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The Scoop wins a Lizzie

April 29th, 2009 by mhjones

Way back in 2007 I had this idea for a business podcast. A technology podcast that brought together the best minds in the technology business to uncover a few pearls of wisdom for CIOs and technology leaders. I called it “The Scoop.”

mj-awardFormer publisher of The Australian Financial Review’s MIS Magazine, Matt Rigney, backed the idea and helped sell it to editorial and management at Fairfax Business Media. And FBM has backed me ever since.

Fast forward to April 2009 and  I received a huge thumbs up from my tech journalism and media colleagues when The Scoop received a Lizzie Award for Best Audio Program.  Obviously I’m stoked by the win, particularly given that The Scoop returns next week after a long summer hiatus. I’ll write more about that soon.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Calacanis interview on AFR TV

May 30th, 2008 by mhjones

When US tech entrepreneur Jason Calacanis flew into Sydney for CeBIT this month, I joined the queue of Aussie journalists who wanted to meet the man who sold a blogging company to AOL for US$25 million (yes, we’d ALL like to do that…).

Here’s the result of our chat - part 1 and part 2 - on the new-look, big-screen tv.afr.com that my colleague at Fairfax Business Media, Marc Tewksbury, has been working on for months (btw, nice work Marc!). You can also watch it over at misaustralia.com.

Telstra’s CTO Hugh Bradlow

April 8th, 2008 by mhjones

Hugh Bradlow had been on my list of people I wanted to interview for some time. In part, because I was reading his blog on Telstra’s infamous NowWeAreTalking. We finally met recently at a broadband conference and this video is the result. It’s a shade long at nearly 16 mins, but we decided it was a good yarn and worth the effort. Hope you agree!

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.500826&w=425&h=350&fv=guid%3Dguid93432] from www.misaustralia.com posted with vodpod

The day I interviewed Woz

March 3rd, 2008 by mhjones

Updated below

Y’know, it’s not everyday that you get to interview someone like woz. I mean, he’s a geek’s geek. A deadset legend in developer ranks. He basically invented the PC, for crying out loud. And for me, he was the guy who designed the Apple IIe, the very first computer I ever used. Kinda bizzare, that.

So anyway, 30+ years after he and Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Computer, I find myself interviewing him in the corner of a funky cafe in Sydney’s Shangri La hotel during the Broadband and Beyond conference. A video interview for afr.com and misaustralia.com, that is, recorded by my multimedia partner in crime, Fairfax Business Media’s multimedia producer Marc Tewksbury. Expect to see it online later this week. I also recorded the audio on my Zoom H4 for potential podcast material, and knocked out an old skool print yarn for Tuesday’s AFR - so go buy a copy!

You probably won’t believe me, but I didn’t feel “star struck” as such. Yes, he’s an amazing guy. But I guess a better way to describe it is that I had great fun - one of those “I get to do this as a job?” moments, where everything just seems to click. I had questions, and guess what, he had great controversial answers.

But that said, I did succumb to the temptation that faces people in such situations - get stuff signed.

As it happens, I use an old PowerBook G4 perched on my knee to display my interview questions. Thanks to some marvellous foresight on the part of yours truly, I brought a permanent marker with me. Here’s the result… (and I wonder what the 5 yr old machine is worth now?.. :)
PowerBook G4 signed by Woz

Woz also gave me a signed *metal* business card, which I’ll do him the respect of not showing here since it contains his home address and mobile number…

But one of the AFR’s snappers, Peter Braig, was on hand to capture the moment for the paper… and (below) caught Woz signing a card for a very clearly chuffed Mr Tewksbury while I fumbled for a business card of my own.

Now, I’ve got a card in here somewhere…

Say cheese… Marc, Woz, Mark…

Happy chappies

Finally, thanks to Jeff Bird, Rachel Slattery and Telstra’s Martin Barr for making it happen.

UPDATE:

The video has gone live on afr.com and misaustralia.com

You can find it on AFR.com down the bottom right hand corner of the home page (here’s a screenshot for reference, and the image links to the video on MISaustralia):
AFR woz screen shot

And finally, if you missed the story in Tuesday’s AFR, the online version is here.

Enterprise 2.0 thinking

February 20th, 2008 by mhjones

What is Enterprise 2.0? To paraphrase Harvard Business School’s Andrew McAfee at yesterday’s Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum, it’s a term that describes the use of social software by companies. Think Web 2.0 for the suits.

e2.0

(Cartoon source: Geek and Poke)

So that’s the definition, but what about real world applications? Forum host Ross Dawson assembled some interesting local case studies, and you can listen to their presentations and the Q&A session on The Scoop. (Btw, it’s the first time I’ve done a live recording of a panel using my Zoom H4. The feed out of the desk was a little hot for some of the speakers, but with a bit of digital spit and polish I’m largely satisfied with the result.)

There’s plenty of blog coverage out there from the event, including posts from Brad, Trevor, Mick (plus more from him at Phil Morle on Tangler), and of course Ross’ own reflections.

As for me, it’s been interesting to reflect on the expectations that we bring to this discussion. If you’re a digital marketer, you want to know how social media effectiveness can be measured in terms of ROI and sales leads. If you’re in business, there’s a sense that Enterprise 2.0 should add significant business value. Andrew McAfee’s assessment was that we expect any new collaboration tool to be at least 10x better than the incumbent technology - email.

Expressed in more simple terms, we’re impatient for success. Enterprise 2.0 is part of a broader, very significant shift in the way we communicate and collaborate. We’re still experimenting, and those on the bleeding edge like those in featured in my podcast are blazing the trail. It strikes me that to simply sit back and demand instant success does not reflect the spirit of what’s happening here. It’s the different between participation and consumption. Consumers say “gimme!”, while those in social software are prepared to take a risk and get their hands dirty.

We got a chance to flesh out some of these issues during roundtable sessions at the event. I attended one hosted by Capgemini’s CTO Peter Evans-Greenwood called “Effective implementation of Enterprise 2.0.” Here’s the notes I typed into my dopod 838: Read the rest of this entry »

Conroy’s broadband agenda

November 26th, 2007 by mhjones

Sometimes it pays to make an educated guess. Last week I lined up Senator Stephen Conroy to join me as a guest on The Scoop this morning on the assumptions Labor would defeat the Liberals and that he would retain the Communications and ICT portfolio as the Rudd Government transitions into power.

Some of the biggest names in the Australian IT industry also accepted the invitation to join me on the panel for a special “Election Edition” which I recorded on the first working day after the weekend’s so-called “Ruddslide.” My other guests were TechnologyOne CEO Adrian Di Marco, AIIA CEO Sheryle Moon, ACS outgoing President Philip Argy and BRW’s technology editor Foad Fadaghi, one of the country’s most respected telecommunications reporters, and a regular on the show. That’s a lot of voices to give air time inside 30 minutes of recording time!

Naturally enough, we talked about Labor’s plans for broadband and my industry colleagues received a positive response from Senator Conroy on the vexed issue of why state and federal governments have persisted in keeping their communications and technology industry development portfolios separate. There’s a permalink available via Stephen’s pic below. Enjoy!

Stephen Conroy

Facebook slides, Second Life sings

November 9th, 2007 by mhjones

Asher Moses at the SMH has been writing a series of articles, such as this, and today’s piece on Facebook’s plans for world domination.

Like most things in social media, the Facebook story is part spin, part reality, and large doses of intrigue.  I don’t think anyone really expected the Facebook fad to last. After all, you could argue MySpace has already become yesterday’s social network. What’s interesting is the lesson that Facebook’s learning in a hurry is actually one that’s an age-old truism in the media business. You must always put the interests of your readers/audience/community before that of the advertisers. Yes, that’s an obvious statement, but the irony is that Facebook is a social media company. A central tenet of social media is involving your community in corporate decision making, or at least responding quickly when you upset them. Breaking the new and old media rules simultaneously is quite a feat!

So has Facebook has jumped the shark? The Facebook community is dangerously offside, while on the other hand the investment community appears unlikely to back away from demands the company turns a profit.

Meanwhile, there’s a lesson to be learnt in all this over at Second Life. I was also prepared to write off Second Life as yesterday’s social media fad, but the opposite appears to be the case. As I learnt from my chat with the ABC’s Lisa Romano, Mr Podcast himself TPN’s Cameron Reilly and The Project Factory’s Gary Hayes on The Scoop, the SL community has jumped by 9 million residents during the past 12 months. Oh, and it gets better. They’re apparently not all geeks, but 30+ high-income earners, many of whom spend real money on SL.

I’d suggest the lesson Mr Zuckerberg has to learn from Second Life is that Linden Lab knows it lives and dies based on the degree to which it keeps the residents happy. It’s called social media for a reason.

Lessons in podcasting

August 5th, 2007 by mhjones

MJ’s studio

I’ve been recording and producing The Scoop for about five weeks now for MISaustralia.com. I’ve been juggling this gig with time in the office on other editing and strategy-related duties for the site, and mixing it up with recording video interviews. Talk about a learning curve. The best analogy I can think of is having driven a car for years and being given the keys to a plane - all of a sudden you’re dealing with three dimensions at once. At a previous job I acted in a producer role, so this time it’s different now I’m in the hot seat. Here’s a few of the things I’ve been learning:

  • Podcast and print interview questions really are different. It’s not that you’re after different information, people just want you to get to the point quickly on a podcast.
  • Skype recordings suck. The Skype software itself is fine, but you just can’t trust the open Internet for any kind of quality of service. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to clean up a Skype recording with a really famous IT industry leader because of frequent drop-outs. Never thought I’d say this, but I don’t think you will get a more consistent & clear sound than a fixed line until VoIP technology or bandwidth improves. Mind you, I’m also using some cool gear that cleans up a fixed line so that helps…
  • It pays to have a friend who’s a sound engineer & musician (thanks James!) - audio gear is more tricky than it first appears.
  • I say “umm”, “ahh”, and pause to think far more than I should - gotta love post-production.
  • Planning episodes, setting up interviews, recording, editing, & producing always takes more time than I think it will.
  • What is a “radio voice” anyway?
  • A friend in radio says that if you smile, your voice sounds “warmer.” I must sound “cold” … ah well, just as well I’ve got broad shoulders…