March 2005 Archives

Hi to you all. Melbourne weather has been lovely for my visit - thanks to all up in Brisbane who have been sending good weather vibes - keep it up!

And for a laugh, have a look at NetDisaster.com. Nuke your least favourite website! Hours of fun for all the family! (Or 20+ seconds, anyway.)

PS: A big thankyou to my housesitters. Glad you've had no worries from the evil neighbour. I'm very worried about you reorganising my linen cupboard, though. You need a life.

As I'm likely to be rather too busy to blog over the next few days, I'm taking this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and safe Easter and hoping that you enjoy yourself, whatever you're doing. Enjoy all the chocolate, or if you're lactose intolerant, and/or health conscious and/or don't like choccie, then enjoy a nice egg and lettuce sandwich :-)

A duct tape workshop to make a wallet that will take close to a whole roll of duct tape. Words fail me.

In the extended entry I talk about the effects of the Star Wars series, and the forthcoming final chapter of the prequel series.

À propos of nothing, the Guardian list for the Top 10 Best Sci-fi films of all time is, in my humble opinion, about as perfect as such a list can get.

I'm still alive. After a weekend of teaching and taking care of friends, I've not had time to blog the passage of the stars across the heavens, but I assure you, I am still knocking around.

First of all a few quick housekeeping messages.
1. For those who enquired, no, my St Patrick's Day tattoos were not permanent, and they didn't involve piercing any appendage of my chest.
2. No, there is no hotel called the Furry Animal & Sprocket. I think perhaps there probably should be, but that's it. If there can be a Pig & Whistle and an Elephant & Wheelbarrow, then I figure there ought to be a Furry Animal & Sprocket.
3. No, I've not taken up gardening. While the title of this post may refer to a plant, I'm still totally inept when it comes to gardening and I would much rather watch paint dry. I have managed to keep a plant alive for more than 6 months but that is entirely incidental, and it's an Impatiens Ole which is virtually impossible to kill.

Normal blogging will resume just as soon as I am sure what is normal anyway.

I haven't yet blogged the furore surrounding the funding issues being faced by the Sydney Dance Company and feel it's about time I did so. I've partly been tentative to discuss this issue as it is actually remarkably difficult and politically delicate. But I am plunging in with my opinion, regardless. And given this morning's reports that the cloud is lifting over the SDC, with the Federal Government agreeing to loan the company the $600,000 it owes in debts, it seems an opportune time to tackle the issue.

The trouble with the funding model for SDC is partly to do with the artistic decisions and cultural response to modern dance, combined with the changes in costs associated with touring, and international political unrest. This year SDC travels to Melbourne, Ballarat, Bendigo, Canberra and Brisbane as well as a lightning-fast, 2-day international tour to the United Kingdom in May. Last year SDC toured again around Australia, but also undertook a 10 city tour of the United States in February and a 4 week tour of Europe in November. That's a pretty huge difference in terms of tour undertakings and costs for the company between 2004 and 2005. And while Ian McRae might have been a little harsh in describing SDC's funding model as out-of-date, it's probable that the planned tours of the US and Europe in 2004 were not well budgeted. Changes to the costs associated with touring should have been predicted, and either a more reasonable tour schedule been pursued, or a new sponsorship model to bridge costs should have been negotiated.

But the financial problems weren't just experienced in 2004. They go right back to the late 1990s with major sponsorship deals falling through, and ineffective planning for financial difficulties.

This is about poor business development, not about marginalisation of the Arts. Certainly Australians don't value Arts innovation and culture as much as is deserved, but that's not going to change by increasing government funding for a few representative companies of the Arts community. The key to ensuring financial surety in low and non-profit organisations is appropriate forward planning and effective business development. This is something so many representatives from the Arts world think is impossible. But clearly it's not. There are business developers out there who have turned low-profit companies around with sensible business plans and forward-thinking financial management. There must always be a substantial surplus in every budget in order to accommodate for unseen issues that can arise. And that doesn't mean that a less profitable performance season or poor box office takings can be regarded as an "unseen issue". Indeed, low box office takings should be expected in budget planning; any high box office takings should be regarded as a windfall. Unseen circumstances include things like Acts of God, legal disputes, political unrest and global financial hardship. So a company like SDC with an annual turnover of about $4 million should be looking to end each year with at least a surplus of $1 million. There's nothing wrong with using some of those funds when they become embarrassingly large to act as good corporate citizens themselves, and support other players in the Arts sector.

While I totally support government funding of Arts companies and believe governments have a responsibility to protect companies like the SDC, I also am gravely concerned about the strategies being pursued in business development across the Arts sector. We have far too many incompetent managers out there, and far too many Arts industry snobs who fail to secure the services of quality business development managers in favour of "one of their own" trained professionals, or a sympathetic, Art-for-Art's-Sake kindred spirit. It's time Arts industries took financial management out of the hands of Arts community representatives, and placed it in the far more competent hands of those who are capable of effective financial management.

So I'm imagining that it's possibly a bad thing to wake up with a shamrock tattooed on my bust and a bottle of guinness tattooed on my shoulder?

Wishing you all a very happy St Patrick's Day today. Four leaf clovers to you all!

And on this day, I am reminded of a time when I was about 7 years old, when I used to make "Irish Coffees" in the bathtub. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had a vivid imagination as a child, and while most children were play acting as fireman and nurses and school teachers, I used to play a barmaid in the bathtub, scrubbing down the bar (the edge of the bath) and serving froth covered hot drinks (soapie water with a foam "head") and pulling "beers" from the (cold) tap. Whether this was a suggested strategy from my mother as a means of getting me to clean the bathtub I don't remember, but as an adult looking back, I cannot help but laugh at the memory. I was an odd child! :-) But perhaps it was some distant cultural memory of Irish roots rising from the imagination of a very small girl. In any case, here's to all of us enjoying whatever version of an Irish coffee you would like to consume today!

EDIT: In the spirit of the occasion I thought I'd also add a link to the Leprachaun Watch webcam! Wonderfully silly!

Many of you know that my only sibling is a prominent Australian commercial radio host and he's presently heavily involved in experimental broadcasting technologies and information service provision. Therefore, I should be up front in saying I have not discussed what I am about to say with my brother, and am quite happy to have him contest me on this issue at any future point.

That said, I believe the Australian commercial radio lobby is probably acting in the interests of its members, but their demands today for free spectrum space and a moratorium on new commercial players are absolutely outrageous. These calls for what amounts to be a oligarchical industry structure as 'payment' for investment in digital radio broadcasting are anti-competitive, short-sighted and absolutely absurd.

The thing is, we've been through this before. When digital television was first discussed in Australia, we had the opportunity to have multi-channelling and datacasting in addition to the high-definition television. Multichannelling and datacasting only needed a set top box, and possibly an ADSL back channel, but HDTV needed a brand new, very expensive television in order to be able to receive the signal. But the commercial television and subscription television lobbies fought the government, saying that multichannelling would be anti-competitive for the immature subscription television industry, and datacasting shouldn't be allowed to develop as a kind of "back door" or de facto method of broadcasting. New players in commercial television were banned until 2006, and we lost any chance of developing a competitive digital telvision environment based on diversity. Dozens of commentators have blasted Australian digital television policy development as a travesty of future planning, and regarded it as monumentally contrary to the dominant communications industry policy of competition, choice and diversity.

And now the Australian commercial radio lobby wants to do the same thing to radio broadcasting? You have got to be kidding me?

Research conducted by Odlyzko and Tilly at the University of Minnesota has resulted in the assertion that the previously accepted Metcalfe's Law - that the value of business networks increases with the square of the number of devices within a network - is massively overestimated. Students of my classes will probably not be surprised as I tended to make a habit of screwing up my face and telling people not to believe what they read, when I came to the topic of Metcalfe's law in GSN402 Strategic Use of Information Technology, but it's nice to see the proof of the matter. This kind of absurd posturing on technology value is dangerous for its effect on overall business planning for IT, and it is far better to be conservative in estimations of technology value in an organisation. It's still better to have a good workforce than to have a sophisticated network run by a sub-standard employee base.

Thanks also to Kevin for this link to the story about Apple winning the rights to have three anonymous bloggers reveal their sources in discussing trade secrets in their blogs. The ruling may set a rather dicey precedent for bloggers who take pride in reporting a commercial "scoop" on their blogs, but it's also probably fair enough that bloggers don't erode any competitive advantages that companies may feel is due to them for keeping news on development of their products secret.

I have just this morning received the official letter of offer (well okay, "email of offer") from the publishing house that has agreed to take on our book on uses of blogs, so Axel and I are celebrating today. It seems appropriate then, that the latest Technorati tracking on the State of the Blogosphere is registering absolutely phenomenal growth in the number of blogs now online. Tomorrow the details of blog post volume will also be posted at David Sifry's Alerts, so that will again be an indicator of the growth of influence of blogging (regardless of interpretations to the contrary, as I noted in my last Blog Research post).

It's great to be part of this revolution, and to be contributing to the array of knowledge in the area.

In preparing a study guide for this subject, I've come across a few rather interesting paradoxes of technological innovation management. Here's just one of these.

First of all, some parameters for this discussion are necessary.

If we agree that "innovation" is the successful application of creative problem solving and creative thinking within an organisation (often for commercial benefit), and if we accept that innovation applies to business processes as well as improvement in products (goods and services), then technological innovation should be technological solutions, or processes that rely on technology, and management of technological innovation should be about the strategic and administrative concerns associated with ensuring continuous improvement of technological innovation. Okay?

As has been noted in several academic papers, management of technological innovation will be to the early 21st century, what total quality management and quality assurance was in the 1970s to the 1990s. Ensuring that organisations continue to innovate, and that continuous improvements in efficiencies can be achieved through technology investments, are heady goals for firms, but they are necessary in order to ensure sustainability, and to capture and maintain competitive advantage. Still with me?

Trouble is that technology has often been found to be a limiting factor in organisational innovation, and that most organisational investment in technology produces much less than the total potential benefits any technology solution could provide for a firm. Capiche?

So while there is a potential to gain much higher efficiencies in normal business activities from a technology solution implemented by an organisation, the technology itself might actually limit the innovation that an organisation may achieve.

Moral to this story? If you're going to sustain innovation within an organisation, make sure you keep reviewing and, where necessary, replacing your technology to ensure you avoid "lock in" to the limited functions of the technology solution. This means you will probably never be able to get maximum efficiency from any technology solution investment. Sorry.

[Electronic Answering Machine Voice]Message ... received on .... Friday... 7:02pm...
[Electronic Messaging system]*BEEP* We are sorry.... This message was designed to be received by an answering machine ....*BEEP*
[Electronic Answering Machine Voice]End of messages.

If anyone's interested in watching the progression of TC Ingrid, have a look at the Weipa Radar.

It's further away from me than Melbourne, but I'm still watching the trek of Tropical Cyclone Ingrid as it moves towards Cape Melville and the Coen region of Far North Queensland. Packing winds of 250km per hour near the centre of the storm, Ingrid is already sending destructure winds over Cape Melville and very destructive winds are expected to hit Coen overnight. For those who are unaware of the fury and power of a cyclone, it might be worth your while having a read through the materials pretty much all northern Australian residents have to read at some point. In particular, the implications of a Category 4 Cyclone are worth noting: significant roofing loss and structural damage, many caravans destroyed or blown away, dangerous airborne debris, and widespread power failures.

Our thoughts are with local residents, and we hope that the storm will be more a marvel of the power of nature, than an instrument of widespread misery.

To those who have been so kind in sending good wishes for my return to full health, I thank you! Your vibes certainly worked, as I was able to return to work successfully yesterday, and feel 100%. Was also great to spend some time last night with my friend Shan, who made my night :-) Have also had some great news this week with more work and more opportunities, so things are looking up. I'll divulge more when I am permitted to do so.

... I'm still sick.

Many will have heard John Howard's latest advice to school students that they should drop out at the end of Year 10 and get a trade.

There are so many things wrong with this advice it's hard to know where to start. But for the sake of accuracy, and for the sanity of my readers, I shall spend some time on this issue in an extended entry. But before I submit to the extended entry edition of this post, I will say that there are about three careers I can think of that justify leaving school early... and none of them are in industries where Australia suffers a shortage of workers.

Oh and thanks to Troffie for encouraging me to post on this issue.

Still sick. Will post normally when I'm better.

You know how I said I wasn't dead in the last post? Well I suppose it's still technically accurate but after a week of fighting off a cold, it's finally arrived in full. So I feel rather dead anyway. It's times like these I really should eat more capsicum. It's supposed to be awfully good at fighting off the symptoms of asthma which inevitably worsen every time I get a cold.

In other news.... you have to wonder how the US can even begin to call themselves a 'democracy' when they start to gag bloggers, develop weapons that cause excrutiating pain at a distance of two kilometres, and arrest schoolkids for works of fiction they keep in writing journals. Perhaps Australia should send 100,000 troops to land in the US and surround the Congress as "reinforcements of goodwill".

No I'm not dead. Just busy. Ideas Festival meeting was fabulous yesterday and have been busily seeking out opportunities to podcast certain apects of the event. The timing of the event has been put back to next March so we now have a little more planning time, but rather than the staid old forum format I'd like to develop some interactive elements to a discussion on technology mediated discussion. Stay tuned....