A Meaningful Life

At the moment the emu is exactly the write emblem for Australia, I just wish the kangaroo would kick it’s head out of the sand.

There wasn’t any substantial attention to tech in the 2020 summit from what I can tell/read (someone please give me hope for our country and tell me I’m wrong).

Australia’s economy is based on mining, farming, real estate and education. This list should include technology. Australia’s risk is that a multi-country global recession (or depression) could kill the mining sector for about 10 years. Another risk is that farming becomes less and less viable over time. The real estate sector is mostly about one Australian taking money from another so it’s not a great contributor in a real way. Yep foreign money comes in via this segment but it’s investor dollars. Migration property demand doesn’t count because we need to build infrastructure to cope with growth.

So we get a bunch of minority groups together (such as elite sports people) to help work out what our vision for the future is. Australia 2020 = Fail.

The time would have been much better spent visiting other countries and seeing what is working successfully overseas. A trip to a Korean ship yard or better still a Korean Telco exchange. I would have gone to China visited manufacturing plants and at least a couple of their universities. Then off to Japan to find out why technology and discipline can sustain an economy who has a near zero resource base. From this we might learn how to stop riding the sheep’s back and instead jump on the backbone of a fibre optic network.

Technology has to be a part of any modern economies vision. Only a fool thinks otherwise. Technology is dominating work and lifestyle more and more.

Stil sums it up well in this post and also Stephens Collins on this acidlabs.org post.

Not to let the Liberal opposition of the hook. The Rudd Labour government should have taken this 2020 opportunity to address the Liberal Government credit bubble. Rampant asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates has lead to burgeoning household debt which is now a major social issue and RISK heading off the back of a 10 year global boom.

Mining and rural sectors won’t provide for the future. That’s short-term-ism. If Australia is riding the sheep’s back now we will be hanging onto it’s stump of a tail in the future. New Zealand knows this all to well. We’ve been lucky to have a nice mining kicker to help us ignore the issue.

Eventually the big global economies will have enough money to buy the businesses that supply the resources they need so be prepared (they already have big shareholdings in some). Who’s addressing what we need to reduce our risk exposure to this sector not growing forever? Not the 2020 summit, that’s for certain.

Simplicity is Sustainables Best Friend is an article I’ve just done for TheCalmSpace.com. Simplicity is a key area of interest for me on many levels, business and personal, so this article was a fun one to write.

Society has somehow decided that simple is bad in many situations. There is a fight to give simplicity back its good name. Simplicity is a very sustainable and freeing existence for people to undertake…

Photo: The Lehmann families home made pasta

It was a spectacle with followers no different to sport or rock-star crowd pull. It’s simply about passion for something. That’s just how humans are. There’s nothing wrong with that in my book.

I posted on SydneyNorg a citizen journalism website (love that concept) about the opening in a bit more detail. I met up Bronwen Clune the creator of PerthNorg and SydneyNorg at drinks with Ross Dawson of Future Exploration Network last night.

Some time ago I wrote about transition time costs and how they are a big cost to personal and business efficiency. Problogger Darren Rowse was right on the money today in his post about batch processing tasks together to get efficiency in his blogging business. I think he misses the “why” it works but the crux of the strategy is there. The approach can apply to managing businesses, finances, sales, marketing and even getting the chores done around the house. Just about any area in your life can benefit from the batching strategy.

I had an experience today reading a post in Google Reader which when I later opened the post on the bloggers website I realised it simply wasn’t as clear and easy to read as it was in Google Reader. Google Reader had cleaned it up quite well.

So for bloggers out there it’s worth a quick check to compare your blog posts in a few different commonly used RSS readers versus your actual blog pages. It might just highlight some style shortcomings.

I’m no style guru, so let me know if the same applies to my blog!

Donkey prices are going through the roof. A good mate on the trading desk at Deutsche Bank I worked with sent me a hilarious news snippet (in a nervous laughter kind of way).

For those who are wondering if there is inflation: the Turkish newspaper Zaman reported the price of donkeys in Yozgat district in central Turkey has increased 7 fold as local people give up the use of tractors over high fuel prices. Because of increased demand, the price of one donkey grew from EUR 26 to about EUR 180.

Equally funny is Pete our CEO was telling me about a guy who buys Ass’s and sells them as Donkeys. They are the same beast. So the Ass fraternity needs to work on their personal brand a little.

It’s good to see some financial respect for the noble steeds.

• Good video from CeBIT on startups from Stilgherrian featuring Jason Calacanis of Mahalo.
• Will have to re-write the Saasu API to support this ecommerce site. Hat tip to zfweb.
• Saasu won CeBIT again for the 2nd year in a row. This is my 10th gratuitous self back patting. Ah well, we deserve it.
• If you’re thinking what’s the big deal with fixing twitter then check out this post from Myles Eftos.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) announced their 2010 expected delivery machine. With a price tag of $75 there will soon be no reason for the 1st world not to be able to get PC’s in the hands of every 3rd world child.

Photo thanks to OLPC on Flickr.com

One of our Saasu customers optimises Web 2.0 in it’s original meaning. He uses 88miles.net for tracking time on projects against customers and uses Saasu.com for his accounting ledger, tax and so on. 88miles and Saasu’s API’s have a little chat during the day keeping all his stuff in line, like a couple of fax machines having a banter. bidi bidi bidi beeeeep bidi bidi bidi —– Don’t you love that, it’s not humans having to do it!

What the customer actually has is a virtual application. Two distinct applications developing and enhancing separately but operating as one. Very cool.

Portfolio managers use tools to optimise placement of investments. It’s all about rigour and hard maths. So to should we optimise how we spend our time. It’s all too easy to concentrate on money, it’s in your face day in and day out, but people forget to act on the well known truth that time is money. You cannot separate the two.

Myles Eftos of Madpilot Productions built the 88miles.net connector, so a hat tip to the mad pilot. Check out his blog he shoots from the hip which is just how I like it.

Well at 4:30pm today Aust EST it was official. Vodafone wins the iPhone deal.

Do I have to accidentally drop my Blackberry?

Do I divorce my Blackberry and go for the younger more nubile SaaS enabled iPhone?

Might wait a while, let all the cool kids go first.