A few people have asked me what I’m doing these days so I thought it’s about time I wrote an update!

Many of you already know I’ve been a technology journalist for more than a decade, and I’ve continued to work as a freelance contributor for The Australian Financial Review, producing video interviews and The Scoop (which is on an extended summer break). But what you might not know is I’m also a keynote speaker and workshop host focussed on, you guessed it, digital media and internet trends (btw, you can book me direct, or via agencies like Saxton and ICMI). Why? I’ve always made career decisions based on a simple premise. If the idea sounds scary, I do it! Life is more fun that way.

So last November I found myself on a big stage at the Financial Planners Association Conference on the Gold Coast speaking about social media in front of a few hundred people. It was one of a dozen or so keynotes and workshops I have delivered over the past 6 months or so.  The folk at the FPA were kind enough to send me some photos of yours truly on stage, pictured here. Read the rest of this entry »

I live for moments of clarity, when all those passing thoughts and observations suddenly collide and create something new. And this time it was during a chance encounter on ustream.tv, the free video channel community.

One of my twitter buddies had linked to a test broadcast by ABC personality James Valentine. He was in a radio studio with an engineer (off air) and trying to figure out how to possible weave a live video feed into his radio show.

And here we were, some 92 people who had caught wind of the experiment and buzzed by to see what the fuss was about. James was engaging directly with the assembled onlookers. He wanted to get the sound working. Technical stuff. As an aside, it was fun to discover one of the ustream participants was an old friend who I’d not seen for years – the online equivalent of bumping into someone in the street.

Meanwhile, I had other stuff happening while ustream’s live comments unfolded. I was glancing at my twitter stream (you can find me here, btw), reading email, doing some online research ahead of a social media workshop I was to host the following day, synching my ipod and smartphone. Just your regular Joe with an digital attention deficit disorder. Read the rest of this entry »