SmartCompany has unveiled its list of the hottest Australian entrepreneurs aged 30 or younger. Congrats to everyone who made it – including Jonathan Barouch, Tim Fung, Taryn Williams and many more. You can check out the complete list by clicking here.
Monthly Archives: April 2012
My interview with Amazon CTO Dr Werner Vogels
He may not have meant intended it, but if anyone deserves the title of ‘The Father of Cloud Computing’ it ought to be Amazon’s chief technology officer Dr Werner Vogels (although Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff could mount an honest challenge). It was through expanding Amazon’s services to provide the platform for powering other online businesses that the concept of public cloud computing became a viable business, with other companies able to build entire systems and applications on top of Amazon Web Services with an unprecedented level of freedom. Dr Vogels was in Australia early in April and I was fortunate to be able to interview him for the Fourth Estate Domain. You can see the video of that interview here, thanks to Viocorp.
ABC: Build it and they will come
It’s truly amazing what a topic of contention the National Broadband Network has become. I’ve started writing a column for the ABC on broadband, and it’s highly likely that the NBN will be regularly featured. I’m curious to see whether future columns elicit the same response as this first one. What started as an attempt by me to point out some potential uses of high-bandwidth networks quickly turned into a debate on the merits of the network itself. What worries me however is the lack of vision and leadership in some segments of the Australian community. Anyway, please read my first effort here, and let me know what you think.
Speaking – When was the last time you had a roll of film developed?
For the past couple of years now I’ve found myself in some demand as a speaker on the topic of broadband technologies and their impact on business and society. The combination of the Internet and various digital technologies has had a massive impact on our lives, but often in ways that we hardly notice – until we look back and see how those changes unfolded.
I’ve been working with the Saxton speakers’ bureau for over a year now and recently started writing blog posts for their website. This first post encapsulates some of my thoughts on the film processing industry, and the lesson that it holds for other sectors.