Category: technology

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.

ampitexpo 001

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.

ampitexpo 002

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.

Scoble on Write-only Marketing

Robert Scoble, now earning a living dealing with PR people in the ‘valley, understands the difficulty of blogging from within large organisations. Robert refers to one of the 4000-or-so bloggers at Microsoft: David Weller.

The best way to learn about an organisation, its plans and products is with a search engine. Marketing and product teams are absolutely scared witless of the transparency that blogging provides. It’s not evilness, it’s the fear of informing the competition. Especially in the online world where the small is as powerful as the large, and products live and die within a 24-hour cycle.

Marketing and PR prefer a “write-only” internet. Sadly, the internet as we see it today is read and write, read and write.

Maybe Microsoft is not “ubercool” because it’s not obscure enough. Too much transparency, too many eyes, too many mouths. Please don’t forget for each one of these mouths, there is a matching set of ears. We are listening too. Bloggers write, and see the response, feed this back into the cycle of product development.

One wonders about other organisations, and if the “eyes” to “ears” ratio also applies. Read and Write.

Generating PDF via OpenXML, PowerShell…

Colleague in crime, and fellow Aussie (well, at least he’s naturalised now), Dave Glover has a post that crosses some old territories of mine.

Using Powershell, .Net, OpenXML and some code that I barely understand because it’s not Python; he’s been able to generate 60 to 70 documents per second.

Linking it here as it intersects the Adobe / Microsoft world.

Alive at Pamplona

Hey, Jeffa The Geek Stories has the scoop, before The New Inventors: watch the interview with the Alive Tec CEO Bruce Satchwell – that blue device attached to the patient is made on the Gold Coast!

Emailing Bruce last night, apart from complementing me on my sharp eyes and good memory – he also broke the news that Alive’s Web Developer, Tim Hilliard, is wearing the monitor for the running of the bulls in Pamplona in a couple of weeks.

Alive  have made a very crude map of the bull run route using Windows Live maps.

Map view

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=42.81795~-1.642793&style=r&lvl=17&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=11721060&&cid=62DC070579519371!130&encType=1

Birdseye view

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=r42pyngvwrkz&style=o&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=11721060&&cid=62DC070579519371!130&encType=1

Youtube video of the run in 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTHHgxFOD_g

I hope this doesn’t end in tears.

Stephen Price, a WACOM Tablet and Popfly:

Monday morning at ReMIX. Coffee hadn’t quite kicked in. I wandered over to a man standing, rather bemused, near the wall. Stephen Price. He was all the way from Perth on an overnight flight (read: 2 hours sleep). Steve’s card has cute cartoons.  A .Net developer in the daytime and a cartoonist in “his shed”

Stephen let me use the following cartoon in my Popfly session:

popfly

Cut to midday Monday. I draw his name out of a hat as a winner of a WACOM Bamboo tablet. Steve was over the moon: although he wasn’t quite sure if it would help or hinder his cartooning. http://littlevoices.com/photos/scribbles/images/42/original.aspx:

Popfly geek

Later on Monday night, as I left WebJam, Stephen was still going shooting aliens in some game at Galactic Circus. 

ReMIX 2007 ReDUX, Melbourne Australia

auremix07 013

Left to Right is Paul Jenkins, Blue Monster  and Will Hughes

XAML Expression Xbox Silverlight ImagineCup Elvis WillHughes WebJam MediaCenter BlueMonster Carousels Vista Glass Expression Photoshop Blend AJAX .NET Popfly Panels

Nigel Parker: http://blogs.msdn.com/nigel/archive/2007/06/25/remix-melbourne-is-in-full-force.aspx

Cameron Reilly interviews Brian Goldfarb on G’Day World: http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/06/27/gday-world-256-brian-goldfarb-silverlight/

Flickrs: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=auremix07&m=text

JD: http://blog.bluecog.co.nz/archives/2007/06/24/remix-part-i/ , http://blog.bluecog.co.nz/archives/2007/06/25/remix-part-ii/  and http://blog.bluecog.co.nz/archives/2007/06/26/remix-part-iii/(JD is my current second favourite NZ-er after Neil Finn. Smart and understated. )

Max Design: http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2007/06/26/remix-2007-melbourne/

Steven Price: http://littlevoices.blogspot.com/2007/06/web-development.html

Geek Glue: http://geekglue.blogspot.com/2007/06/remix-ux-suxs.html

PixelKitty: http://pixelkitty.net/weblog/2007/06/27/remiss/

Brad Howarth: http://lagrangepoint.typepad.com/lagrange/2007/06/live-from-remix.html

splaTT: http://www.splatt.com.au/blog/archives/2007/06/remix_07_rocked.html

Lee Brimelow: http://thewpfblog.com/?p=128 and http://thewpfblog.com/?p=129 and source code: http://thewpfblog.com/?p=131

Delic8genius: http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=464

MossyBlog: http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog/archive/2007/06/29/remix-australia-was-fun.aspx

Impressions Scholarcast: http://blog.mrees.biz/myblog/?p=224

Will Hughes, lately famous of the above image: http://will.hughesfamily.net.au/20070629/remix-2007-melbourne-roundup/

BigScreen Blog: http://mobilewares.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!78533A1A2E078194!499.entry?beid=cns!78533A1A2E078194!499&d=1&wa=wsignin1.0. Note: the Windows Media Center + Flickr.com app rocks. Just rocks!

Dr Neil: http://drneil.blogspot.com/2007/07/australia-remixed.html

Jonathan Parker: http://jonathanparker.com.au/JonathanParker/Web/blogs/jonathan/archive/2007/06/29/remix07-resources.aspx

Nas: http://www.naskhan.com/?p=6

Anymoose: http://www.aeoth.net/2007/07/02/remix07/

Mr WPF, Joseph Cooney: http://jcooney.net/archive/2007/07/02/54044.aspx

Frankarr: Agenda, or posterity

Videos from ReMIX 07, Postmix: http://blogs.msdn.com/postmixau/default.aspx

Things to remember for next year’s ReMIX:

  1. Party down in a better venue, where there is no refurbishments.
  2. Improve gender balance of presenters. Fat, Forty-year-old Fellas don’t own the web!
  3. Do more “industry” web things in the agenda (thanks Susan from JWT).
  4. Food and service excellent from Crown Promenade.  Even Lee Brimelow agrees
  5. Podcast/videocast?
  6. WebJam needs to be explained better beforehand, although it will be a brand by next ReMIX.
  7. More lounges, more power points and free wireless. For the love-of-god, free wireless. See lolcat below for the visually minded.
  8. Twitter-ers anonymous corner where we can meatspace each other
  9. Integrate ImagineCup a little tighter into ReMIX as an event.
  10. It’s not designer vs / and / or / with developer. It’s making great online things that does meaningful stuff for the users. All sorts of people are involved in this; from infrastructure architects to ux people. Need end result back to back-of-envelope plans explained.
  11. Innovate your Web Knowledge. WTF? And don’t get me started on people_ready.

netcat on no free wifi at ReMIX:

ImagineCup Australia specific posts: http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/andrewwhitten/archive/2007/06/26/251992.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/ausic

http://www.apcmag.com/6514/now_the_blind_can_program_in_net

http://ericlam.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5D73BE0B4076E647!2707.entry

http://littlevoices.blogspot.com/2007/06/imagine-cup-2007.html

http://blogs.msdn.com/frankarr/archive/2007/06/27/imagine-cup-2007-winners-announced-lives-to-be-changed.aspx

http://geekswithblogs.net/shahed/archive/2007/06/27/113523.aspx

Beginning of Gonzo Video Journalism

A unique program on the ABC 10 years ago, John Safran ruled.

“Race Around the World” pitted amateur videographers against each other, as they traveled around the world getting stories.

Handicams, simple editing and excellent stories pre-dated the intraweb pseudo-stars doing long-form interviews or strapping a camera to their head.

Go have a look at John Safran’s work:

In 1997, the ABC gave John Safran, “Australia’s most exciting guerilla filmmaker”, his big break on Race Around The World. Although he came last in the competition, it’s not too hard to fathom why he won the popular vote, with these submissions: Don’t screw with the rules in Japan, The ambulance chaser (Mumbai), Anarchy in the Renault family hatchback (Bristol), The right to bare grudges (Cote d’Ivoire), Mum I’m not Jewish any more (Cote d’Ivoire), Father Pino vs the Devil (Sicily), Mohammad’s guide to busting a move (Lebanon), Football’s my religion (Jerusalem), The series of unfortunate events and The happiest place on earth, my butt (Disneyland).

via: Metafilter

Neil Finn Lyric Server goes Mashup

neilfinnblock

The Microsoft PopFly alpha can make you lose three days. In a good way. I haven’t had so much fun since, well, Photoshop maybe.

I’ve created a public PopFly “Block” called NeilFinnLyrics (now shared) this is bare, bare bones. It simply uses the new REST interface to the Random Neil Finn Lyric Server.  The Lyric Server supports SOAP/WSDL, and normal image insertion.

PopFly is social programming: drag and drop blocks onto the page, and create your own mashups of data. Adding Neil Finn’s Lyrics to the data that can be mashed up is just another step in getting the words out there. My love for Neil Finn knows almost no bounds.

neilfinnatic 004

Writing a Block with the current Alpha requires knowledge of JavaScript and XML. And a little bit of patience.

Come have a chat at ReMIX to discuss where you may also profit from PopFly. The first thing that should be created is a branded PopFly Superannuation Block. Thoughts?