a great act of contrition though. And while I don’t expect politicians to be saints, you have to question whether we need another political party run by someone who has deliberately tried to mislead and deceive in the past.
The other concern I have is one of whether or not SOL truly “get” the net or not. Check out their website. Wouldn’t you think an outfit positioning themselves as “Australia’s first internet based political party” would have email addresses, IM details, Skype addresses, blog details… ANYTHING… so you could talk with their candidates? Their site has the mandatory “Contact Us” form, but nothing that makes them truly available. I think that’s a sign of how much they really get the idea of openness and transparency.
Podcamp Perth 2007 – final impressions
Well as I sit in my hotel room after spending a couple of days with some of WA’s digerati (I say WA instead of Perth because Duncan Riley lives a few hours away) as well as some ring-ins from the Eastern states such as Nick Hodge, Stilgherrian and Paul Montgomery, as well as Adam and Jared (what happened to you guys? I hardly saw you yesterday and didn’t see you at any of the events today?), I’m trying to distill my thoughts.
The Perth digerati crowd certainly has a lot of energy. I was impressed by the amount of people who turned up to Podcamp, especially as most of them were from Perth. Bronwen Clune seems to be the Mother Goose of the Perth digerati crowd, running around keeping everyone in beer and skittles, with my old mate Richard Giles hanging back, giving both Bronwen and I a lot of shit, but acting as another lightening rod for the digerati here. Duncan lives out of town but his personal brand and the fact that he writes for the hottest geek site on the planet (although there has been a lot of talk over the last few days about whether or not TechCrunch still carries the cache it did 18 months ago) casts a big shadow over everyone here.
Getting back to Podcamp and geek meetups in general… the feedback on my unkeynote has been sparse, I still think I freaked most of them out. Mike seems to agree, although he seemed to like it. Stil called it “passionate” and thinks my use of a picture of Che Guevara gave him permission to use a picture of Goebbels.
I still get the feeling though that we geeks, we early adopters of the new new tools, the Twitterers, the Facebookeranians, the SecondLifers, the podcasters and bloggers, are still running around playing with these shiny new toys like 3 year-olds in a sandbox. When I look at people at gatherings like those over the last couple of days, I think about how wealthy and privileged we are. We all sit around with our shiny Macbooks and our iPhones and play with our communication toys which let us talk to enormous numbers of people all over the world, and yet we seem to lack direction. Whenever we get together at events like Podcamp or MODM, whilst there is a certain level of geek community bonding and a few impassioned conversations, that there is a general lack of BIG IDEAS. I’m including myself in this by the way. I come away from these events feeling slightly hollow, like a great opportunity has been missed. That there should be more going on than just getting together, having a few drinks, comparing toys, exchanging a few anecdotes, swapping business cards. Shouldn’t we be doing something more when we get together?
Nick summed up my rant from our recent podcast as “Geeks For Good” (I love how he describes debating with me as “like fighting a intellectual tornado”), and I think that sums it up pretty well – shouldn’t we be using our geek powers for good? Is it just me? Does anyone else out there feel like us geeks have a responsibility to use our understanding of computing and new communication technologies to make the world a better place? Or is it all just about making ourselves richer and buying newer toys?
Where is the sense of responsibility? The sense of purpose, of destiny, of time and place and manifesting these things to advance the chances of the human race to survive this century? I so much want to meet someone who has an awe-inspiring vision to share with me, something to expand my consciousness, threaten my perspectives, build me a new dream, entice me, invigorate me, dazzle me. Instead I find myself being the guy ranting and raving about changing the world and feeling like everyone is staring at me like I’m a lunatic. Maybe I am. Maybe it’s me, I’m just missing a few screws. Maybe it’s my messiah complex. I just feel like we’re all wasting time, wasting opportunity.
ANYWAY…
Someone during the Q&A after my session yesterday (I think it was Brett) asked me if podcasts were all just like radio. And yes, I do. I think most podcasts are just like radio. And that bothers me, has done for a long time. Shouldn’t we be doing something new, exciting, fresh? Something that hasn’t been done before? And the more I thought about that issue over the last couple of days, the more the ideas which Duncan’s post a month ago started in my mind have been taking more shape.
There is something new happening and it’s in the emergence arising from a loosely-coupled combination of the new tools – it’s podcasting + blogging + twitter + facebook + second life + real events like MODM or Podcamp. The new form of conversation lies in the intersection of these things, not in any one of them. It is messy and rambling and it is swirling around us, impossible to define or pigeon hole, but it is real and it’s growing stronger each year, a milieu that contains within it the beginnings of the true new communications platform, the true 21st century media. The conversation might start with a blog post then migrate over to a podcast then get expanded on in a Facebook group, debated in Twitter, then turn into a 4 hours group discussion in Second Life.
I don’t know what to call it yet (any ideas?), but I’m intrigued by it, excited by it and determined to harness it and use it for good.
All this talk of Geeks For Good reminds me of that episode of “The West Wing” when President Bartlett says to the new guy Will Bailey:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Do you know why?”
Will thinks for a moment, then answers ‘It’s the only thing that ever has.’
Cue theme music…
technorati tags: podcampperth07
G’Day World #299 – Rock The Vote
The other night I caught up with Scouta founder and former TPN’r Richard Giles and Microsoft’s local professional nice guy blogger/podcaster Nick Hodge for a chat about the upcoming Australian federal election and was appalled to hear how they both intend voting. Geeks have a responsibility to lead. You’re a smart bunch. You are educated (formally or informally), connected and powerful. Don’t waste your vote.
This is a recording of the conversation. Warning: I used Garageband on the new Macbook to record it and I didn’t bother to equalize it, so it may sound a little rough.
This photo isn’t from the night, it’s one Nick took of me during my Podcamp talk yesterday, but it captures me in full revolutionary rant mode, which works as a visual for this show quite well.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
TPN now has a HQ in Second Life! If you’ve never spent any time in SL, jump in, go to TPN HQ (by clicking this link) and add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends (that’s me). I’d be happy to show you around and help you find your SL legs.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
You can show your love by buying me stuff from my Amazon wish list.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
- Subscribe to TPN::G’day World by Email
- If you use iTunes, click here.
- If you use another aggregator, grab our RSS feed here.
- If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this description in Wikipedia.
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.