Category: Technology Author : Duncan Riley Posted: May 18, 2009
Tags : fail, future summit
Does Australian have a bright future in a challenging broader global economic climate? The Future Summit, the Australian lite version of Davos is being held in Melbourne Monday and Tuesday featuring some of Australia’s leading figures in industry, the media and Government. I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to attend both days along with a group of new/ social media people from across Australia. Fortunate in that at least one day in, it has so far confirmed my worst fears: Australia’s future is as a technological backwater.
At a summit that should be envisaging what this country could be, we had a lot of old, mostly white people (perfectly gender balanced I should note) talk about what has been, and what is happening now. What I saw very little of was what we could and should be, at least in terms of anything new or exciting. We heard the same old story on education, we heard about the challenges presented by the decline of the United States and the rise of China and we heard an advertorial dressed up as a welcoming address from the State Premier.
On tech, Google Australia’s GM briefly spoke on a panel about the rapid changes in technology, there was a mention of two in passing of Twitter, and one panelist boldly said that the majority of Australian’s want internet censorship (they don’t, polls are against.) But the only tech concept that went close to getting a work out was broadband, and here’s where we have the problem.
Government has the same problem, but our business leaders do as well. “Broadband” is a buzz word that they believe will deliver improved opportunities for existing businesses, eduction, and health. But that’s it. No innovation. no web industries, no increase in tech jobs. Nothing. Not a thing. One panelist asked what Australia’s competitive advantages will be in 20 years time, and his response was Minerals. No mention of striving to deliver a “clever country” that thrives on new tech and web related jobs. No mention that two of the United State’s largest companies by market cap are tech/ web companies (Microsoft and Google). Nothing. Zip. Zilch.
Australia’s Government and business elite can’t see the web from the trees. The web is all about crappy YouTube videos and Facebook for them, but nothing that is taken as a serious business opportunity, nothing that can provide jobs for the kiddies they want to provide improved educations to. While Australia’s industrial base is dying, and white collar service industry jobs get exported to India, we as a country do nothing to promote web jobs that are not some pipe dream, but proven overseas. Millions of people in California rely on direct or indirect tech/ web jobs, a US State with a bigger population than Australia.
Victorian Premier John Brumby had the tenacity to compare the Victorian economy to Israel in the opening speech this morning, and nothing could be further from the truth. Despite its geopolitical issues, Israel has 7-10x more tech/web related startups then the entirety of Australia put together, despite having a population nearly 3x as small. Israel is a country that understands the value of high tech and web related startups and jobs, and Australian could do well to learn from it. The alternative is to further cement our place as a technological backwater, and from what I heard today, perhaps it’s already too late to change course.
(image: JJ Projects, L-R: Darren Rowse, Bronwen Clune, me)
![Oh My Freaking Gawd now you too can prove how crazy you are in this free falling swing [Video]](http://www.inquisitr.com/wp-content/2011/08/nevis-100x100.jpg)
May 18, 2009
The Australian government don't get it, that much is obvious from their rush to censor the net.
The telecoms business doesn't want to get it because they can milk the population with hugely overpriced broadband plans. I've just moved to Australia from the UK and I'm shocked at the prices – $30/month for 8Mb capped at just 200MB!
200MB is an afternoon's downloading not a month. Luckily the local library has no caps on its free broadband for members.
May 18, 2009
thanks for the update on the day. Was also following along in Twitter. I look forward to a summary of day 2. Hopefully there will be something good to report.
May 18, 2009
In fairness though there were 2 conferences. 1 “old skool” suit conference, and 1 awesome wireless mesh and twitter backchannel. Surely the challenge lies in educating the dinosaurs on one hand, and learning from them on the other?
We can't eat data packets… but we can learn how to grow food and sustainable energy from data packets, and digital representations of people in the global village. @irldexter
May 18, 2009
What do you expect from a government whose solution to the economic downturn is to give everyone in the country $900 cash to go out and spend on imported products. Imagine if they used the money in a tech start up fund. It seems like Australia never recovered from the 2000 dot com crash.
May 18, 2009
Sounds about right. But of course Australia has always plundered into the future with eyes glued firmly to the rear view mirror (and the doors locked tight). Working at a large tech firm in Australia I see the complete ignorance of management as to what makes good product and how to run a skilled business.
I think the panelist who mentioned Minerals was just about right. That is and will always be the main thing that Australia has going for it, along with some tourism and novelty value.
May 18, 2009
You made the newcomer's mistake of visiting Telstra, didn't you?
May 18, 2009
Type your comment here.
May 18, 2009
Playing only the Minerals card seems to me like playing with the future of Australia's adolescents. Who needs them in world wide declining economies ? Even the rich oil member states have recognised that they can only reach a sustainable existence with investments in demanding technologies. Hartmut Rast, London
May 18, 2009
If Australia is a technological backwater, Adelaide sure feels like the plughole.
I've been following the whole Social Media | 2.0 scene for the last 2 years registering for every promising web service that came along under the username: guitarfrenzi
A google search for guitarfrenzi gives 17 full pages of results and has been a worthwhile experiment in propagating an identity across the web.
Once I latched on to Google Reader and started sucking down content, I started to get the gist of what the new media scene was about.
Authentic conversations, engaging customers | clients | consumers and finding out their attitudes to your business | organisation …what do they want from you, your product or service, how can you engage them and getting them buzzing about you, where do they hang out?, find them and start engaging….
So now I have enough nouse, to not do anything stupid, negative etc…online that would damage my websheet (despite my namesakes being murderers, evangelist preachers amongst other things), I have started using my actual name to start commenting, adding links via twitter etc…
Next up is to brainstorm a SEO strategy, design a crafty blog under my own domain chrisfoster.tv and come up with some interesting content.
…and instead of sitting around waiting for my 2.0 keywords in seek.com.au to bring job oppurtunities like “Community Manager” Social Media guy …” etc, I'm thinking along the lines of maybe helping small business to migrate from client/ server systems to the cloud (Google Apps as an example) or maybe helping individuals to cultivate their own brand/ identity, without falling into some of the traps that stay on the record forever.
Maybe..I'll get out of the house and connect with other Adelaide folk who are also swimming around the 2.0 backwater..
Do we all need to take small steps to make the “Groundswell” happen in Australia..it has to come from somewhere…..and someone has to give it a crack..
Telstra…get your act together and get firmly behing the Android platform, I cant wait to get an Android device based on the NVidia Tegra chip and connect seamlessly with those Google Apps in the cloud.