CEO, Author, Podcaster, and Geek
Imp-Top, originally uploaded by Bright Sam.
What’s happening in the globe isn’t pleasant. Gladly we’re also closer today than we were a few years ago, so we share the pain and hopefully share the rebuilding. Check Flickr’s tsunami tags for some chilling images.
Warning (Update December 30, 2004) : Recent photos are graphic, so please don’t visit if you’d rather not be upset.
Some times it’s hard to remember that we’re in the middle of a revolution. I often get stuck in the day to day routine, still posting to places to my blogs like Gadget Lounge, here, listening to Podcasts and speaking to fellow revolutionaries, and only sometimes does it hit me just how important all of this is.
Blogs, RSS, Podcasting and Broadcatching are all just the tip of the iceberg. Stick your head below the water and you’ll see things like Outline Processor Markup Language and attention.xml to get a taste of where this revolution is heading.
Admittedly these sound exceedingly boring. But so did Hyper Text Markup Language. Now the web infiltrates a huge population. It was all about building a network of content through linking. Now the net is all about building conversations, and tomorrow the net will be about a network of people. Not links, not sites, but real people. Their ideas, images, suggestions, what they bought, what they didn’t, who they know, etc. This might sound passé, but it means a lot. Companies who don’t consider that the net is about enabling individuals, not business, won’t survive online. It’s about 100% of us, not 20% (see The Long Tail for more of what I mean).
Look at Blogs and RSS feeds, or PubSub. Flickr, and the many applications popping up in support of it like 1001, and Mappr. My laptop is now a hub of information, constantly updated on a minute by minute basis of information about other people. I can listen to their music on last.fm, look at their photos on Flickr, and get an idea what everyone is talking about at Technorati. Soon this will be linked to their presence and there exact location.
We’ll be connected to their pocket via PDA or mobile phone. All this information that we can carry with us, and it’s all someone else’s information, not owned by corporations, but shared by real people. Open Source Living. Freely sharing what we experience, because it’s so easy, because we can, and it enriches the giver and the taker. Not a one way transaction. The more I share the more like data I’ll receive. If I don’t share my favourite tunes in iTunes, then I won’t find new tunes that others recommend based on what I’ve listened to. If I tag well in Flickr then I’ll see other photos that are similar.
Companies that interact with all this data are sure to be winners. Others won’t. But then the internet is not longer about companies is it. It’s about you and I.
Cameron Reilly has created a new term, and I love it.
In the middle of reading a newspaper or magazine I often catch myself looking to the top right-hand corner of the page in search of the current time. That’s why what Cameron says strikes such a cord.
Does this feeling sound familiar to you? Maybe you are also part of the Right-Click Generation.
Keep up the lateral thought Cameron.
Simon Phipps visited Perth this week.
It was great to have him here for two major reasons. Firstly, he’s a great thinker, and speaker. We held a breakfast session for some of our customers on Wednesday, and the feedback was amazing. The single most popular and worth while event we’ve run this last year. His talk, “Waves of Change Rivers of Freedom”, which I gave a few months ago when he couldn’t make it to Perth. He spoke about the changes that we’ve seen in the last ten years, a world that is massively connected, and how this has led to open source. He also delved into the history of artisans, guilds, community standards and shared methods, and just how similar that is to the open source community. If you get a chance to see him speak, make sure you don’t miss it.
The second reason I wanted to meet him was he’s a prolific blogger. It’s great to meet other like minded people. I don’t know that many people that are “always on” like myself, and it’s great to have a conversation with those that are, especially one as switched on as Simon.
I’m looking forward to continuing my dialogue with Simon, and we hope to have him back in the near future. Just before he swings on over to South Africa ;).
Nominations for the 2005 Australian Blog Awards are open for voting. Anyone who reads Aussie blogs should get on over and nominate a few of your favourites. It’s great to see Gadget Lounge has been nominated (thanks Robert 
).
amanita muscaria, originally uploaded by tonx.
This is just a fabulous photo on Flickr!
Brad Sucks was brought to my attention a few weeks ago when Adam Curry played some of his work on the Daily Source Code. Everyone should check him out. He’s an open source musician, releasing his tunes source bit by bit. Literally you can download a each songs source in separate .wav files as loops, so people can remix his work. He then posts them online.
It’s also a great call to action for other musicians to jump into blogging, podcasting, and releasing their source. Just watch Brad Suck’s career take off.
This week’s been a busy one, and I feel like I have hardly started it.
I spent a couple of days in Sydney, for work, but at the same time managed to catch up with some bloggers. Monday I met with Mark Jones and had a very enjoyable time discussing the ins and outs of Aussie blogging. He, and IDG, the company he works for have some interesting plans that’ll be well worth watching for. It’s an exciting time, and there be some fun to be had in the times to come.
He also showed me around his work. 9 magazines, with around a hundred staff. It was great to see some of them, head down squirreling away at their next publications. By far though was the look at PC World’s Test Centre. I’ll leave the detail for the Gadget Lounge article I’ll post soon.
On my way to the airport on Tuesday I met up with Mick Stanic, aka SplaTT. He’s the brains, and currently muscle, behind the Australian Blogging Conference and one of the voices on the G’Day World Podcast. Need I say he’s a busy little blogger. We had a good chat, sitting in a small park in the middle of Sydney. With a little more work he’ll have an official announcement for the date of the event. All Aussie bloggers should get behind him, give him some support, and we’ll see this be an amazingly successful, fun and useful day.
Before I flew out I managed to pick up a dozen Krispy Kreme’s, and got them home in time for desert. 
The week certainly hasn’t stopped there. Next week we’re lucky enough to be getting a visit in Perth from Simon Phipps, Sun’s Chief Technology Evangelist. We’re planning a few things for him, and we’re just getting it all organised. All this in-between my day job.
The view from my hotel on my Sydney business trip.
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