Day 3. Day 2 was interesting, but perhaps not as interesting as day 1. Only a handful of interesting speakers, far too many people speaking like they were trying to sell their products as opposed to delivering something of interest to the audience in relation to their marketplaces.

I’ll probably download some more of this when I get back, but I’m starting to worry. This conference has a broad cross section of Australian IT professionals, journalists and “influencers” and yet in all but a small number of conversations I’ve had with people (say short of a dozen out of 50 or 60 people) they don’t get Web 2.0. They don’t get being part of the conversation. They’re still working from a mindset of one to many. Blogging in particular is something they can’t control, it’s something that opens them up for attack….and I kid you not on that last one, I’ve had people here tell me that they want nothing to do with blogs and blogging because of this perception they have which sounds a bit like the perceptions and beliefs corporate America held in 2004. We are that far behind. And yet it gets worse. The Web 2.0 session day one, the first speaker responded when I asked him what his firm was doing that was Web 2.0ish he responded with “affiliate program”. I’ve heard professional journalists say that Web 2.0 is basically all smoke and mirrors and there’s nothing to it…I’ve heard others say that they DON’T have to engage their customers because their product speaks for itself…..
jeezus. We might be more than in trouble, we could actually be in deep sh*t. It’s not good. It’s not good at all. Maybe the cross section of people isn’t representative and I’m just hearing a non representative mob of people, and yet as I go through the position titles on the participants list I’m seeing guys (and gals…although not many) who should know about Web 2.0, who should know the benefits on being part of the conversation, that participation therein actually helps build respect and trust in the marketplace.

But the converse could be that by living Web 2.0 (taking bloging as a part of Web 2.0) maybe I’ve surrounded myself with people who think the same things as I do, and hence I’ve become a cut down version of Mike Arrington with an Australian accent: a walking, talking advocate for the good in Web 2.0 without being able to look at it from a different perspective.

Food for thought.

Amazing stuff: the top blog in terms of incoming links now at Technorati: this blog, a Chinese language blog hosted by Sina.com. I’m surprised there’s not a huge amount of discussion about this as yet: I picked it up a Techmeme and there was only one incoming link on the story…remember this blog has knocked off Boing Boing and Engadget to take the first spot…yes Virginia, there is still indeed the opportunity in the blogosphere for the little guy to win 🙂

Day 2. The blogging talk went well yesterday, at least the feedback was immensly positive, which was a relief in itself. Met the Australian Poker Champion and a chap who is the Asia-Pacific Rep for Pokerstars.com, interesting conversation, but as dinner sponors they had a couple of games of poker running for funny money….great stuff, I know how to play Poker but Texas Holdem has always been a bit of a mystery to me previously, playing it on a laptop or even at a table…suffice to say I can understand for the first time why Poker has become so big…of course my problem now will being trying to avoid the temptation of playing on line when I get home. 🙂

tags: Media Connect, Media Connect Conference, Web 2.0

Day 1. Some 24 hours after leaving the end of the world and I find myself in The Hunter Valley, NSW for the Media Connect Influence Conference, with a presentation to make on blogging in a bit over 60 minutes that I haven’t written yet. 🙂

The first session was Web 2.0. Unfortunately if this was representative of Web 2.0 in Australia we are in deep, deep you know what. I actually felt sorry for 2 of the 4 speakers. The first guy was so far out of his depth it was embarassing. I got up and asked him a question about how his company was embracing Web 2.0 after he’d basically explained a business model roughly based on Amazon in 1995. His only response was that his company offered…an affiliate program! Oh well…

The highlight though was Ross Dawson from Advanced Human Technologies, excellent 5 minute speech, indeed the only speaker of the 4 who concentrated on what I’d actually consider to be Web 2.0. Of course, having had about 4 hours sleep when Ross introduced himself to me prior to the presentation I responded like I had no idea who he was, despite the fact that not only have I read his blog I’ve also exchanged several emails with him over the years. Sorry Ross. But back to the speech, Ross spoke on the rise of user filtered content and the tools and companies seeking to gain audience share in the long tail…now if only Ross was the keynote speaker as opposed to being 1 of 4 🙂

Anyhow back to planning my little session on blogging, and touch wood I don’t get ripped to shreads like the poor chap from Poker Starts did in the previous session….jeez, some people really, really don’t like online gambling 🙂

More soon.
PS: I’ve got no spell checker so please be kind. Firstly my typing on a laptop sucks completely, secondly I’m lost without my BlogDesk spellchecker.

tags: Media Connect, Media Connect Conference, Web 2.0

For some reason Google keeps defaulting today to the Google personalised home page, not Google search, even when I type in www.google.com. It’s frustrating. It’s trying to force me to use a service I don’t want to use, but what’s worse is that is ridiculously slow to load in comparison to the normal Google front page. If I get much more of this it will be a matter very shortly of Yahoo here I come. Is it just me, or is this something Google’s doing to others?

From Kevins Rose’s blog (emphasis added):

…today we read a couple blog posts that highlight users digging each others stories. This is something we encourage through our friends features and will continue to expand as digg evolves. It is our goal to create a platform in which you can share and promote news that is important to you.

Isn’t this exactly what Weblogs Inc. was doing, i.e. getting their mates to Digg their stories? If it’s ok to get your friends to vote on your stories, then there’s no gaming Digg if your friends vote for you, right?

Tags: Digg, Kevin Rose, Jason Calacanis, Weblogs Inc

SixApart acquires Rojo. Coverage and Niall and Techcrunch. Odd thing though is this line: “Six Apart intends to sell a majority interest in Rojo?ɬ¢?¢‚Äö¬¨?¢‚Äû¬¢s newsreader services in the coming months.” So why buy something just to flog it off later? Rojo doesn’t seem like a natural fit for SixApart either, after all its a feedreeder and blog search engine, not a blogging platform, and putting a company that in based upon hosted blogging services into the feedreader game where it will compete against other companies that index SixApart hosted blogs seems silly….but not if they were only buying the talent and not the feedreeder. Rojo CEO Chris Alden is to be the new head of Movable Type…but still sounds like a lot of money to spend to acquire talent. Chris, you must be a special sort of a guy. Insert machevellian plot here 🙂

Tags: SixApart, Rojo

Tucows has announced that they were the buyer of the dead Web 2.0 startup Kiko. Interesting buy, mainly because probably like a whole pile of other people, I’ve always thought of Tucows as a Web 1.0 company. Is this a step into the Web 2.0 field for the once mighty software download player? only time will tell I guess.

Tags: kiko, Tucows

I’m off to the Hunter Valley this weekend for the Media Connect Influence Conference. I’ll be in Sydney briefly on Saturday 9 September then off to the Hunter Valley Sunday through to Tuesday. My thanks to Phil Sim for the invite. I know fellow Western Australian resident Richard Giles is attending, but if anyone else is going drop me an email.

Tags: Media Connect

Techcruch interviews Paul Graham from YCombinator. Dead 2.0 gets pretty close to my thoughts on the interview. Some choice quotes from Graham:

What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first.

Of course you have to have a business model eventually. But experience so far suggests that figuring out how to make money from something popular is a lot easier than making something popular.

I get a lot of criticism for telling founders to focus first on making something great, instead of worrying about how to make money.

Pretty crazy stuff. It’s not surprising in the least that people knock him for throwing money at companies without business models…it’s a stupid way to invest money. My first thought’s when I read this was that people would be better of playing poker at a casino than handing over the money to YCombinator for investments, after all the odds would be better.

I’d note Scoble also made a comparison to the gambling side of things, you’re right about that Robert, Web 2.0 can be like playing blackjack (and yes, the amount being invested in Web 2.0 is a lot smaller than Web 1.0, so the crash won’t be as big nor deep), although I’d think given YCombinator’s investments, Craps or Two Up would be better comparisons, given that both games don’t necessarily rely on skill, they are more games of luck, and betting on a Web 2.0 company without a business plan is a game of luck.

But lets think about this craziness some more: Graham argues that the key of any startup is becoming popular, and yet isn’t long tail theory about not being super popular? after all, niche marketplaces don’t have to become 20 metre high gorillas like Google and Apple to turn a profit. Scoble notes again that SmugMug has 150,000 paying customers and is profitable. Hardly a hugely popular site/ service, but it makes money. The key is how do you moneterise the traffic you do get, not the traffic you may potentially get if you’re lucky enough to get to the top of the long tail. Business plans do that. Investing in a company which has no business plan is a mugs game… you’d be better off playing Lotto.

Tags: Ycombinator, Web 2.0