not another mean geeks mountain view aggregator.

strikeApose
Originally uploaded by redbarren

First I banned Twitter posts as I read them elsewhere, namely twhirl air app and m.twitter.com on the curve. Then I banned (well unsubscribed) Scoble. Then I banned ex Google founders of FriendFeed. That stopped the Scoble noise, and some of the FriendFeed noise, but it still wasn't enough. There was still too much of 'this person is a friend of so and so' and 'you may be interested in what this friend of a friend has to say about the puppet and whether funny is funny and if funny is serious.' I wanted to unsubscribe to my friend's feeds. It was way too meta.

So before I went to watch The Demons destroy The Lions today, I like every1 else read The President of Lifestreaming Louis Gray's post about Noise River and gave them my friendfeed API handle, and told it to 'automatically delete, delete now, before i see it, do not ask me, just delete it straight away' any entries with 'friendfeed' in it. I added other keywords 'scoble' 'techcrunch' 'twitter' 'shel' '1938' 'loren' 'gillmor' - and guess what : My feed got better, it got demeta-ised. But there was a problem in the 8 minutes I used noiseriver for.

I couldn't plug it in to Alert Thingy or friendfeed.com/fftogo.com via Curve (tell me if i can?), which is how I roll, and would like to, on friendfeed.com/benbarren. So it seemed my de'noise'river'd FF-API annotated is a tinyurl on steve gillmor's #track desert island. My quest for non-mountain view coffee shop content, was to wait for another day, need another hero. Some of us like cars, watches, sneakers, football and beautiful objet/people i guess.

That's why I needed the A, well Q-Team. Duncan luckily had the answer on The Inquisitor - "I’m that impressed with the ideas and functionality I’m going to make a prediction: that FriendFeed will acquire NoiseRiver, or even Feedego, the company behind it. Of course, they could just build these features themselves, but the one thing I continue to be impressed with is what great, humble, forgiving (well in my case) fair, community minded people the FriendFeed team are. I just can’t see them cloning this, but I can see them acquiring it."

Altho I have far less confidence it will happen as 'not built here' mentality is something I wouldnt characterise the friendfeed team with yet, but is a trait high performing engineers do seem to unfortunately have :) Although maybe those with $5m think a bit bigger ? If not, here's hoping with their rapid iteration cycles they copy it quickly... The last thing i want is a mountain view to atherton mean geeks aggregator. Twitter on the other hand seem to be into reverse reverse engineering : Today pagination and replies are off, tomorrow Twitter will turn Summize track searches off.

"Turn that summize search engine off. It's putting too much load on our twitter maintenance bird that loads on 404 pages."
"What are you talking about ? We dont own summize. I can't turn off search tracking on summize. What are you smoking ?"
"I told Valleywag we don't smoke anything at twitter. Just turn off a user's public timeline then."

one point can make all the difference when u r a demons supporter.

dees were goin well.jpg
Originally uploaded by redbarren

I'm just back from a day in the big smoke, and did we blow the top off it or what, the dees won, even Dean Bailey was happy. Beating a Travis Johnstone less Lions, who even though Bradshaw and Brown kicked 9 between them, we had Miller and Sylvia, get near the same. We were up most of day, gave it up towards end by 11 points, at which point I went to bathroom in disgust (while still listening on radio) and when I came back with one minute to go we were one point up, with the ball in Brisbane's forward 50.

We took possession, rushed it forward, and the siren went : Winners by a point. What a sweet single point ! Strawbs pictured, has been to two Dees games with me this year, and we've won both, the only games the team has won this season. 100% efficiency. Damn excellent, going outside the Long room glass (where we are happy to drink our perfect cold temperature $5.80 Carlton Heavy Draught Schooners) after the match, there may have only been 23 thousand fans or so, but it was one intense yell of victory. They're sweeter when u dont come by them as often !



Jimmy Stynes, the new Irish Chairman elect, walked past us, with superwizzstar Austin Wonaeamirri's Dad (from an island off the coast of Darwin: Milikapiti- Melville Island) Jimmy took Wona Snr down to the treasured turf (that nick + i with 10k others had been on after the other win a couple months ago) Pat on the back to Jimmy who is bringing the "Demons" back to the Melbourne Football Club. You need some satanic mongrel in you sometimes to win, more than a sweet angelic cherub. Winning day.

facebook's 540 terabytes of photos.

facebook visa
Originally uploaded by redbarren

I didnt realise Facebook's (the?) biggest photo site on the Net via Inside Facebook, nice terabyte stats : "Facebook users have uploaded over 6.5 billion images. Facebook stores them in 5 sizes each, totaling over 30 billion files that take up about 540 TB of disk space." (preso here)

what's $5m-$10m dollars between video sharing friends ?

the car
Originally uploaded by redbarren

Who said Web 2.0 companies were cheap to run ? I've got expensive taste I'll let u know now, wouldn't want to mislead u, promise the world and deliver nothing but a friendfeed baseball shirt. You'd be better placed parking your hard earned with the take it offshorez video boyz. they r where the real post opes prime spend is via HipMojo.com :

"Back in the day, YouTube’s hosting fees were said to be $1M per month (according to a piece by Dan Frommer in Forbes, he is now at SAI). Today it’s rumored to be $1M per day (according to Fortune’s Yi-Wyn Yen). YouTube commands 75% market share, Veoh (placed #5) has 1%. In other words, Veoh, Daily Motion, Metacafe et al. are not spending $1M per month, let alone a day, but they are spending alot. Veoh has raised $80M in funding, Metacafe and Daily Motion are at $40M each. I presume the companies are now spending $5-10M per year on hosting fees to house User-Generated-Crap."

hehe, I'm off to Rye home again against my 2nd team Red Hill. Speaking of faceoffs cant wait for the New Batman which is supposed to be like Heat via AintitCool : "I've always felt Christopher Nolan was able to handle pacing unlike many movies that are over two hours these days. This is also his first entirely linear film and he proves himself to be a gifted storyteller and a master of utilising film as a visual medium... You can tell he is enjoying himself with the amount of money he is being allowed to play with and wants to better himself and the franchise. Although this movie doesn't feel like an instalment in a franchise. The best thing I can think of for comparison is The Godfather Part 2.. The film feels more like a crime drama in a grand city scape than a typical comic book movie. It feels like Heat except Batman is Al Pacino and The Joker is Robert De Niro and just like in hat film we have a great scene between Heath Ledger and Christian Bale across a table. There is also an element of a Greek Tragedy.. There is a vast sense of morality at play within the film."

'twitterati' : those who "spend more time tweeting amongst themselves than actually DOING anything.."

paris' open
Originally uploaded by redbarren

Some good golf balls were hit early this morning, which really sounds like a ad agency type of thing to do, but really truth is, agencies are usually digital sweatshops and no one is playing golf Friday morning, more likely to be having a happy clappy breakfast muffins and end of week WIP'd latte. Whatever u r doing below is a good read on a Friday/Saturday morning about social media in digital agencies : whether u agree or not, this blog does not reflect the views of my employer* blah.

The Digital Blur : "Agencies and brands don’t fret - you are not crazy nor are your years of marketing experience not translatable to an understanding of how to work in the social media ecosystem. Sorry if my social media brethren offer such elitist views at times. I’ve had too many discussions and overheard/observed/read too many conversations posts from bloggers and the growing “Twitterati” (who often spend more time tweeting amongst themselves than actually DOING anything) about how ten relationships are innately worth more than a million impressions. How arrogant and uninformed to think that this rule can be universally true. It all comes down to the definition of a relationship and the quality of the consumer feedback."

* Froosh's classic failed job interview with an Internet 1.0 Leader (seek maybe ?) when he asked about their blogging policy, classic the conclusions they jumped to (only in australia....) : “Do you have any questions for us?”. I asked what the policy or position was regarding discussing my prospective new employer and broad details of day-to-day activities on “new media” such as blogs, FaceBook, Twitter, etc. As this is evidently where it all went wrong… Their 1st response was to presume that I wanted to spend my day blogging or tweeting, followed very quickly by repeated concerns regarding client confidentiality, trade secrets, product launch schedules and similar. I was staggered and tried in vain to steer the conversation back to the Honesty, Ownership and Passion values they had just been espousing... The recruiter’s feedback to me was that they thought I was a security risk, wouldn’t fit well with the team (of 3), and would be “troublesome to manage”. "

Or Watch a Podtech Video on Hiring Social Media Marketers!

“What blogs have done to newspapers and magazines, I think companies like BlogTalkRadio can do to talk radio."

gym again.jpg
Originally uploaded by redbarren

Was at my $5m Hastings Aquatic Centre Gym on that bit between The Monash, Cranbourne, and the Mornington Peninsula, known as Hastings. Anyway it's not my gym, and the place rox. Anyway, far away from Hastings, BlogTalkRadio got a similar amount of money, well $4.6M to reinvent radio, which used to be called podcasting.

NYT : “What blogs have done to newspapers and magazines, I think companies like BlogTalkRadio can do to talk radio. I don’t see how they can compete in a world where there is unlimited opportunity for people to communicate, and when you bring so many people into the conversation,” he said."

Wishing I was at Mtub, but got a 7am-ish tee time at Sandhurst Golf Club which I've wanted to play for ages, then some hard decisions are going to be made. Like where to get a coffee from. Who to shoot, u know, normal Friday lunch thing. He jokes, he jokes not, he jokes. Roulette.

yahoo 1.0 buy/partner; google 1.5 buy/build; facebook 2.0 copy/build.

;
09_911_4WD_red-strip
Originally uploaded by redbarren

pre real coffee thought of the day on facebook : Facebook is like Yahoo was last time around. Yahoo used to bring out a vertical or application Y!Finance, Y!Mail, etc usually once an innovator had proven a market, defined the use case etc. Yahoo would then buy or white label (not build the core technology) The ol' fast follower strategy.

From Wikipedia : "On 8 March 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! also acquired ClassicGames.com and turned it into Yahoo! Games. Yahoo! then acquired direct marketing company Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc. on 12 October. On 8 March 1998, Yahoo! launched Yahoo! Pager,^[15] an instant messaging service that was renamed Yahoo! Messenger a year later. On 28 January 1999, Yahoo! acquired web hosting provider GeoCities. Another company Yahoo! acquired was eGroups, which became Yahoo! Groups after the acquisition on 28 June 2000."

Google then copied Yahoo's strategy when it diversified from search and did Gmail, Gmaps etc. Google however wasn't ever going to partner : Rather it would build itelf using all the product and program managers toolkits and frameworks google has on offer. But google prided itself on doing the product in an innovative way. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't eg first Google reader - awful. Second attempt - damn good and now industry standard.

Anyway, so back to Facebook : They are now the fast follower, incorporating the "best of web 2.0" not by acquiring (although they did buy that browser related r+d company from firefox guy) but by building themselves. I am definitely in the camp of wishing Microsoft would stop trying to buy Yahoo and instead buy up all the companies that Facebook will try and copy over the next 24 months as they move to becoming a public company. Ballmer could mess with the Zuckerberg chess game by targeting the key properties. Microsoft/Facebook partnership and revenue aside.

Anyway, so today it's facebook copying friendfeed by adding comments. From Inside Facebook : "When commenting, Facebook also sends an email to you with the comment text. However, comment text does not appear in the Mini Feed by default. Visitors must click the “bubble” to expand the comments." Most facebook users will not even know of friendfeed, but as little a feature as it sounds (adding comments to mini-news feed) its all part of the evolution. Copycats ! Will people comment on attention gestures ? ok this thought has run out in lieu of enough caffeine to move it forward. moving on. facebook is like the PG version of web 2.0.

sucking, sucker, melbourne suburbz.

at gym.jpg
Originally uploaded by redbarren

I chuckled reading MelbourneGirl's My Suburb is a Sucker meme. Going to Melbourne High on Alexandra Avenue/ChapelSt meant growing up with these types of memories : "I remember Chasers and places like the Warehouse when I used to see prominent media celebrities wander out of there looking trashed. Once-was Channel Ten sports journalists turned TV big wigs looked so adorable tumbling out the front of Chasers, onto the footpath and claiming that someone pushed them. Yeah right!" - OK its get great 'external caffeine' time with winds that were around 100kms per hour last nite, having died down. My suburb is a sucker, they dont deliver coffee.

ill have a cappuccino with my 430 scuderia sproutcore.

Ferrari 430 Scuderia
Originally uploaded by Ian Jones Photography

These new frameworks (Ojective-J, Cappuccino and SproutCore) are very interesting. Great post by Carsonified : "So the big shift is this: instead of relying on the client-server model, you can build asyncronous, offline, robust web apps right inside the browser. In fact, they don’t even need to connect to the web at all... You might be saying “Duh. You can already do this with AIR or Silverlight. What’s the big deal?” The answer is that Objective-C, Cappucino and SproutCore are all open source."

kanye : an american boy, one d@a_time.

Banksy- Laugh Now
Originally uploaded by racingtiger

its rare in this mediated world, altho it's happening more and more, that we hear directly from celebrities, the exception that proves the rule being Lilly Allen drunkblogging and a High School Musical stars facebook being hacked. so the kanye west blog which i read, u can tell when his digital agency update the content (often about architecture, industrial design, fashion etc) or when it's kanye himself. today it's kanye going off first person, i can only assume from his iphone, because sometimes it's lower case, then goes upper case quick.

"I am sick of negative people who just sit around trying 2 plot my downfall... Why???? I understand if people don't like me because I like me or if people think tight clothes look gay* or people say I run my mouth to much, But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I've ever had in my life. This is the most offended I've ever been... this is the maddest I ever will be. I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!! Call me any name you want.... arrogant, conceited, narcissistic, racist, metro, fag whatever you can think of.... BUT NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL! NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL! THIS SHOWS NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO BE GOOD AT SOMETHING THERE WILL BE PEOPLE THERE TO LIE ABOUT YOU AND BRING YOU DOWN! LIKE WAYNE SAYS PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ME DOWN CAUSE I'M FLYING! I'M FUCKING HURT BY THIS ONE. ALL I CARE ABOUT ARE THE FANS. JUST SAY THIS OUT LOUD IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE, "KANYE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT GIVING A GOOD PERFORMANCE." CAN ANYONE HONESTLY SAY THAT ?????????"

* for a bit of kanye comparison, check out one of the best pot psychology bloggers out there : the slut machine (yup her parents know), one d@a_time, post-fem' editor of jezebel and decide for yourself after reading her investigative kanye post. alernatively download the latest free kanye mixtape from aptly freudian named 2dopeboyz.

u can searchme.com but i dont have your $43m!

searchme.com $43m_VC
Originally uploaded by redbarren

So do u sometimes dream what u would do with a certain amount of VC ? According to TechCrunch searchme.com have raised over $43m to do Coverflow for Search. Having been at a company that raised that amount of money, you really dont need that much and can move the decimal point one digit left and be quite happy with a few mill rather than tens of.

Obviously my coffee hasnt kicked in because I aint got $43m or even $4.3m, although if persistence and focus is key I've got millions of that ! Did I mention I'm rich on the inside ? How useless and quite untrue. Anyway I quite like the searchme interface wish the initial images could be a bit smaller tho., thumbnaily, so I could flick thru multiple channels of search results content. Also it seems strange that you can build stacks, but they are separate from the search results, and also laid out differently. (the stacks being smaller look better than the search results)

My google preferences are 100 search results on each page, so if I look on average at 1.5 pages, that's 150 search results I can scan thru in 5-7 seconds. With searchme, the equivalent number would be closer to 20. Thats why if I could view 5 thumbnails of content from different sources, with 30 results in each, I'm getting the same universe potential as google, but with the pictorial bonus. The TC Bible also mentioned that SearchMe is "one of only a handful of companies that indexes the entire web, so they’re serious about evolving into a big search player over the years." - I also find that interesting in so far as I keep wanting to find a heavily filtered, high authority, but live web search result - And ideally across multiple content sources/file types.

So the example of "Breitling" search :
- Web Links : I could navigate one stream of thumbnails/screenshots of the destination sites that are the high page rank googlelike results eg breitling.com, breitlingsource.com etc
- Etailers : Online and offline retailers that sell breitling eg authenticwatches.com/breitling
- Images : From flickr api (as they are doing) and other sources (eg images from watch forums)
- Blogs/News : Latest blog posts about breitling on watch blogs.. these would be key from a recency point of view.

Also I know alot of search engines following google's relevancy model (and being the default architecture of lucene) order results based on what they think will be most popular. Ironically where google is heading on their advanced search is what should be standard : Ability to draw results (which can still be ranked or not on relevancy) that are new in the last day, month, week, month or year. In effect what blog search engines have done since day dot.

I like searchme. They could fund the whole Australian web 2.0 industry thru their funding and still achieve their product goals, but good on em! If they could give power users who no longer use technorati much, and arent fully satisfied with google.com they could definitely get some adoption. I'd just get their search results to look like and integrate with their "stacks" and provide a better "live web" search result into filtered channels of thumbnail browsable content.

As Dave Winer said about twitter, it's about giving users and developers more power about how they use and develop products. In the search example, the power is with google, and the me-too products are all one search box one column results size. So hopefully searchme, and other companies wanting to slicendice profitable niches from google, can allow more controls to view the live web portions of their content. Or provide access to their coverflow type content browsing tools. Now if Yahoo just opensource the heck out of some of that searchmonkey technology so those of us without $43m* can develop innovative front end search products....

Related Video : I'm going to watch this video on Ajaxian with the guy thats written the Sproutcore technology that powers Apple's MobileMe (makes me wonder what technology underpins searchme?) : "Charles talks about techniques that they use to give you fast applications (common global event dispatch seems key, and Prototype 2.0 is adding this) and how he feels that compelling rich browser applications will keep pushing the browser vendors to speed up, and shape up!"

* versus those with $38m Series C to do mobile telephony for "the elderly" !

australian social media club@the pub ?

Social Media Club Member Kits
Originally uploaded by kristiewells

so u remember the yesteryear of your grandparents going to local RSL and having a sunday roast. well the australian social media club sunday roast at the pub could be a more 2008 monthly weekday take. i could even imagine this down at one of the bowls clubs - st kilda, richmond, possibly a rotating schedule. for $9 u would get a lawn bowl, pot of beer and unlimited talking about the latest social media app. so come on down and bring your centralised me of social media apps, and listen to what the passionate users and wannabe developers of these services like and dislike about them.

last month the profile would have been friendfeed. this month it would probably be plurk as alot of people jump off twitter and are not monogamous to it. it would be great to hear from the end users, and also from design and UI people about why it's design is beautiful but does the horizontal scrolling really work. developers would talk about their technical assessment of plurk, why twitter didnt scale, was it ruby, whats this xmpp thing, whats the whole queueing/messaging scalability issue, do they have 3 databases etc. but it would always be tied back to end user and technical viability, then business and funding.

too many conferences in Australia are all business or all technical. as well as being siloed they're out of date. We cover the agenda which US conferences did in 2004-5. Its 2008/9 and the best smaller/informal conferences/events (outside of the big TC50's + pure unconference barcamp type format) are those like Defrag and Graphing Social Patterns; Not should a newspaper website be free or charge.

















rather than just talk about the latest thing or twitter's scalability, the social media club australia, would rather than be business/publisher centric or be a pure #railscamp/webdirections workshop techfest - the focus would be on technical demos, prototypes where programmers 20% projects, their nighttime alphas, or dream idea, would be pitched into the entrepreneurial, business analyst, angel investor crowd. so its got a webjam element, but i think they're be even more focus on the non entrepreneurial not in the industry end user of social media, who comes along to meetups because they spend their whole day on twitter etc and want to meet their online friends and talk all things twitter.

building meetups and a social media club that was site agnostic, with power end users at the top of the pyramid, followed by developers, then designers/UI, project/BA types and enabled by business, product, entrepreneurial and ultimately funded by money folk - that would get around conferences un or not, that go down the blackholes of "What is Web 2.0 ?" (and the what comes next 3.0 debate that ensues) "How do you Monetise Social Networks ?" and the killer one last nite "Free vs Subscription" in a room of journalists mainly and bloggers not afraid to talk up. There was never going to be a winner just as there never is in discussions of God vs Science.

so a social media club downunder... just planting a seed 'ere... could have a similar generic name like kristie wells has done some great work O/S. or could have a more mtub type feel.... so basically it would be end users, developers, and supporting crew pitching their latest crazy technical idea, showing their new prototype off or talking shit about what new shiny social media things they have become addicted to : All at the local pub, with proper wifi :)

Feel free to chime in with some kooky ideas in this mould.. i'm thinking of something thats a cross between the end user focus and passion about twitter that is mtub; the short snappy 2-3 minute product prototype pitches ala webjam, chuck in some y-combinator minus the Paul Graham stress and add some Ross Dawson Web 2.0 Corporate Australia.. with the structured meets unstructured of barcamp. Did I mention it would be in a pub :) ? But end users first, developers second, then designers/producers next. With business/finance types being the enablers of the rockstar programmers.....

summize u went to melbourne pubcamp.

Today after tracking #PubCamp thru Summize, and gcalendaring that a Monday 3pm-8pm slot avoided peakhour driving, didn't clash with meetings, and there had been positive buzz from the Sydney event - I thought it may be worth dropping in to the 2.0 unconference at a pub format - for a free drink n twitter. Arriving a bit after 3pm, I was greeted by Mick Gatto of Underbelly getting into an AMG Mercedes.



I tried to not look like I was photographing the alleged Tony Soprano of Melbourne, but I was megapissed that in the blink of the eye he jumped into his tinted window merc and missed my acutely angled blackberry. (it could be any1 in that car BB, damn i tell u its mick gatto - being a $300k AMG S-Series I wonder if its one of the opes prime sports-car loot) I couldn't really ask him to get out of the car as I missed the shot. I don't think he would "get" twitter. But he might "get" me.



Once inside and presentations started, it was a slow burn crescendo as "Web 2.0" definitions, terms like remix and user generated content were distantly heard from the far back. I thought being a PubCamp though there would be some waiters(esses) taking drink orders, or better a twitter direct message the bar your order (like the rooftop movie setup in cbd melbourne that so impressed A VC Fred Wilson) Melbourne Pub Camp, was after all different, better most said, than it's Sydney counterpart.










Over half of the people in Europe are on social networks said one of the media panellists. And Melbourne's the same. I just dont know which half of my social network budget is wasted :)



There was a dedicated projected screen for the 'twitter/summize backchannel' which while kewl in a realtime feedback way, MTUB fans have been spoilt by @lucas' visualisation tools which give prominence to posts, and realtime streaming. This was more static.









Most of us were sitting on iphones, blackberries, treos + spechty has taken over from camreilly as the tablet at a conference guy - where we were tracking summize.com #pubcamp, and m.twitter. Externals were chipping in, with Inquisitor Duncan Riley being especially vocal saying he hadn't been invited.










Neither had alot of us, but in the last fortnight were unable to avoid Norgesque LittleBron updating her followers on her Control Media debates and presentations, which had supposedly incensed and divided the crowd into Pro Curated Authoritative Journalism versus the Non-Fact Checked Citizen Journalists.









Duncan following 900 or so twitterers obviously missed the blatant signal with all the noise he must attract from his followers. We told him invite or not, to get down'ere, which he soon did and boy did he take control.



Even Old Media raconteur Steven Mayne couldn't escape Dunc's healthy encouragement (or AlvinP's illustrations) to the Panel of Free Content with Steven suggesting that AFR in another life need not ever have been half-pregnant in its web strategy in supporting a paid and limited free version; He said they should have just had a print version and not even worried with a half baked afr.com. Duncan seemed happy with this. Steven blogging the next day said : "Thanks also to Duncan Riley for reprising Kerry Packers Bondy line with “theres only one Christian kerr in a lifetime” - I wholeheartedly agree."









Downstairs over a dart, we both wondered if any of the Fairfax kindren understood the financials of one women operations like dooce.com, and run out of home enterprises such as TechCrunch, both of which are likely 7 figure turn over businesses.










Although the Pub prefix for the event had been considered misleading by many a free alcohol seeking free conference attending twitterer, the post-drink unconference panels were the ones with the largest payoffs.










Companies that darest not speaketh their names such as ABC, BBC, and Telstra had their wiki, facebook and user generated content strategies behind the corporate firewall and smokenmirrors PR laid bare.









Tom, working for a large Telco, mentioned the one post he didnt get approved by 3 departments, is the one that ended up in him getting dooced, luckily tho Tom is still making good tips playing the Baby Grand at some select spots around Melbourne, with a Crown Lounge tour coming up.



As the public transport catching poster boy of the Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade @andrewsayer wasnt going to be outdone by TelcoTom on the grand piano, with Mr Sayer showing anything u can do, I can do standing up.



After a 3pm start, by about 8pm time seemed to lose its significance, as a 30 minute unconference session would then break for some drinks, and then be on again.



One constant though was Duncans support for Free Content, and the breaking down of the paid premium walls which havent worked anywhere in the world.










Except in the case of the Wall Street Journal, where Rupert decided he didnt want to give back the $100m of online subscription straight away.



By now it was getting late, well 930pm-ish and the staff working there were in need of a taxi home, spilling some no-name coke everywhere.



LittleBron's networking wasn't going to be stopped by a little bit of Coke on the table though.



Moments before my blackberry finally ran out of juice after finally locating a charger from @anguskidman, @mspecht was still twittering for finger food, pizza, or really anything beyond a chocolate chip cookie which were very nice, and served with coffee around 5pm, to which a backchannel contributor opined that 2 cookies per audience member was not an ideal or abundant ratio.










I get the feeling some might not have minded 20 large pizzas arriving during the unconference part. But overall it was pretty impressive if somewhat parochial that a Brains Trust of people were flown down to educate the Melbourne Market on Web 2.0 - many of which were well worth it, minus a chillingly painful talk about "Paradigm Shifts" where the only thing left unsaid was to imagine you were walking past the Bondi Beach cemetry chanting "I am the Network" + "I am the Paradigm Shift".










Anyway good thing about speed presenting is the less persuasive presenters go quickly and you dont have to marry them for an hour. Altho they needed some of Ross Dawson's 5 minutes bell management : 5 minutes is 5 minutes, not 12. Sorry to be Dicko@Idol, but some people shouldnt sing.



The only person in more places at once, and almost with as much to say (as he did do a presentation, and run one of the panels!) was Filtered Media's Mark 'i once worked with Steve Gillmor Duncan' Jones. Audio for his preso here.









Here he's smoozing @marketingmag.



Wrapping things up, Jed did a little speech which I couldn't hear but I assume brought together the central themes of the conference, and synthesised some meta-patterns from the 3 running concurrently unconference rooms; Basically what @trib, @bronwen, and @duncanriley said. Chanting "I am the paradigm shift. I am the network" Jed probably reinforced something along the lines of : If you build it, set it free, unless you can charge for it, and if you do, make sure you have a good argument or Duncan will encourage you to set it free.



Luckily I wasn't the only approved unmedia with pictorial and video access to the subjects today at PubCamp;



Foxy Twitter user @Fox, channeling the Seinfeld episode where George was an in-demand hand model, proves she's not just an ultra-slick twitter username, made sure everything (or something?) was recorded on her suave flip too.



By this time it was definitely time to leave, as I was bit paranoid that Mick Gatto may have been engaged by Fairfax to shut up the Free Content splinter group. I shouldn't have been concerned, as @guilthatenfear, had quite the boxing moves to match it with older pauncher Gatto.



Any companies looking to hire a great customer service, leading edge socialnets user should ping @guilthatenfear btw. It was surprising in the unconference the issue of whether companies should ban Facebook. To which I'm obviously in the quite the opposite camp, wouldn't you hire GenY's like @guilthatenfear who are cutting edge consumer-creators of twitter and facebook and may just help your company become a leader in the space, rather than a spazz. Banning socialnets would be like taking the Pub out of PubCamp.










And at 1252am and quite a few too many coffees today, but hey I'm lucid, good to see the true Beyond Publishing ethos of PubCamp is still going but coming to a close. Every1 seems to have enjoyed themselves.. Night.




















Update : Spechty has posted his thoughts and uploaded his preso which i'm annoyed i missed... Renai@AFR (soon to be the bigwig@zdnet) has published his social networking comes of age, sort of piece in the daily finance paper ! But in true melbourne v sydney conspiracies : the melbourne event misses out due to deadline :)

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Lots of people posting their post-Pubcamp thoughts today:)