I'm probably being a bit nasty with this post title. BBC2's Dragons' Den is probably one of my favourite television programs. For those who have never seen it, this is a program where a group of 5 Venture Capitalists (VCs) appraise the business plans of budding entrepreneurs and decide whether to invest in the contestants' business proposals.
There are a couple of things about Dragons Den which those who enter the den don't seem to realise. These VCs are self-made men and women (or woman, as is usually the case). They have a lot of money. But they are not giving it away. Their sole purpose in being on this program is to generate more money. Thus the entrepreneurs must realise this is not about them making money. It is about the VCs making a large amount of money, and about the entrepreneur making enough out of their idea to start up another business in 3 years. No-one will make a fortune out of the dragons' deals (except possibly, the dragons).
But in order to educate people about this aspect of the program, what I think is necessary is a Dragon's Den Revisted series. This would track the dragons' investment in businesses presented in the program. It would articulate the success or failure of the businesses, and would specify the return on investment achieved by the dragons as well as the entrepreneurs who orginally pitched the idea in the den.
Oh and if you have never heard of Moot Corp, it's a competition for MBA students and recent graduates to pitch a business idea to venture capitalists, with the objective of winning a nominal bursary to begin a business. The business ideas are usually relatively good quality, but even if you win a Moot Corp competition, the money you receive is so limited and the conditions of investment so constrained, that the business often declines into obscurity. Really, the point of a Moot Corp win is to promote the careers of the winners, not to generate a compelling business. Unfortunately, Dragons Den doesn't even achieve that much for the participating entrepreneurs. So if it isn't quite Moot Corp for Dummies, perhaps it is more 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (My Venture Capitalist does)'.
Have just seen two little videos of my one-year-old niece playing with a mobile phone and enjoying a nice bit of barramundi (that's fish, for you Brits), and then another video of her taking the camera lens into her hands, staring down the viewfinder, and saying "Hello", and then responding to her Daddy's return greeting with, "Hi".
I know it's not ground-breaking or even terribly interesting to many people, but for her proud aunty it's the cutest thing in the world.
Hello Miss Alissa. Aunty Jo loves you and misses you! :-)
BBC's Mastermind tags itself as 'TV's Toughest Test'.
I think not. When contestants can set their topics as the 'Life and Music of Cliff Richards', and Grand Prixs from the 1980s till today, this is hardly a difficult competition. All it requires is a slightly frightening level of fanaticism. I'm sure any of my old pals in ATXF (aus.tv.xfiles community) could probably have entered (I'm looking at you, RachREL and Chris) and won every game.
Yes, there is a general knowledge section but those questions are no more difficult than those on Temptation, and frankly, I still think actually sitting through an entire episode of Big Brother would have to be TV's toughest test.
It was 50 years ago today that the Lego brick first came on the market. I know my brother and I had hours of fun playing with Lego as kids, and I'm fairly certain that pretty much every hacker I've ever known has had a no-so-secret love of Lego, even if only manifesting itself in Lego versions of Monty Python sketches and Star Wars stop-motion re-enactments of the films, built entirely in Lego.
I must admit I'm a huge fan of Lego and their work on 'serious play'. So I feel there's always a place for Lego in your life - no matter how old you are. That said, I wish Lego a very happy birthday, and hope all will enjoy their favourite Lego moments today. And in celebration, I want to include this little gem of a Lego stop-motion sketch. But I warn you: it's adults only!
London keeps astonishing. Besides the fact that I'm seeing sun an awful lot since I've been here, I'm also acutely aware that people tend to smile at me more than I expected. It's often said in London that no-one smiles at you on the Tube or in the street. I haven't experienced that at all. People smile at me all the time. Now of course, there's always the possibiity that they are laughing at that wacky Aussie who never goes anywhere without one of her hats, and who tends to peak out from under the brim with a sense of whimsy, but I'm hopeful that it is because people are nicer than you are generally led to believe.
I'm also conscious of the fact that my tendency to match my outfits is so out of place that it warrants as a topic of conversation. A typical ex-Melbourne geek, I do have a habit of dressing all in black. By wearing a black suit with a black top and covering that with a black coat, and accessorising with a black hat, scarf and gloves, I am apparently a subject of great mystery in London. (This may well be why people are smiling.) But the same happens when I wear my creamy white jacket, scarf, hat and gloves, and when I wear my red jacket and red/black accessories. The usual comment I get in the street is something along the lines of... "Now don't you look.....?", followed by a longish pause. I tend to jump in and offer, "Colour coordinated?" Laughter ensues. I've noticed most people tend to contrast their hats with their jackets. I do have a pink hat I wear with the black jacket, but then I wear a pink scarf and carry a pink satchel. Either way, it still coordinates. Perhaps it is also because I tend to wear suits and am out in the street during office hours that this is worthy of commentary, but I do find it a little weird. I certainly never received the same response in Brisbane or in Melbourne, and I was just as coordinating there, though it's true it was less common for me to wear a hat.
Imagine, if you will, a bright sunny day in London (there are actually more of them in London than anyone will concede) and the local Walkabout (Aussie pub) is so jam-packed full of 20-28 year old Australians that they have spilled on to the street. People are wearing Aussie face paint and impromptu scarves made from the Australian flag. Aussie girls are wearing Akubra hats and green and gold tank tops, in spite of the fact that it's actually only 10° Celsius, and all are carrying British-style cans (a full pint, rather than the usual Aussie can measuring less than 600ml) of Fosters beer. Aussie accents are fair dinkum everywhere.
Those of us belonging to a slightly more mature age group are clearly struggling. The old Australian urge to be ocker and proudly sing our nation's anthem (Men at Work's 'We Come From A Land Downunder', not 'Advance Australia Fair') is tugging at the gut. Or perhaps that's just the beer. But we are trying to appear a litle more civilised, whilst also being part of the festivities, proud to be Australian, yet distinctly embarrassed by the antics of the younger set.
Eventually it dawns on us: there are people outside who don't know or care that it is Australia Day. It's just that Australians apparently outnumber them. I will say it again: there are far too many Australians in London. In fact there are - at the last count - more than 200,000 Australians (or 1% of the entire Australian population) in London at any one point of time. Given the population of London is about 12 million, that means that at any point of time, Australians represent between 1.5% and 2% of London's population.
Oh dear. But even so, I am celebrating today because when it comes down to it, I am and always will be proud to be Australian. Happy Australia Day everyone. And Londoners - please just avert your eyes from the young Australians today!
Had the most bizarre experience this afternoon (for me, at least). Walking home from an appointment with my real estate agent today, I wandered up St Stephen's Avenue in Shepherd's Bush and was faced with a wild fox, casually heading my way. Now I understand that urban foxes are common in London, roaming the streets under the cover of darkness, and I have in fact spotted a fox in suburban parks of Australia in the dead of night on a rare occasion. However, this was broad daylight, and the fox was happy to come within about 10 feet of me before casually deciding to swap to the other side of the road, where the opportunity to ransack a 'refuse sack' (read: bag of rubbish) was apparently more appealing than wandering past me in the street.
I don't think I've ever come as close to feral wildlife in my life. But at the moment that it seemed that a fox would simply pass me in the middle of the day, with the sun shining down and the fox possibly ducking his head in a general acknowledgement, as if to say "g'day, how's it going?" (I assumed the fox would greet me with an Australian accent, as he was clearly quite comfortable with me), and suddenly I thought, "well if it wasn't for you, Mr Fox, then the rat situation in London would be abysmal".
I'm not sure whether I had consumed too many cups of tea or not, but the prospect of actually feeling relaxed and gratified about passing a wild fox in the street struck me afterwards as possibly more weird than seeing the vulpine individual happily strutting his stuff down a quiet suburban street of London.
Most of my readership will know I value a good debate and am interested in any opportunity to engage in sustained discussion and exploration of ideas on often controversial issues. I have learned perhaps, from my experiences as a campaigner for Daylight Saving in South-East Queensland, as well as for my roles behind the scenes for a number of public interest campaigns, to be careful about how I articulate a vision, and not to respond merely to the simple barbs of some combatants. It is vital, for instance, to focus on the realistic consequences of a policy change, and not to be too wrapped in idealism.
This is why I have been rather frustrated by the attempts at social debate made by the BBC program, 'The Big Questions' aired on Sunday mornings. Yesterday's program involved exploration for some of the program on whether prosititution should be made 'illegal'. Not only was the question misunderstood by some of the speakers present (there is a distinct difference between criminalisation of soliciting and criminalisation of prosititution more generally), but there was also a blindness among advocates for the rights of women, in believing that criminalisation of prostitution would in fact improve the rights of women, and reduce cases of abuse and sexual slavery (both of which are already illegal). I applaud the BBC for engaging in these difficult questions, but I wonder whether the invited audience format for debate is useful? At least, if such a format is to be employed, should not there be substantial opportunity for the public to engage in the debate electronically, either before or after the event (preferably before, as the public are remarkably better informed than most programmers would have you believe)? Also, the program is very short and explores far too many questions at once. This leaves the audience both in the studio and in home lounge rooms feeling more frustrated than informed about the issues at hand. Public debate needs to be more considered than these snapshots of difficult issues. And technology can help there.
No don't get me wrong - I'm in many ways an idealist about new technologies. But once upon a time, under the direction of my old mentor, Trevor Barr, I faced the prospect of defining myself under his now-famous 'Schools of Thought' theory, as someone who believes in the potential of the technologies to improve human communication as well as business opportunities, so long as there are distinct ground rules for ensuring access to the infrastructure for participation.
In the case of 'The Big Questions' there is a limited opportunity for the public to engage in debate, based on the community that has been built around the program online (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thebigquestions/), but perhaps because of its positioning as a Religion and Ethics program, or because of its fairly simplistic and under emphasised Message Board, the debate online is dominated by a few main voices, with at times over-simplified commentary.
I think this kind of program deserves the profile and style of engagement favoured by the Guardian's Comment is Free site. It would be simple enough to invite the public to submit extended, and thoughtful pieces related to each 'Big Question', such that a more sustained and proactive outcome can be achieved by engaging with these ideas. Further, if the televised version could follow up on questions raised, I think the value of the programme would be greatly enhanced. The method I propose is more truly a collaboration between audiences and content developers, rather than a website as an add-on to an existing programme.
If reality television has taught us anything, it is that audiences like to be heard and to have influence over what they see after they get their 'vote'. Programmes like 'The Big Questions' need to ensure that they are more considered in their articulation of an issue, and the role they play in bringing about change.
... to all those who sent such supportive messages after the passing of my grandmother in Australia last week. Your support was extremely valuable to me and I regard myself as being very fortunate to have such a wonderful and giving readership. Thank you, all.
My last grandparent passed away today. Nannie had been an amazing woman in her time, a wonderful teacher and carer for her community through her church, and an avid gardener, eventually becoming President of the Bonsai Society in Victoria, Australia. Her house was always a bit of a treasure trove for me as a child, with a morning room which was always warm, even in the depths of winter, and a lounge room which had lots of miniature tea sets and figurines which kept me happy as a small child. Then upstairs in one of the two attic rooms there was a room full of treasures: an old wind organ, boxes of my father's comics from his childhood, golf clubs, chemistry sets, microscopes, an old lyra, and heaps of other odds and ends which would keep me entertained for hours. And then as I grew older, there was my uncle David's fabulous science fiction book collection which beat all. Finally, Nannie's garden was a complete spectacle. Always neat and trimmed, the place was like a miniature faeryland, with hundreds of bonsai trees in little pots on stands three deep, all under the shade of an enormous walnut tree, along the boughs of which the old shells of cicadas could be found. I always looked forward to being at Nannie's because Nannie used to let me explore, and would answer even my most impertinent questions with patience and equanimity. And she encouraged an enquiring mind, taking us to museums and exhibitions when we were children, and allowing our questions throughout, whilst always commanding respect and interest from my brother and me.
Nannie always struck me as a determined woman, and of a kind not seen nowadays. She steadfastly wore her wedding ring through all the decades following her divorce, and she held to her faith in a manner which I can only admire, looking back - I never had such faith. She was old-fashioned in some ways, and yet she was a career woman long before that was regarded as commonplace. She found it difficult, I think, to express affection, and yet she clearly felt it for us, her grandchildren.
I'm glad I got to see Nannie when I was in Melbourne this year - I had a feeling then, that it was as if I was saying goodbye. She had been moved to a permanent care home, and she seemed much changed from the quiet but firm woman I had always known. But once again, as had always been the case with her farewell, she said 'God bless' when she said goodbye. I can only wish her the same now: God bless you, Nannie. And thank you for being my grandmother.
I'm a-huntin' wabbits.... or rather, I'm counting sheep. After a very long, exhausting, but largely successful week, I am now so tired that I have decided to just skip the whole Hey-I'm-in-London-and-it-doesn't-matter-how-tired-I-am-I'm-going-to-just-press-on game of tourism, work and research and instead, I'm going to admit my whole body is so tired that I can barely move and go to bed early with a book or a movie. G'nite folks.
.... From the comfort of my lovely little London pad. I'm very cosy here with my BT Wireless now, and am going to spend my evening resting and catching up with old emails after a VERY long week. Will catch up with you all on the weekend!
It was a delight to hear from the Resource Center for Cybercultural Studies today to hear of their listing Uses of Blogs as their Book of the Month for February 2008. I acknowledge here how delighted I am with the reviews, and how much I appreciate the constructive comments made about the book. Not to put too fine a point on it, Axel and I are considering a series of these books with other emerging technologies, and taking the same approach of considering how to use specific technologies in scholarly and commercial contexts. I'd like to take all the comments made on board for our next expedition in to publishing in this vein.
I will release the address of the reviews when they are published online (they are currently 'hidden') but, suffice to say, I am thrilled with the reviews.
I'm in the process of moving to the new place and am basically going to be offline until next weekend as the wireless at the apartment where I am staying has completely died and my connection at the new place isn't established until Thursday evening (Friday morning Australian time). Right now, I'm using an appallingly expensive Starbucks connection to write this.
Anyone trying to contact me from Australia, please note that my Australian mobile still works, but don't expect a response from it - it costs too much to use, even for SMS. And preferably, please don't send me SMS messages as I'm paying for those too. In any case, I'm only checking my Australian mobile once a week now, and will be using my UK number from now on. If you want to contact me via mobile, please email me, and I will send you my new mobile number. Otherwise please just use email and we can catch up at some stage later.
Also folks, bear in mind that London is 10/11 hours behind Australia, so while 3pm may be a great time for you guys to talk to me, it doesn't work that well for me!
Okay - will fill you all in next weekend on happenings!
I am totally and utterly exhausted. Just spent half a day cleaning and another half a day running around town and carting stuff here and there. And it's not over yet; I have washing and home duties at my temporary flat to complete tonight before I head to bed early and rise to return to trips to my new flat where goods will be dropped off and more washing of dishes will occur.
I'm relatively happy with the way things are going but I'm too tired to provide details... will fill you all in with more news next week In the meantime, I need to stay awake long enough to finish the work left to do today, and then, with any luck, allow myself to fall in a long and reviving rest.
Contrary to popular opinion, the process of setting up a phone account and broadband connection in London can be fast and efficient.
If there is an existing phone line connected to any property, then establishing an account with BT is remarkably simple and extremely fast. I have just ordered my new phone line account and broadband package with BT and everything will be active from the day after I move for good. I even get my wireless hub posted to my address. So essentially the landline is active within 2 days of ordering and the broadband connection is available within 5 days of ordering, including all hardware. Telstra in Australia was nowhere near as fast.
However, setting up mobile broadband in London is remarkably tricky and expensive, and virtually impossible unless you are prepared to pay £100 for one of the providers' modems. Come with your own broadband USB modem and you have no chance at all. You can get a pay-as-you-go SIM card but it will only show you sites that are accessible on a mobile phone. So in other words, it's useless. It's also extremely expensive, starting from a minimum £30 per month. Some providers charge an extraordinary £2.35 per *megabyte*.
In comparison, I can get free calls to local service providers, free internet calls, 5Gb monthly limit and 8Mb/s broadband speed plus digital television and personal video recorder with a landline and wireless broadband package for about £30/month (and only £20/month for the first 6 months). That includes everything - calls, line rental, broadband internet, BT Vision.
That's about A$67 a month for *everything*. Taking in to account my former monthly landline rental, calls and broadband package, let alone my basic subscription TV package, that's one hell of a lot less than I was paying at home in Brisbane. I have to say, I'm extremely impressed.
Westfield Shopping centres in Australia have realised that London is a place where people spend lots of money, and as such, they are in the process of building the biggest shopping centre in England in Shepherd's Bush (just down the road from where I hope to be living). Damned good investment, in my humble opinion. I think it will be a rip roaring success in both winter (where it's so damned cold to shop in London) and summer (where the place will have air con).
Now I think there are two more Australian chains who should seriously consider branching out to the gateway to Europe: Dan Murphy's and Bunnings Warehouse. Now this isn't just selfish. Yes, of course I would like them both down the road. But there is actually a gap in the market for both retailers here, too.
The only really big chain of alcohol-selling shops in London is OddBins. They are a bit more like Vintage Cellars in Australia, as they tend to have small stores and stock boutique wines as well as cheapies, and they even have their own kind of cleanskin. But there are no real alcohol supermarkets in London. Granted, most people buy their wine at Tesco or Sainsbury's (something we can't do in Australia due to licensing laws) but as a result the British palate is relatively ... shall we say... 'immature'. But given the volume of Europeans in London now, and the immense growth rate in alcohol consumption, I think there's a real opportunity here for Dan Murphy's to consider expansion of their business in to Europe. Not only would it help the distribution of quality Australian wines, but it would enable Dan's to carry some reasonably priced European stock both within London and back to Oz. And this is relevant because Australian wines are losing favour here and in Europe as cheaper local product begins to challenge the generally low-priced Australian wine market. In particular, Australia's generally reasonable discount sparkling wines are bottoming out as the Spanish traditional method 'Cava' (a sparkling wine) eclipses them for both quality and price (average bottle of Cava is just £4.50 and can go as low as £3, where even a Jacobs Creek Pinot Noir sparkling cuvee is about £7). Until there is a channel for Australian wines and a venue for both education and competition in the wine market of London, I think Australia's exports may begin to drop off, no matter how good the quality may be. Dan's could establish itself here both as an educator about wine quality and as a substantive competitor in the wine marketplace - as it has done at home - through sheer buying power and through offering competition to the shoddy product available at supermarkets and corner stores in the UK.
The other huge gap in the marketplace is for Bunnings Warehouse. Yes alright, I love the store. But it's not just that. London has only one chain of hardware stores - Robert Dyas - and a whole range of crappy tool and homeware shops that tend to have ill-informed staff and very tiny ranges of products, so you generally can't learn anything about the marketplace.
Now. Come on. London is *obsessed* with DIY and renovation programs on TV, and there isn't a facility to support the trend. This is an enormous opportunity for a company like Bunnings to come in and fill a massive gap in the marketplace. Even a single warehouse store would make Londoner renovators salivate. There could be the usual Bunnings DIY training sessions and even the usual sausage sizzle on a Sunday to entertain the masses. But more importantly, all those wood, tool, painting and homeware products would move faster than a speeding bullet out of a London Bunnings store. Plus if there are links established with the local building community, the trade market would also be boosted. Again, I see this as a huge opportunity in London and one which the giant Bunnings chain could afford. A single warehouse even as far out of town as Hounslow or Willesden would be a serious winner in the UK.
There are several more Australian companies I think that would do well here, but I suspect the usual Australian cultural cringe and poor business confidence has blinded organisations from considering London as a business location. We keep focusing on Asia, and not on market weaknesses as influencing our decisions on global expansion. But both Bunnings and Dan's could afford to invest here, and there is a market for their products. Time to look outside the pacific region for new business, guys. Come here. They'll love you.
Ho hum. I suppose nothing compares to Sydney's fireworks on New Year's Eve, or Brisbane's Riverfire. The London Eye makes a few appearances but the whole thing seemed less choreographed than events in Australia and there were no public speakers to blast out a music sound track for the event. Plus from where I was on Waterloo Bridge, the fireworks themselves became so enshrouded in their own smoke, that much of the display was partially obscured. At one stage Big Ben just disappeared.
Then on exit I'd have to say London has *no* idea of what to do about crowd control. Interesting. I think the cricket-going crowd and police handling of events at the MCG and Tennis Centre would be good training for London bobbies. Not only did they close roads without prior notice, but where they closed the road was a little way in, so the crowd would surge to a point and could go no further but didn't know why. There were insufficient announcements, and police and transport staff were offering contradictory advice. It was actually pretty poor.
Sydney handle over a million people in the city over New Years Eve. London only had 700,000. But London's handling of how to deal with crowds was so poor that it was as if 2-3 million were in town. I know Sydney is physically a bigger place, so you can direct people over a larger land space, but London could *very easily* do much better in these kinds of public events. And they will need to learn *before* the Olympics in 2012.
Come on Aussies! We better teach these folk a lesson about how to put on a show and get people in and out of events!
(Oh and BTW there are FAR too many Aussies in London. There were shouts of 'AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE! OI OI OI!' all night, and crowds of people singing 'I Am, You Are, We Are Australian'. There were more Aussie chants than British renditions of 'Sweet Chariot'.)
