by cameron | Apr 2, 2007 | Melbourne, TPN
A question for all you uni students.
How do we promote TPN around universities? How do we get the word out?
As I never attended university (but I did DRINK in them a lot, back in the days of 88 – 89 when my last band, The Rhythm Pigs, used to rehearse at Trinity College at Melbourne Uni), so I don’t really know much about what goes on in them fancy-pants higher learnin’ institutions, apart from group orgies and meth-fueled tree huggin’ by the hippy types.
I figure, though, that uni students are a big target market for the stuff we do (would you agree?) and that we should spend some energy figuring out how to promote TPN across the campuses of the world.
Any bright ideas?
by cameron | Mar 31, 2007 | TPN
For a while I’ve been thinking about putting together a ‘keiretsu‘ of Aussie online startups.
Technically, a real keiretsu in Japan is “a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings”.
More loosely speaking, a keiretsu is a group of non-competing businesses with a strategic relationship. It strikes me that in Australia we have a bunch of non-competing online startups each individually fighting to build their audience and trying to nimbly outmaneuver larger, richer, powerful businesses. When I had dLook CEO Theo Tsiamis on the show last month, and he talked about their hundreds of thousands of visitors, I thought “hmmm, they have hundreds of thousands of visitors, TPN has hundreds of thousands of visitors, we should do something together”.
Theo and Meg were all for it and so today I’m happy to announce a strategic alliance between TPN and dLook.
You may have noticed recently that the newly re-designed TPN homepage carries a very prominent advertisement for dLook. In my opinion, dLook is the best place to search for Australian businesses. If I have a choice between supporting a small, Aussie startup run by entrepreneurs or a billion dollar company run by managers living off of someone else’s risk, I’m going with the little guys, especially if their service is as good or better than the big guys. As consumers, you should support the innovative startups because without them the billion dollar companies play the “maximize profits, stifle services” game.
And, from today, when you are searching dLook for businesses, you will see some TPN advertisments. For example, check out their restaurant listings and keep an eye in the banner on the right hand side. Hopefully, some of dLook’s users will want to grab themselves some excellent podcasts.
I’d like to invite other Aussie online startups to join the keiretsu. We can support each other to build big audiences for our respective services. The more successful we all are, the stronger Australia’s startup community becomes which, in turn, will improve funding opportunities, accelerate revenue models, and generally strengthen the Aussie online market. As they say “a rising tide carries all ships”. Let’s work together more closely than sharing VC tips over beer. Let’s build genuine value.
I say that if we throw our weight together, we can make an impact in the local marketplace faster and stronger than we will alone.
by cameron | Mar 28, 2007 | TPN
Check out Ewan’s interviews with Tim O’Reilly and Danny O’Brien, as well as commentary on the Kathy Sierra situation, live (well kind of) from ETech 07 at TPN Tech Conf.
by cameron | Mar 26, 2007 | Podcast, TPN
Congrats to Jeff and Paul, hosts of the recently re-launched AFL podcast on TPN. It’s cracked the iTunes Australian top rankings! I think this is the highest any TPN podcast has ranked in iTunes, so I’m pretty proud of the boys.
And a special shout-out to Molly Malone who introduced me to the boys in the first place and suggested they would make great hosts for the show.
by cameron | Mar 21, 2007 | Podcast, science, TPN
With the success of The Napoleon Podcast on TPN, I’d really like to develop a whole catalogue of educational podcasts. It strikes me that there are probably tens of thousands of retired educators around the world who have knowledge, educational skills, and time. With podcasting they can each continue to make a significant contribution to the world by taking their educational skills and producing a series of podcasts (video or audio) to convey that knowledge to the rest of us.
Personally I would love to listen to a series of podcasts on mathematics, science, history, language, philosophy, literature – you name it. I’m an information junkie. I think there would be a big market for educational podcasts. Most podcasts are still news and reviews of the week but there is a growing list of shows like our Napoleon show – linear format, educational shows.
If you’re an educator and you are interested in sharing your knowledge with the world, please shoot me an email.
by cameron | Mar 21, 2007 | TPN
Today we’re launching The Wii Show on TPN! Charlie George and Brian Ibbott will be taking a weekly look at Nintendo’s Wii console with news, review and interviews to make sure you get the most out of your Wii investment!
