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.

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.

Often we pundits in the media are far too quick to predict the demise of entire industry sectors at the hands of the Internet. In other instances, entire segments disappear without anyone really noticing, with the change only to be identified in hindsight. In this article for SmartCompany I chose four sectors that have been at some stage declared dead, and had a look at what those involved are doing to delay – or possibly avoid – that fate.

IT used to be easy. Well, at least easier. The CIO would set the policies for their organisation – which hardware to use, which software programs to load, etc – and users would do as they were told. After all, it’s not as though they could do much about it.

Some time in the 1990s the Internet began to change all of that. Web browsers gave users access to services that weren’t installed on their PCs, and enabled them to do things that weren’t just related to work. Some opposed giving workers access to the Web for fear of them spending their time surfing real estate and news sites. They were possibly right to be fearful – not of the lost productivity, but that they were opening the doors to a floodgate of other user demands.

These fears were realised when the first senior executive walked into their CIO’s office and demanded they be allowed to use their iPad at work.

Now CIOs find themselves responding increasingly to the demands of their users. Indeed, many of the biggest trends in IT today – cloud computing, bring-your-own-device policies and social media – are consumer-driven. It is the workers that have bought these concepts into the workplace, and it is the CIOs and IT system suppliers that have had to accede to their demands.

As this story for The Australian explains, perhaps it is the users of IT who are the real influencers in the IT industry today.

Influence can be measured in many ways. There is the overt form of influence, which is represented by the buying power you have (and none can top NBN Co’s Mike Quigley, pictured), the number of people you command, and the loudness of your voice. Then there are the most subtle forms of influence that emerge through powers of persuasion, leadership and relationships, which are harder to spot, but can be all the more powerful for their subtlety.

In this feature for The Australian we looked at influence from all angles, to pull together a list of candidates who play a vital role in shaping the way that the Australian ICT sector is developing. Some may be obvious, some not so, and no doubt there are some names missing that might have otherwise considered themselves to hold a place.

Needless to say, they’ll have another opportunity to demonstrate their level of interest 12 months from now …

Just as the combination of broadband Internet access and digital cameras has all but wiped out the need for photographic film, so too it seems that similar combinations of broadband and electronics will do the same for the humble CD. In this story published last year in The Australian I explore the statements by Simon Fox, head of the UK-based entertainment retailer HMV, who said that CDs would be obsolete by 2016. For the CD, which pushed vinyl albums of record store shelves due to(alleged) superior audio reproduction, the final blow is being delivered not by a superior physical media, but by cloud computing.

Much off the discussion of cloud computing has focused on its uptake within large corporations and government departments. But in truth the greatest uptake of cloud services is occurring within small business. In many cases the business owners aren’t even aware that they are using the cloud – they are just getting on with the job. In this feature for The Australian I take a look into how cloud computing is benefiting Australia’s small businesses.

For start-up companies in the technology industry, times have never been so good. At no time before have start-ups had so much access to cash and incubator programs, and it seems there is no shortage of entrepreneurs with good ideas to take advantage of them. In this story for The Australian, published late last year, I take a look into the state of play for start-up funding, and the significant gap that then exists in the funding market once a company has gotten started …

Last November I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at the Creative Innovation 2011 conference as part of a line-up that included Edward de Bono. Also on the list was Raymond Kurzweil, a US serial entrepreneur and noted futurist, so it was great to have the opportunity to speak to him while he was here in Australia.

I first spoke to Raymond more than ten years ago when I was working for The Australian. At that time Kurzweil had been researching the conjunction of technologies that will lead to the creation of true artificial intelligence and potentially even the ability for people to copy their minds into machine.

That concept of singularity is still a key focus for Kurzweil, but his interests spans a broad range of topics from 3D printing to life extension. You can read more about his current thinking in this special report written for The Australian’s website.