September 14th, 2009 by mhjones

Once a month for the last few months we’ve been trying something different at The Scoop, a technology business podcast I produce for the Financial Review.

Two guests join me in the Fairfax studio for a chat in front of the cameras. The format is shorter than the regular audio program, but I’m hoping the video format will help broaden the show’s appeal. Hope you agree…

Check it out each week under The Scoop tab at tv.misaustralia.com.

Here’s an embedded version of a recent episode that is served up from the same platform, titled “Online travel takes off.”




Tagged: Podcasting, The Scoop
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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.”

Former 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 »

Tagged: MISaustralia.com, Podcasting, The Australian Financial Review, The Scoop
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April 28th, 2008 by mhjones

It’s great to see that Steve Gillmor and the gang have returned from hiatus and found a home with Mike Arrington.

The Gillmor Gang sprung out of conversations Steve was having with Jon Udell (now at Microsoft) during our time at InfoWorld. These two would muse, debate, and generally play verbal pong pong for considerable chunks of time. As Steve writes (yes Steve, I am a full 10 days behind on this news), he wanted to share the ideas they discussed with the world at large.

One of many other characters worth pointing out in the fray here is Mike Vizard, former editor in chief at InfoWorld who took a punt and imported yours truly from Australia in 1999, just before the Internet business went pear shaped.

These three guys, perhaps more than any others, shaped my experience in San Francisco from 2000 to 2003 - and I’m still enjoying the fruits of that season. So that’s why I listen to the show. There are breadcrumbs here that I do want to pick up and run with.

For other people, the Gang is arguably what RSS/Web 2.0/attention/social media/social networking was always all about. Shared ideas, and turning the mythical “conversation” into reality - warts and all.

In fact, it was this show that partly inspired me to launch The Scoop podcast. We are no Gang, but to my knowledge we are still the only podcast in Australia that’s based on the concept of a panel-style conversation.

Update: wrap your noggin around this post and comments at TechCrunch. The fun has started.

Tagged: Podcasting, Social media, Tech news, The Scoop
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February 26th, 2008 by mhjones

Ah, the sweet irony. After recording the latest episode of The Scoop - titled “The end of social networking?” - I decided it was worth updating the tag at the end of the show which includes a reference to our facebook group.

In case you’ve been under a digital rock, it’s now become fashionable to talk about how you’re either deleting your facebook account, moving to another platform, or declaring you never thought it would take off anyway. Personally, I think it’s a case of back to the future with email, as I’ve argued before.

So given that I’ve planted my flag in the ground on this subject, it will be really interesting to see what happens at ad:tech Sydney. I’m moderating a panel on social media and we’re discussing if a value proposition has emerged? I’m really looking forward to the conversation. Check out the panel’s lineup:

• Rebekah Horne,Vice President Australia & New Zealand, Fox Interactive Media
• Adrian Toy, Regional Director Digital, Universal McCann
• Francisco Cordero, General Manager, Bebo
• Mike Murphy, VP, Media Sales, Facebook

Update: Jon Udell (the bloke who first introduced me to blogging), points to a second generation of social networking…

“…social networks that you have to explicitly join are artificial and ungraphable. But we agreed that these first-generation online social networks are fostering a culture of self-disclosure, and that they may lead to a second generation of more naturalistic systems: bottom-up, ad-hoc, peer-to-peer.”

Tagged: Social media, The Scoop
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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.

(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 »

Tagged: MISaustralia.com, New media, Podcasting, Social media, The Scoop, Weblogs
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February 13th, 2008 by mhjones

Hey, are you one of the thousands of people who download The Scoop each month?  How are we doing? What topics would you like us to discuss? Want to come on the show?

Join The Scoop’s Facebook group and let us know.

Tagged: New media, Social media, The Scoop
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January 22nd, 2008 by mhjones

According to my guests on the first episode of The Scoop for 2008, the short answer is yes - at least from the perspective of the local IT industry. That’s a very big call given that the ASX keeps heading south and the media use terms like “freefall“.

It was something of a challenge finding the CEO of an Australian IT company at work in January (7 CEOs I contacted were away…), but we overcame. Joining me on the show with their predictions for the year ahead is Gary Cohen, chief executive, IBA Health, Tom Stianos, chief executive, SMS Management & Technology and Tim Reed, managing director, MYOB Australia. Enjoy!

Tagged: The Scoop
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January 22nd, 2008 by mhjones

If you read between the lines, there’s a sense of uneasiness about social media in 2008.

Facebook was the Internet’s darling in 2007, having effectively squashed MySpace’s mojo and diverted much of the blogosphere and traditional media’s attention away from discussions about blogs, podcasts and vodcasts. But as Facebook hurries in its efforts to grow up and get a real income, Facebookers like myself have taken a good hard look at the information we publish about ourselves online. Heck, if you breach the social network’s code of ethics you could get struck off, like Robert Scoble. (It’s old news now, but apparently he committed a page-scraping crime in the name of innovation.)

Regardless, it’s dawned on the Facebook community (again) that this social network is not their network. They provide content to Facebook, but ultimately they don’t own that content. Not that this should be seen as some new, evil crime by a big company, mind you. Those of us who work in the media have long understood that the trade-off for a salary, or freelance invoice, is that we surrender copyright to the organisation that publishes our work. That’s life.

But to step back a moment, these Facebook and user-generated content debates highlight an important trend that’s unfolding in 2008. We’ve become social media and online content snackers. We browse Facebook, YouTube, scan Digg for some interesting yarns, poke around on our local newspaper website, scan some RSS feeds, then get back to work (unless reading and blogging is your real job, of course).

Trend Watching has wrapped the term “Expectation Economy” around this trend, and made a good point. Our high expectations for instant access to free, engaging content on the web is also making us irritated and indifferent. Kind of like eating sugar all day. At some point you just want a really good steak (or vegie burger).

A parallel trend here is the proliferation of social media marketing tools. Vandelay lists 233 different social networking sites you can use to market your blog, or get plugged into online conversations. Now, I’ve just resurfaced last week from a long Christmas and New Year holiday. With the exception of checking email and a bit of web surfing, I was basically offline for a month. I do it every year as a way of resetting the brain. But the good thing about getting reconnected again is the sites Vandelay lists will get you up to speed really quickly. The downside is that I’m not particularly loyal to any of them. Actually, to use Twitter as a case in point, I’ve virtually abandoned the service because I found it too distracting and wasn’t delivering value. So I move on to snack on other stuff like Spock.

But there is an interesting upside. In November I invited some of my business contacts and friends to do a quick online survey on how they were using social media. I received 35 responses - all from people who were high net worth individuals, ran a business or occupied some form of senior business management role. To my surprise, they’re strongly in favour of using social networking tools to recommend products and services (see slide below). That tells me we’ve started to move beyond snacking to eating bigger meals, as it were. Product reviews, particularly by business users and consumers, are one of the most powerful developments in social media. That should be music to marketing ears and for the industry at large. What about you, how do you feel about using social media to rate, evaluate and share your experiences with products and services? And should this be the greatest utility to come from social networks?

Tagged: Marketing, Social media, The Scoop
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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!

Tagged: MISaustralia.com, The Scoop
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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.

Tagged: MISaustralia.com, New media, The Scoop
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