Why aren’t we telling these stories of talent, potential, happiness and beauty? Why are we bogged down in the negative, backward looking view of the world we see in much of our commentary of the world?

Maybe it’s time for a rethink about the stories we tell.

Join Tony Delroy and Paul Wallbank to discuss cloud computing and what it means to the ordinary business and household on ABC Local Radio across Australia from 10pm on August 19.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

If you’d like to join the conversation with your questions or comments phone 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702 or twitter @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag

The “fail fast” philosophy was behind Google Wave’s dropping last week, as CEO Eric Schmidt said at the Techonomy Conference on the day it was announced; “….we release it and see what happens. It works, you announce product, you ship it…”

Until recently, “failing fast” was restricted to hot shot Internet businesses but as the cost of product development falls due to better collaboration tools, testing methods and global outsourcing, it’s become easier for all businesses to experiment without risking an organisation’s future.

This is very different from the old style of doing business, a good example of how things used to work was Boeing’s development of the 747 Jumbo Jet which was a $2 billion dollar bet, $14bn in 2010 dollars, on a big lumbering subsonic jet in the mid 1960s when the future of aviation seemed to be with sleek supersonic aircraft like the Concorde.

While Boeing’s bet paid off, it took 15 years and nearly sent the company broke.

Most of today’s businesses aren’t locked into 14 billion dollar and 15 year investment cycles as we can test products with simulation tools, computer aided design programs, fast prototyping and oursourcing services like o-desk for labour and alibaba.com for manufacturing without risking the farm.

For most businesses, it’s not even a matter of spending time and money actually developing ideas, usually it’s something as simple as testing a new idea by buying a domain name and setting up a low cost website on a cheap hosting service for under $200. If the idea flies then you start looking at spending real money on making the product ready for the broader market.

Failing fast presents a great challenge to the traditional organisation where the slightest failure is a stigma. In the new economy, a risk adverse culture is going to be punished by competitors who accept that not every idea is right for its time and learn lessons rather than punish those associated with the unsuccessful project.

While this is bad news for large organisations run by risk adverse managers it is one of the great opportunities for nimble and smart companies. If your business is prepared to take small risks, learn from the misses and celebrate the wins then your business could well be on the way to being the next Google.

Maggie’s question is a very good one at a time when governments, businesses and households are investing heavily in Internet technology. Just a few hours before the radio show I’d been invited by television program A Current Affair, to discuss if Australia’s 43 billion dollar investment in a National Broadband Network is worthwhile.

For Maggie and ACA’s viewers, the answer is “yes, it is very important” — the Internet today is what the motor car was to the early 20^th Century and railways were to the 19^th Century. Communities that aren’t connected will miss the benefits of the 21st Century economy.

To illustrate how important it will be, let’s have a look at Maggie’s life. We’ll assume she’s an older person living in a regional Australian town or one of the fast growing fringe suburbs of a big city.

Probably the most immediate change the Internet delivers for Maggie is how it is giving her a stronger voice as a consumer and citizen. This is what we discussed on the ABC program, how Internet tools like social media are giving customers and voters their voices back.

With reliable broadband Maggie can be researching products and voicing her dissatisfaction with government and private organisations to the world in a way that would have been impossible a few years ago.

Those Internet tools also growing communities around her as like minded people across the world and in her own district are connecting online then meeting in real life at events like Coffee Mornings.

Not only does the Internet connect communities, it connects families — one lady recently described to me how she speaks more to her daughter living in Brazil through Skype than she did when they lived nearby. The net brings friends and families back together and helps overcome social isolation.

Exclusion in education has always been a pressing issue, once upon a time you had to be in Cambridge or Oxford to access the world’s great minds. With a fast reliable Internet connection, the kids in Maggie’s neighbourhood can listen to a Harvard or MIT professor’s lecture without leaving their hometown.

Bringing knowledge to local communities will also help Maggie should she have to have to go to the local hospital, the local doctors will be able to consult specialists without Maggie having to travel long distances to get specialist advice.

Importantly for Maggie and her local hospital, the access to online training resources mean the local staff will be up to date with their professional development and across new trends, ensuring Maggie’s standard of care will be equal to the big city teaching hospitals.

Solving staff training issues also delivers benefits for the local business community. It means the Maggie’s son Tim, the owner of a local plumbing business, doesn’t have to pay for expensive training courses or to travel into town to attend business conferences.

The net also means Tim can access the world’s best business minds without leaving his office. Which gives him benefit of running his business more efficiently and profitably.

For Tim’s kids, it also means they aren’t excluded from the entertainment world. They can stream and download the latest things happening and share equally on social networking sites. They may be in a small town, but they can play in the big world.

Having these education, business, training and entertainment resources strengthens communities. It means kids and entrepreneurs can live in their home towns and still participate in the global economy. It means Maggie is a valued and important citizen of her country and the world.

Fast accessible Internet is more than important, it’s vital just in the ways roads, railways, canals and the telegraph were in their eras. The investment in these freeways of the future is necessary to grow strong and dynamic communities.

Last week’s COSBOA conference in Brisbane showed another aspect to that statement; in the next decade most businesses will be operating in industries that don’t yet exist and all organisations will using technologies yet to be thought of.

The day’s conference sessions reflected this with the topics consistentently coming back to technology; for instance, discussions on taxation coming around to e-tax and marketing covering e-commerce and social media.

In many ways, the emphasis on social media is a bit unfortunate because these tools are really yesterday’s news; Twitter has been available for three years, Facebook for six and blogs since the establishment of the World Wide Web in 1993.

The mobile Internet, location based services and augmented reality are the current frontier as described by Ben White, Optus’ Director of Strategy and Corporate Development in his keynote to the conference.

Darren Alexander of Launceston based company Autech emphasised this change later in a later forum by describing how his business has evolved over ten years and where technology was taking regional businesses. If you doubt the value of the National Broadband Network, have a chat to Darren sometime.

Also on that technology panel Mike O’hagan of mini movers  described how outsourcing and crowdsourcing has changed his, and others, businesses. This is something we’ve covered previously and discussed how this presents challenges to many established businesses.

While this means we’re in a great era of great opportunity, it’s also a time where the slow movers will fall by the wayside. When nearly 50% of businesses don’t have a website and where retailers are ignoring their customers moving online, you can’t help but think many of these enterprises are heralding their own doom.

On a national level this is clear as well. While I’ll leave the commentary on the politicians’ promises to small business at COSBOA to others, it should be pointed out that accelerated depreciation and small business ministers in cabinet are nice, but without an overhaul of the tax system that puts investment in Australian businesses and innovation on the same footing as passive investments like housing and shares then Australia’s investment structure is going to remain unbalanced and much of our business and intellectual potential is going to go untapped.

Australia’s national obsession with property and our dependence on raw commodity exports to finance a private debt habit put us in the same position as the business without a website. We need to be thinking properly about the future and equipping ourselves with the skills to deal with tomorrow’s technologies and the 21st Century world economy.

While in our own lives and businesses we can’t change national policy, we can prepare for the changes by being aware of the trends, experimenting with them and making the financial and management investment in today’s tools that are creating tomorrow’s industries.

Are you prepared to be part of the future?

X Media Lab’s Global Media Ideas conference day was billed as exploring “cultural and commercial content in a global world; creative ideas and innovation in media and technology; international media business opportunities; new media and new geographies; and new platforms, applications, and content.” It didn’t disappoint.

The great thing about X Media Labs is how it brings disparate ideas together and exposes the audience to worldwide trends and developments. The June 2010 Sydney X Media Lab was no exception with a great range of diverse speakers. Here’s a brief rundown of their themes, more comprehensive coverage can be found at Brad Howarth’s Lagrange Point blog;

Ralph Simon
Dubbed “the father of the ring tone”, Ralph Simon took us on a tour of innovation that started with the Sex Pistols, through applications like Red Lazer and sites like TuneWiki, which uses crowdsourcing to translate music lyrics, to end with mHealth applications where diabetic children use their mobile phone games to test their blood sugar levels. A broad and exciting view of where the mobile Internet and gaming platforms are going.

Dana Al Salem
The founder of Fanshake, Dana showed us how her site is used to connect bands with their fans. Her view is that today’s Gen Ys are just like their hippy grandparents except today’s groovers are wealthier have more technology. An interesting take on “the more things change, the more they stay the same“.

Gotham Chopra
Gotham described his journey of setting up superhero cartoons for young Indians and intertwined it with a story of his travels through Pakistan as a journalist. His hope is to replace the influence people like Osama Bin Laden have on the youth of South Asia with more positive role models.

Parmesh Shahani
The divide between the richer cities and poorer rural areas in developing nations is often just characterised as a migration story as millions of poor agricultural workers migrate to the cities. Parmesh gave us a broader perspective on what is happening in India including some fascinating case studies of how comparatively older technologies such as satellite TV and SMS mobile messaging are changing rural India.

Joy Mountford
Among the geeks and developers, Joy was probably the most anticipated of the speakers having being a designer with Apple and vice president of design innovation at Yahoo! Joy showed us how designers are moving from the “look” of computer programs to “feel”. She also showed us how crowdsourcing has worked for other projects including the fantastic Johnny Cash Project which reworks his Ain’t No Grave into a group video.

Wayne Borg
The Chief Operating Officer of twofour54, a content creation hub in Abu Dhabi, Wayne took us through the opportunities of 340 million Arabic Speakers covering diverse cultures and where 200 million are under the age of 25. His presentation showed us much of the development plans of the United Arab Emirates and how the kingdoms are seeking to be the Arab world’s creative centre.

Nick Yang
The entrepreneur label is often too easily given away, but no-one could begrudge Nick Yang, founder of KongZhong, ChinaRen.com and Wukong.com for using the title. Nick walked us through his journey of being a young student of Stanford, his return to China and both his and China’s growth over the last decade. He also showed us how his latest venture, Wukong.com, aims to change how search engines work.

Rob Mason and Scott Halcom
Local flavour was provided by Rob Manson from Sydney’s MOB Innovation Lab and Scott Halcomb from from SystemK in Japan, who walked us through the worlds of augmented reality. Rob concluded their joint presentation with the view that object recognition is going to change the way we see the world.

Haidong Pan
Like Nick Yang, Haidong is the founder of a Chinese Internet service, this time Hudong.com which is a “knowledge media” run along the lines of wikipedia that acts as a news and fact service. His presentation on how social knowledge changes the world was thought provoking in how societies are reclaiming their culture and history back from mass media.

Anand Giridharadas
Technology Columnist with The New York Times and International Herald Tribune, Anand challenged us to think about the ethics of the digital world and how foreign cultures are now beginning to colonise the dominant anglo-US culture. Personally I struggled with some of Ananda points as our online ethics should be no different to our off line standards and the US domination of global media stems from it being the richest nation, as other countries catch up with US living standards their cultures will reassert themselves.

John Penny
Like Anand, John forced the audience to think; he invited us to consider the problem of the television producer where audience fragmentation has meant we’re approaching the point where the only profitable TV productions will be reality shows and advertorials. John as an Executive Vice President of Starz Entertainment was well placed to walk us through this dilemma. John finished with a call to consider how dis-intermediation will help rebuild the fortunes of those who want to provide well written screen productions.

Amin Zoufonoun
As corporate development manager at Google, Amin was probably almost as highly anticipated as Joy Mountford had been earlier. Unfortunately his speech on the development of technologies from the Internet’s “Big Bang” fell flat, largely because the audience know this topic. The talk probably would have worked better with an audience of financiers or CEOs who don’t live this topic the way the X Media Lab audience do.

Robert Tercek
To finish a long, stimulating and challenging day Robert Tercek walked us through why great minds like Lord Kelvin, Edison and Einstein had missed emerging technologies in their times and how we can avoid it. Robert sees great opportunities for innovators as successful, large companies entering new markets don’t know more than anyone else and in many cases are blind to the potential of these sectors.

Overall, X Media Labs was another stimulating and fascinating day. The entrepreneurs and artists who had the opportunity to be mentored over the next two days by the speakers were very lucky to be exposed to this sort of talent.

The key message from this X Media Labs came from Parmesh Shahani when he said “don’t just look at India as a market, look at it as a source of innovation and inspiration”. We shouldn’t be just looking for the obvious, easy markets but watching the bigger trends that are developing around us.

Albert Einstein famously said “information is not knowledge” and that’s certainly true of the net. We need ways to process the data that comes pouring in so we understand the context and value of what we’re reading. Here’s five ways to manage your information overload;

Mail Rules

For most business people, email is the first thing we look at each morning and it’s where half the day can easily disappear. The mail rules built into every email reader help you filter the important from the not so important.

It’s also worthwhile reviewing your email subscriptions every few months and unsubscribing from newsletters that no longer interest you. The less clutter, the better.

Google Alerts

“Unknown unknowns” is a quote from a less esteemed historical figure and there’s a lot we don’t know happening on the net that can affect our lives and businesses. The Google Alerts tool gives you a regular email summary of what’s appeared on the web for any search term you enter.

The right terms in Google Alerts gives you an insight on news and trends about your industry, competitors and customers. It’s a great, but underused, market intelligence tool.

Twitter

90% of what you read about Twitter discusses marketing, in my view Twitter’s real value lies in following smart people who tweet smart things. You get the benefit of the accumulated wisdom of the people you follow and the things they find interesting.

These days I find I spend as much time reading links I’ve saved from Twitter as I do surfing the net. It’s become an invaluable tool.

RSS Feeds

Most websites have a built in feature called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS feed, which pumps out updates to the site as they happen. You can use the built in RSS features in your browser’s bookmarks folder or a dedicated feed reader to keep up to date with your favourite websites. Just click on the subscribe button most websites feature.

Favourites

Bookmarks or favorites is the oldest way to save information off the web and it can result in overload of its own. If you keep your bookmark folders organised, it can be a treasure trove of useful information.

We’re at the early days of the information economy and the flood of data which engulfs us is going to get even greater. The challenge for all of us is to learn how to manage this so we can derive the best benefits from this new economy for our businesses, society and families.

As President Obama said in last weekend’s speech at Hampton University, Virginia;

“What Jefferson recognized… that in the long run, their improbable experiment — called America — wouldn’t work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn’t have the best interests of all the people at heart.

“It could only work if each of us stayed informed and engaged, if we held our government accountable, if we fulfilled the obligations of citizenship.”

The same is true of our personal and business lives as it is of our citizenship. Get informed.

One of the things that stood out was how the business world has changed radically; today’s workers have all the tools at their fingertips that once only the the biggest organisations could afford. The amazing thing is the change has only just begun. Most of us are still running our businesses the way our parents did in the age of telex machines and snail mail.

We may have got away with this for the last twenty years, but the rate of change is accelerating and smarter businesses are figuring out how to best use the existing tools while adopting new technologies. Here’s five ideas on how to keep up with our evolving economy.

Train your staff

Last Monday I met a lady who cuts and pastes in the old way, with scissors and glue, because she’s “hopeless with computers”. She’s in her early thirties.

One area we have really dropped the ball in the last twenty yeas is with training, we don’t train our staff sufficiently. For example, simply giving your staff touch typing lessons will improve office productivity out of sight.

Sending the technophobic workers onto an “introduction to computers” course run by most community colleges will have an immediate return on investment, you’ll also probably find the luddites will become your most enthusiastic staff when picking up new technology.

Be curious

We all know people who had to be dragged into the new era, those owners and managers who swore they would never need a fax, mobile phone, a computer or an Internet connection. By not being one of them, you’re ahead of the pack.

Markets are also changing — mobile Internet, social media, higher energy prices and the Global Financial Crisis are all reshaping customer behaviour. A good example is with Yellow Pages where many consumers have stopped using paper directories and now search online. You need to understand where these changes are affecting your business.

Don’t be on the bleeding edge

Early adopters are great for the tech industry as they pay full price and are the crash test dummies for the support sector. As we’ve discussed previously, being on the bleeding edge might be trendy and fun however it’s also expensive and can lead you down some blind alleys.

Sitting back and letting the overhyped version 1.0 of any technology allows you to learn the lessons from others.

Be sceptical

One of the big topics Tony and Peter discussed was the Y2K hysteria. While the rollover presented real risks and the IT industry did a fantastic job of mitigating them, there were a lot of snake oil merchants spreading panic to peddle their wares.

A lot of these people moved on to other technological waves like Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media marketing so have a healthy dose of scepticism when you’re told the world will change unless you buy a certain tech product.

Understand sunk costs

That 486 server or Nokia Banana Phone might have served you well for ten years but it’s crippling your business. It’s time to move on. Similarly any of those bleeding edge technology purchases that turned out not to be so good need to be dumped.

Basically any technology older than five years should be retired unless there’s a compelling business case for retaining it.

Don’t be afraid of failure

As the price of hardware and Internet access falls, so too do the costs of getting ideas, services and products to market. Don’t be afraid of testing new lines.

The key is to “fail fast”, that is to cut your losses as soon as it becomes apparent an idea isn’t working. The sunk cost rule applies here; regardless of how much you’ve spent on an idea if it doesn’t meet expectations cut it fast and move on.

Techonology has now matured to a point where people don’t even notice they are using it, coupled with other changes to society we are going to our market rapidly change over the next twenty years. That makes it a time of great opportunity for entrepreneurs. Understanding those changes and having a team who can react to them will separate the successes from the others.

The evening was well documented by Martin Cahill and the message was clear — publishers are not going to pay for content because even if they want to they can’t afford it.

The prevailing view was journalists will have to learn how to multi task; but given YouTube is even more poorly rewarded than online journalism, it’s unlikely sites will be any more generous to video or audio contributions than they are to text contributors. Which only suggests a future of journalists doing more work for no money.

Valerio Veo, Head of SBS News and Current Affairs Online pointed out SBS is paying a 19 year a $1000 per contribution for covering Obama’s visit to Indonesia. Ignoring this is pocket money in terms of sending a camera crew and traditional reporter, the fact SBS are one of the few Australian organisations paying online contributors suggests ABC Managing Director, Mark Scott’s view at a previous Media140 that only government supported organisations will be able to afford to pay journalists is part of the future.

So what is the future of professional journalism? Will it be restricted to a few subsidised outlets? Is it the gifted amateur contributing for their love of the masthead? Or is it that of the professional pushing their own or their employer’s agenda?

Maybe journalists will become editors cleaning up the shoddy contributions of not so gifted writers that have the only benefit of being free. Could it be that curating other people’s content will be the role of future journalists?

Or perhaps journalists are the new poets, starving in garrets and working in desperate jobs while waiting for the phone call from the ABC, BBC or PBS, penning great works that will lie undiscovered on obscure blogs which will only be found after their passing?

We didn’t really glimpse the answers at Media140 and this is an important discussion to have as the rise of the digital sharecropper isn’t confined to journalism.

Many professional and white collar occupations are going the same way and we need to understand what this means for large parts of our economy. Even if we choose not to discuss it, it’s the reality we face.

We’re often told that there’s a divide between the “digital natives”, those who grown up with computers, and the “digital immigrants”, those who’ve had to learn about computers.

In reality this isn’t true, the real digital divide is about being prepared to learn and explore the possibilities being opened up every day by the Internet and computers.

I was reminded of this shortly before Christmas when talking to a group of forty year old business owners who dismissed Internet tools like Twitter and LinkedIn out of hand – “a waste of time” “just for kids” and “I tried and received Chinese spam” being a few of the objections.

The contrast is the Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association who prove you’re only as young as the computers you tinker with. These seniors, some of whom were retired well before computers became commonplace, are prepared to explore and discover possibilities that change their lives and the lives those around them.

The forty somethings all had successful businesses and they were the first to admit mobile phones, email and websites had changed the way they work. Yet nearly half of them didn’t have a website for their own business; a statistic consistent with business surveys that find almost 50% of small enterprises don’t have a website.

In many respects these businesses and their owners are reminiscent of the handloom weavers of the early 19th Century. At first technology worked in their favour and pushed wages up but as industrialisation continued they found their skills redundant and incomes falling. Eventually their trades and businesses disappeared; which is what will happen to complacent companies and industries in today’s industrial revolution.

A similar thing is happening to society and individuals. While you won’t disappear if you aren’t using the net, those who won’t will find it harder to do pay bills, communicate and simply get things done. Eventually they’ll find themselves marginalised as not being connected will make it harder for family and friends to keep in touch.

All of this is unnecessary, it’s just a matter of being prepared to try and to give something a go. The real digital divide is between those who choose to give things a go and those who don’t.