Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • ABC Nightlife: Our Digital Future

    ABC Nightlife: Our Digital Future

    Our digital future

    In the last week the Federal government announced their National Digital Economy Strategy while at the Sydney Opera House the Digital Sydney project was launched. In New York the city has appointed a digital commissioner and London has launched their Tech City community.

    Clearly our governments think the future is digital. But what does that mean and are their plans achievable? Join Paul Wallbank and Tony Delroy to examine how our society, economy and businesses are changing in the digital era.

    The program details

    The podcast of the program is available for a limited time at the Tony Delroy’s Nightlife homepage.

    Aspects we discussed included;

    • Why are our governments suddenly talking digital?
    • What are the digital industries?
    • How are they changing the way we live?
    • In what ways are existing industries coping with these changes?
    • What are the barriers to setting up new industries?
    • How do we create regional business hubs?
    • How important is broadband in these developments
    • What tools can we use to start new online business?

    Listeners’ Questions

    YouTube not playing

    Rod asked about his computer not playing YouTube clips. This is usually due to problems with the Adobe Flash software on the computer.

    To fix it, first uninstall all the versions of Adobe Flash on the computer. Then run a computer cleanup on the system. Finally reboot your computer then reinstall Adobe Flash Player.

    Multiple business accounts on one computer

    Running a number of businesses from one office can raise some difficulties, Jane called to ask if she can have different email accounts that have each businesses customised address block.

    The answer is “yes” if you’re running Microsoft Outlook, you can setup separate accounts that automatically add the correct business information. Microsoft explain how on their web site. This feature has been around for some time although instructions vary between the different software versions.

    Choosing the right Internet plans

    Two of our callers, Shirley and Margaret, called about the limits and costs of their Internet connections. This is understandable as both prepaid wireless and satellite Internet plans can be very expensive.

    Where possible it’s best to go to fixed plan with shaped excess usage, where rather than being charged when you go over the monthly data limit your connection is slowed.

    It does take some research to find the right service and we recommend Whirlpool’s Broadband Choice website to find the plan that suits your needs.

    Software and websites referred to in the program

    Ccleaner: Free computer clean up tool (remember to back up your data first)
    Adobe Flash Player
    Microsoft Outlook email signature setup
    Whirlpool Broadband Choice

    Next program

    The next Nightlife program should be at 10pm on July 14. The topic we’ll discuss will be posted on the events web page and in our weekly newsletter. Subscribe to get all the details of upcoming radio segments and workshops.

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  • Business Web Essentials

    Business Web Essentials

    In conjunction with Microbusiness Week, a New South Wales government initiative to help smaller and startup businesses, we’re happy to release our Business Web Essentials e-book.

    This e-book is free to all subscribers of our newsletters lists the online tools that can help your website be more effective online. While it’s aimed at business users, if you’re a blogger or community group running a website you’ll find most of the information in the book will help you as well.

    Business Web Essentials lists the important web hosting, search listing, social media and cloud computing services that will help you promote and track the progress of your online presence.

    Subscribe now to our weekly newsletter and receive the e-book free of charge. If you’re an existing subscriber, you’ll get the link in our regular newsletter.

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  • Building business communities

    Building business communities

    Last night the NSW Government launched Digital Sydney, an initiative to bring together the various groups that make up the digital media and IT industries while raising the city’s profile as a global digital centre.

    This project was something close to me as I’d been involved in developing the concept through 2009 when working with the then NSW department of Industry and Investment.

    Originally the idea had been to create a digital hub around the Australian Technology Park to the south of the city. Over the decade of its operation, the ATP had attracted some high profile tenants and various high tech business start ups but there was a feeling it could be a more dynamic centre of the Sydney tech sector.

    Digital hub failures

    The setting up of “digital hubs” around the world has not been a great success – in Ireland an attempt to set one up in central Dublin’s disused Guinness brewery cost the European Union well over 100 million euro and subsequently collapsed amid acrimony between the various governments and businesses involved.

    Even if there was a track record of success it’s unlikely any Australian government, state or Federal, would be prepared to spend money on the European scale. So the idea of building a “hub” had to be kept within industry, particularly the IT and digital media sectors.

    Existing industry hubs

    In talking to the industry, it became apparent that Sydney already a digital hub spreading across the suburbs immediately to the south and west of the city centre and centred around Surry Hills with an vibrant community of developers, designers and entrepreneurs occupying the old factories and warehouses being vacated by the city’s rag trade.

    The proximity of competitors, clients and suppliers was why the hub had developed; exactly the reason why the fashion industry had previously concentrated around that district.

    This is consistent with history; the great industrial hubs such as the English midlands of the 18th Century, the US mid west of the 19th Century along with today’s Chinese coastal manufacturing centres and event Silicon Valley happened with little government forethought.

    Like-minded businesses clustered together because they could find the essential resources for their industry such as raw materials, labour, transport, markets and capital.

    A shortage of capital

    The access to capital is a problem for all smaller and innovative businesses in Australia, not just those trying to build digital businesses or hubs. Start up enterprises have been starved for capital and a few late stage Venture Capital investments like the recent ones in Atlassian or 99Designs are not on their own enough to build vibrant businesses of the future.

    In Australia, it’s difficult to see any government in the near future changing the tax and legal regimes which favour property and stock market speculation over investment in new businesses and technology so the best hope is initiatives like Digital Sydney, along with the profiles of similar industry hubs in Brisbane and Melbourne, can encourage investors to look at the start up and innovation sectors.

    Why big cities?

    The real question is though is why is this just the major cities? Why can’t we have hubs in Renmark, Esperance or Hobart?

    Access to skills and talent are the driving forces behind the local hubs and in that respect some smaller towns and regions do have the skilled workforces and businesses capable of building industrial centres and we’ve seen some regional hubs develop like the wine industry in various places.

    So it’s worthwhile considering where your business is located, maybe it would be better to set up next door to your competitor? For many organisations, being part of vibrant industry hub is part of their success.

    postscript;

    Joe Kelly, former Commercial Director of the Dublin Digital Hub Development Agency, takes me to task on the claim the Dublin Hub collapsed. His comment is as follows:

    As the former Director of Commercial Operations at The Digital Hub Development Agency, I felt compelled to correct you on your assertion that the Digital Hub in Dublin collapsed. That is incorrect. Media Lab Europe, an entirely seperate entity collapsed at a cost of over 100 million euro. The Digital Hub continues to thrive with over 100 companies located there. Please refer to www.thedigitalhub.com for further information.

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  • Is the dot com dead?

    Is the dot com dead?

    The web is about to change with a range of new domains due to appear. But does it mean the web will get easier to surf, dot com addresses will disappear and Google quietly fade away?

    It’s expected ICANN, the International Committee of Assigned Network Names is set to approve custom global Top Level Domain names – known as gLTDs – which will allow big organisations to buy their own domain names.

    This idea was first announced in 2008 and was expected to be in place by the end of 2009 but the Internet bureaucracy is not known for quickly making decisions.

    Once this policy is in place organisations can register their own domain and not bother with a .com or other suffix.

    For example Microsoft could ditch the microsoft.com domain and move the .microsoft address with websites named support.microsoft and shop.microsoft

    The cost of one of these global Top Level Domains will be $178,000 with $25,000 annual fees, given the cost it’s only going to be the largest organisations who can afford them.

    Even then, we’ll see many businesses simply not bother. Given the current proposal includes strong provisions against cybersquatting, there’s no need for trademark holders to rush, it’s quite feasible that many will sit out the hype and wait for the prices to drop.

    Where these domains will work well are for internal networks and secure applications where system administrators can lock out unauthorised devices from their domains.

    Excluding search engine robots will provide a certain level of security along with some opportunities for corporate mischief like we’re currently seeing between Google and Facebook.

    The potential for misbehaviour by owners of these domains will be a barrier for small business adoption. Few businesses or groups are going to trust their online properties to a .facebook, .ibm or .apple address when they can own a domain with the current registrars.

    An application being cited is using the .music domain and selling space to performers. That’s nice but it locks them into the same risks they currently have with Facebook and MySpace that at the first sign of controversy their account will be shut down for allegedly breaching some obscure term of service.

    A major problem for ICANN is going to be place names, how do you decide between Birmingham, England or Birmingham, Alabama when the .birmingham name comes into play?

    Better still the argument between the city of Victoria, British Columbia and the state of Victoria, Australia becomes problematic.

    Even more delightful is who owns a place name? Should Australia wrest the rights to .sydney off Nova Scotia, the dysfunctional state of Aussie politics almost guarantees an unseemly brawl between the Federal, state and local governments over the name.

    The corporate sector has similar problems with similar trading names being used in different jurisdictions, Woolworths in Australia and the UK is one that immediately comes to mind.

    While it’s clear many of the domain registrars think these new names are going to be a nice little cash cow, it’s not difficult to see they may have misunderstood just how complex and fraught some of the registrations will turn out to be.

    Most of the registrations though will be straight forward and far from killing search engines, the further fragmentation of the net into even more domains is going to make services like Google and Yahoo! even more powerful as web surfers will find it harder to guess or remember websites.

    On balance it’s unlikely the new top level domains are going to put the search engines out of business or see the dot com addresses we’ve grown used to disappear.

    What we are seeing though is the evolution of the web, search engines will adapt and the addresses we use will develop as the technology changes.

    It is quite possible that eventually we’ll have our own personal top level domains should we want them when the price drops to the levels we’ve become used to with dot com addresses.

    This won’t happen overnight and it’s a long way off if ICANN and their members keep prices high. The famed dot com is going nowhere yet.

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  • The learning curve

    The learning curve

    When new technologies appear it’s interesting how people experiment and adapt to them, we’re seeing this right now as businesses grapple with social media tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and discover where the benefits lie.

    The second edition of the Social Media Benchmarking Study, a joint release by Sydney online consultants Community Engine and the research company Nielson, illustrated how things have changed over the last two years.

    One of the clear conclusions from the study is how businesses are developing the ways to determine benefits of their social media activity with near halving of the number of organisations citing lack of measurable return on investment as a reason for not engaging online.

    A barrier that is increasing is the perception that businesses don’t have the time or resources required for which is probably business owners and managers realising that maintaining a Facebook Page, Twitter account or blog isn’t easy.

    Time is the scarcest asset for any business that gets more precious with smaller organisation. Even large corporates and government departments struggle with finding the resources necessary to run effective online presences.

    One of the tragedies of social media is how it’s been identified as a marketing tool and in this survey with over half the respondents stated they are going primarily use the tools as a marketing channel rather than in customer support, recruitment, research or product development.

    This is probably why the perception that social media is a time sink comes from. As purely marketing tools social media is time consuming and difficult. A challenge made greater by the fact we’re all still figuring out how to effectively connect with customers in what is a hostile place to more traditional broadcast based marketing methods.

    Given social media is being used primarily as a marketing tool by business, it’s no surprise that the survey found larger corporations are the biggest users as they have the marketing budgets to allocate.

    An interesting aspect with big business’ social media investment is how much it’s focused on Facebook. On one level this is understandable as a Facebook “like” is easy to set up and becomes a very simple measurement to follow, although the challenge still lies in converting a low friction click on a Like button into a useful customer or advocate.

    What is surprising with corporate Australia’s adoption of Facebook is the apparent lack of understanding of the platform’s terms and conditions and the business risks involved. Again this is probably part of the collective learning curve.

    Possibly because of those risks, public sector use is static. We can expect this given as social media is being pushed as a marketing tool which isn’t a priority many government agencies, are you going to skip registering your car because the motor registry doesn’t have a “like” button on their web page?

    This liberation from being obsessed with marketing and sales is probably why the public sector is using social media a more creatively as collaborative and research tools where many of these services do an extremely good job.

    Many businesses, particularly smaller organizations, believe social media doesn’t fit their objectives. A terrific quote from an SME accountant is “I run a business, not a chat show”.

    That attitude’s fine as social media – like pretty well everything else in the business world – is a tool to be used the best way you see fit, just because some businesses don’t need a hammer but that doesn’t mean hammers aren’t useful.

    Although when that tool is fairly new, as social media is, it’s probably best to have a play with it and see where if can help your business.

    The Social Media Benchmarking Study is a useful survey that shows where businesses are using these tools and how effective they are finding them. It’s going to be interesting to see the field evolves as we all get to understand social media as both consumers and business owners.

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