End of FY07 in the Heart of Finance: AMP

Every year, AMP has a small IT expo where their vendors get to display the products and services they want to sell.

Microsoft, due to paternity leaves, various end-of-year / beginning of year shenanigans, it’s down to me. Single-handedly representing a multi-bazillion dollar company to another multi-bazillion dollar company.

Today, I do my normal day’s work with a crowd; blogging, social. Live blogging.

8:10am arrive. Sydney CBD is quiet, considering this is Australia’s financial hub and it is the last day of the 2006/7 financial year. Billions of dollars move through bank accounts today. Quick park next door to the event and I am away.

8:30am all the stuff is wired together. Many other vendors here showing off their financial wares. As per Frank Arrigo’s post yesterday on the AMP Thought Leadership Festival, Microsoft Australia DPE is going “online” in a Web 2.0 fashion.

Off to grab coffee.

How I am wireless: The expo has not supplied wireless, so its a matter of using Bluetooth to connect from Vista to my Treo 750. Dialling out via Telstra NextG (although I don’t think I have the super fast Next G speed on the Treo until Windows Mobile 6.0) Dear Rob in Microsoft Australia who manages our mobile phone bills. Mine might be larger than normal.

Picture: “Bridging the Digital Generation Gap” with my special semiotic message OfficeSpace t-shirt.

9:10am first question of the day. What is Web 2.0? I love this job.

9:25am Windows Live Writer rocks. How did I blog before this? The stand next to me is “web 2.0 for dummies”.  Where do I download that product?

9:33am a quick wander around the other stands. Someone has “IronRuby” shortcut on their Windows desktop on a Portals stand. My future friend.

10:08am question: how do I start blogging.  1. Get a spaces.live.com account 2. Windows Live Writer

10:18am demonstrate a chatbot. discussion of Second Life with few logged in users vs. chat/IM/mobile.

10:36am Conversation with marketer “reach out when people have a significant change in their life”, this will not be in the MSM. Mobile, chat.

10:45am Financial advice, online. Doing it independently, interact with a human, financial info is not clear. Clearly compare things. Professional advice $200-$500. Trust.

11:08am Autoplay virus. Answering a question from David

11:15am complied with the audit rules and stamped the card for the Vetting (read: Audit) department.

11:20am IBM showing some graphical business process drawing thing, and SecondLife where there are presently about 10 Australians logged in. Am resorting to Popfly with pretty pictures to get more questions.

11:25am people want free stuff. I am sending them to codeplex

11:50am selling lots of http://linkedin.com

12:00pm couple of HR people asking about employing digital natives

12:35pm Assisting parents with understanding MSN Live Messenger, talking about business continuity with technology

12:45pm demystifying Web 2.0. Attempting to separate marketing lingo from reality. Watching IBM guys go white across the hall

12:50pm had a box sent from North Ryde to here, I hope it arrives and doesn’t get stolen by the security guards

1:00pm the “Bridging the Digital Generation Divide” getting the mums in with teenagers. Assisting with guidance to online safety and the power of social community. Extending the meme of ensuring you know where you kids are going online, and have tried these out yourself.

1:15pm box arrived, customer happy. phew.

1:20pm talking about age gap of financial planners: younger planners expect deeper interactions with AMP, more instant, less paperwork.

1:30pm spending DPE mobile phone budget on NextG Wireless. This is about the size of Will Hughes’ salary for FY08

1:45pm Excel Pivot Tables!

2:00pm Uninstalling Internet Explorer 6.0 from Windows XP question

2:05pm selling lots of http://twitter.com/NickHodge .  FlickrVision / TwitterVision on big screen gets the oohs and ahhs. Altho’ its running from a mere Mac

2:30pm getting a LOLZ from http://lolbots.com/

2:45pm Popfly, Silverlight demo. Showing how to make your own block

3:00pm It could be over, not sure as there are still lots of people around

3:10pm Been surprising people all day not by selling stuff directly, but asking the question “what is AMP doing for the sub-25 year olds”. Making the age distinction (or being ageist) helps describe the digital natives, no matter the age. Provoking thought is critical for all us online customers of AMP. I’d prefer to deal with people via email. Believe it or not, its way more personal.