I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Communications, Events, Politics, TechBiz at 1:33 pm on Thursday, 29 November 2007
Great day at the Digital Strategy 2.0 summit yesterday.
http://www.digitalsummit.org.nz/
I’ve been putting out that the Digital Summit was a key focal point for our industry this year. I think yesterday lived up to that. Some key points for me were.
- David Cunliffe has definitely been listening. Key parts of his plan moving forward included a focus on international - where economic transformation can really take place, and that aligning funding structures to the infrastructure layer may hold the answer. I’ll post about my Funding Separation thoughts later. But yesterdays DC speech was excellent.
- Maurice Williamson, the National party spokesman who I’ve mentioned before as being the invisible man this year, has sprung into life. Maurice was saying why don’t we just do Fibre to the Home (FTTH) on a debt basis and take a bold step. Yeah boy. (I think it’s clear that the National Party members have been told not to speak on specific policy yet so they must be getting things lined up for a big launch next year.) Maurice was in great form and good to spend time with him.
- The people in the industry we spar with are all good people, and their behavior is completely logical. I especially enjoyed spending time with Alan Freeth yesterday who has a great sense of humour. Paul Reynolds is great bloke and had a good first speech to the industry. Good to also see Mark Ratcliffe was around. I worked with Mark at EY many years ago so feel a sense of pride as he moves up the ranks. Tom Chignall’s mo was looking quite acceptable by the end of the month.
- Sam did a great presentation. I think people are pleasantly surprised to see that Sam actually is very bright and doesn’t take himself to seriously.
- Andy’s presentation from Austin Texas was excellent. His points on ICT having to be environmentally friendly were well made. That got me thinking big time.
- The long tail presentation from Chris Anderson was also great. Really ties into our SaaS messaging. Lots of goodies in that session.
- Loved the Gen-Y people. Really impressive.
- The broadband map project looked like a useful initiative. http://www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz/Your-Region/broadbandmap/
- There were 500 people there. The conference laptops put on by HP and Cisco were excellent. Being able to participate and converse during the speeches was very useful, though the moderator didn’t seem to appreciate my sense of humor.
- I really like the people in our industry and it was good to catch up with many many smart people in person.
More to come later but just wanted to get this up.
blog
Rod, good to hear you are positive after the conference but ….
this is not a criticism of you but of Telecom, Telstra etc. This dance routine has been going on for over 12 months now and nothing has happened or even looked like happening in practice. Peter Griffin over at the Herald had a headline which said “Thorny issue of broadband more than just talkfest”.
My answer to this is “Talk is cheap”. It is a talkfest until the providers dip their hands into their pockets and start spending on new infrastructure.
Action is what we want, any action would be better than talk. And I know you want that as well.
I think here people are trying to solve all the problems at once rather than just getting in and doing them one by one. For example, fibre to businesses would be a good place to start, the peering issues, the international bandwidth. I don’t need fibre, I have a 12 pair fibre connection, but lots of businesses do need it. Start here and then once we get this working roll out the next area.
So far its like riding a rocking horse, great action but its going no where.
In saying the above I think conferences need business people like you to explain the realities of live in the real world.
Put this:
“nternetNZ welcomes the announcement by the Minister of Communications David Cunliffe that the Government will look at subsidising an undersea fibre optic cable to provide additional international connectivity for New Zealand…It may be appropriate to think of bringing the link ashore in Invercargill, which would do much to make the data flows through New Zealand more synchronous. Currently data tends to flow to Auckland and then out through the international links.”
http://blog.internetnz.net.nz/?p=149
together with this:
“Freedom wins, and openness wins. You can hold it back for some period of time, but in the long run, freedom always wins because freedom and openness let people all over the world be fully creative and innovative in every way they want. And the creativity and innovation that freedom and openness enable will always swamp anyone’s attempt to wall off a proprietary world with tight controls and sharp limitations.”
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/11/report-from-the.html
To get to the latter situation, we need more people digging holes and more people climbing poles. Multiple local and regional initiatives and a benign check against any would-be monopoly. Let’s go!
Dermott: Sure, talk *is* cheap, however this talk was very thoughtful, conscientious and deeply encouraging. Telecom *are* spending big. Hell, they need to, and I believe Paul’s focus on putting the customer first will pull that company out of its mud-pile and ultimately help NZ get to the place we hope it will be as soon as possible. More than ever we need to support their efforts rather than constantly bash them, and ensure we’re all personally doing our very best under the collaboration and communication part of the strategy. Further babbling notes on most of the sessions at the summit here -
http://www.gnome.org/~gman/digital-summit-notes.txt
http://www.gnome.org/~gman/digital-summit-notes-2.txt
Rod, enjoyed the event thoroughly. Fyi the session from Darryn Melrose of AIM Proximity was cut short very abruptly because of time pressures late on the first day; he was only 15 minutes into his 30 minute slot. However he will be placing his presentation in various posts over the next few days on his blog at: http://www.thedigitaledge.co.nz
In particular look out for his ‘Roadmap for Digital’, and ‘9 Steps to take your business forward’
Yes Darryn’s session was great as well. Hadn’t seem him present before and enjoyed it.
A few of us attended the Digital Summit by way of webcast beamed into the council chambers here in Wellington. It was more fun than sitting at home by myself watching it and I made one or two new friends. It was also a good case study for why business needs better access to broadband. Thanks a lot WCC.
But I thought where the conference went slightly off the rails was around the focus on delivering high speed fibre to the home. I really don’t think that is an economic imperative at this point. Individual domestic users simply do not need 100 Mb/S of grunt. Anyway, Telecom have already stated that improvements are on the way, so just let them get on with it.
The real economic opportunity for NZ involves getting better bandwidth and high speed access for our businesses to digital markets offshore - right now! That should be the priority.
but Paul,
Some of those billion dollar businesses that we’re going to build while sitting on the beach, will be run from home. In this virtual world there is no reason that we can’t build big business from home - which begs some questions about the fibre to the workplace/copper to the home demaration
Ben, I think the reality is though, that you cannot build large businesses from home (P labd and tinnt houses probably being the exception. There is a limit to how many people you employ, numbers of toilets etc etc. And why should home businesses pay home telephone rates and the rest of us pay commercial?
Been there, done that, will never do it again.
And what Paul is saying (I think) is what I said earlier, lets start somewhere with fast broadband, fibre is best so lets start with where the businesses are - in commercial premises.
Once thats done then the dream suggestions of working from the beach may happen but lets avoid the one shoe size fitting all syndrome and start with practical realities.
Dermott - at the risk of sounding a little flakey, the paradigm of business as we know it is changing. The future will include people running billion dollar businesses from home if they so wish - virtual workforces, outsourcing, organic business structures et al will allow this to eventuate. I know a number of people who are inolves in building businesses from home - that may turn into big businesses without any requirement to alter the working model
FTTH is an interesting one. I’m glad that the international links are starting to get some focus as that is clearly more important. What FTTH will give us is innovation as smart kids work out what they can do with all that bandwidth.
I now have Fibre tantalizingly close with Weta dragging CityLink through Miramar. The thing I’d use it for immediately is offsite backups of family media. So I’m not even thinking about business apps for FTTH.
Hi Ben, sure a few more home based businesses will spring up from neighbourhoods that get wired, and that will be great. It saves on commuting and means more family time. But I just don’t think that is the real imperative at this point.
I certainly appreciate that you are making a case for a change in business paradigm but the reality is that (most) companies that aspire to be “billion dollar” in size generally move to business premises that befit the kind of setting they need. From an organisational perspective there are still many good reasons to have centralised operational HQ.
Our waterfront business precinct here in Wellington is filling up fast (Xero, TradeMe, Meridian, Shell, NZX, Te Papa to name but a few). We are spoilt here because of having Citylink in the CBD of course.
By all means give the kids at home a couple of megs to play games and get movies and music. But I’m just saying that the really important priority at this point is to get the international capacity up and running, so that we can sell abroad.
Don’t get me wrong - I’ve personally got several ideas for projects that I would love to initiate but I’m only interested in doing so if I can host and manage locally AND get high speed access to an international marketplace. Until that time all bets are off.
Cheers.
Paul et al
When I look back over my experience of computing I’m inclined to line up with Ken Olsen - the computer is the network. While at the applications end I use much more sophisticated software I frankly don’t use much more functionality than was available on the Elliot 503 that I learnt on, or the word processor on the Commodore 64. Definitely not much more than the VAX machines in the late eighties. This really hasn’t been life changing - but perhaps I bored of games too early :).
What really has changed my life is connectedness.
Looking back I remember things like the introduction of STML (HTML and XTML are subsets) into Government Print in the late 1980s, and actually being able to email reproducable documents internationally across the VAX network (Adobe was just a font company); purchasing our first web site and domain name for the NZ Manufacturers Federation in the early nineties (when we could really only afford one domain name and had to choose between manufacturers.org.nz or manfed.org.nz - even in those days Ernie was more wired than the rest of us running the “Buy NZ Made Campaign” with cell phone, dictaphone and rental car all going at once); followed later by dial up access from home and the major news event I heard first while on the internet (Diana’s death); the political debates on usernet (NZ.Politics) trying to straight up David Farrar’s leftward leanings; and the chat rooms :(.
Later came cable from Saturn with real changes to our lifestyle. Altavista followed by Google, and as content grew international newspapers and journals on line; no more looking up dictionaries and more recently atlases; crosswords and family arguments suddenly made much easier; running an advanced technology commercialization business with real access to patents, scientific papers, commercial partners etc from home; children emersing themselves in virtual real time communities (thank god); sharing word, graphic and CAD files of new products as we work on them across the world (well I have to conceed that this probably relies on better computing power, but the network is still the thing that lets us do it). Some of this is now on my phone.
So what’s the point of this little nostalgic homily?
Don’t underestimate what ubiquitous wireless and polymer to the home will bring. Definitely the end of centralized businesses and with it the downfall of western civilization as we know it. For those that argue to invest in business broadband they are arguing to invest in institutions that are so last century.
I’m just surprised there isn’t a lobby group against it :)
Mr Arnold, no one is arguing here against home businesses, what I believe Paul and myself are postulating is rather than waiting for the perfect 100% rollout lets get fast broadband into business areas first which will cover most business. Once done lets move onto home and once thats done lets think about schools, politicians and lawyers.
No one runs large businesses from home, thats our point.
Investment is also about employing people, there is a connection between the two.
Hi Dermott,
I am coming into this conversation at a late stage, but I think your vision of a home business is a little restrictive. A home business is not necessarily a single location where you have all your employees squashed into the room above the garage.A home business can be a virtual business, where it doesn’t matter where your employees are located.
In the US, broadband is freely available in homes and businesses, and it has really transformed the way businesses are run.
Benefits can be seen in many places not just in technology startups and microbusiness but in SMB and Enterprise.
My wife deals with a Market Research company with 40 employees all working from their own homes. Their client base are enterprise companies and are very competitive with their project costings due to lower employee support costs. They retain their best employees as they are not restricted by geography.
I often run multi-country projects from my own home, with my developers spread around different US states and I am working with Enterprise customers who also work regularly from home. We once had a 6 month project with 8 countries involved all run from home. By removing the restrictions of a physical location for your business, you truly become agile and far more accessible to your customer base and at a lower cost of running your business. The Internet provides you with all the tools you need to do this, financials, email, voice, social networking, collaboration, CRM are all available from the cloud.
This can only be good for New Zealand.
Troy.
Another key advance I noted was the “soft” SSC commitment to achieving “joind up governement” by 2010. A few more words about this on my blog http://blog.simpl.co.nz/.
Hi Simon. Long time, no see. You make a good point with your history lesson. We really don’t know where new technology will lead us or what new opportunities might emerge as a result.
Troy - some great examples you have given there. And as someone who performs consultancy work from home sometimes myself, I’m bound to agree that better domestic broadband would be wunderbar. I can also think of people doing animation subcontracting from home who would dearly love more speed. But I just don’t want to see the debate skewed away from the really important issue of opening up international bandwidth. Me and my mate cannot export our services efficiently until this happens (irrespective of how fast the domestic network might be).
I developed my thinking a bit in an article earlier this week.
http://geniusnet.blogtown.co.nz/2007/12/02/do-we-really-need-ubiquitous-broadband-infrastructure/
Dermott wrote:
“Once done lets move onto home and once thats done lets think about … and lawyers.”
I’ll take that as an opportunity to segue into a couple of hobbyhorses of mine, which were also discussed at the Summit.
1. Living north of Albany in Auckland, but with my office in the CBD, unsurprisingly, I am quite a fan of avoiding traffic and working from home (although, I have over time come to agree that something is lost in colleagues/staff not getting together F2F fairly regularly). I am told that regulatory problems have prevented Transit, North Shore City Council et al being able to work together to provide open access ducting (or, heaven forbid, actual fibre) up the almost completed Northern Busway, which will run from the Harbour bridge all the way to Albany. If that is correct, and is symptomatic of a general problem (rather than the common Auckland multi-organisation bureaucratic issues), then that is just wrong.
2. I wonder what the Gen-Yers at the Summit would say to this:
“Some submitters were concerned that new section 81A is limited to sound recordings only. [...] we consider that format-shifting of music for private and domestic use is widespread, while format shifting of other types of copyrighted works is not. We therefore do not recommend extending the exception.” - The view of the Select Committee reporting back on the Copyright (New Technologies etc) Amendment Bill - see:
http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/5A88D15B-C4A1-42C2-AE75-9200DD87F738/67735/DBHOH_BILL_7735_526991.pdf
So, for example, shifting video from your computer to your phone/pda/iPod etc will remain prima facie illegal. One of quite a few examples in the proposed law that will be out of date before they are passed (and for which, if past experience is anything to go by, we will have to wait another decade or so before getting around to changing). Hard to see how that enables our digital future.
Golly Rick, the lawyer comments was in jest!!
Its a good point about the Northern buslane; I am yet convinced that many more people will travel in buses to the city than before it was built. The good thing about it is when/if it fails we can drive on it. What it shows is that at least in Auckland none of the elected bodies work together for the tax payers and ratepayers who own this stuff. It is the seduction of power often by under skilled people who would not get a job in the real world.
I think over time the Gen Y attitudes to jobs and work (or the melleniums as I believe they call them in the US) will be proved false, but only after a decade or two and will be followed by much weeping and knashing of teeth by those who bought into it. History has a habit of repeating itself.
On a more positive note, I live in Milford and contacted my ISP to ask if fibre was available to my house. It is not but is in Shakespeare Road (because it was run done there so that the schools could have it). If I wanted to pay for it I could get it at home.
Sound expensive, maybe not. When we got it at work, Telecom ran an 18 pair fibre cable to the road outside the business park we are in and then 12 pair all the way around it to my offices. Total distance probably half a kilometre, total cost was $1000 if I signed up for 36 months. It’s called Metro Fibre. Open term cost is $4000.
So Rod you should be able to get this in Wellington.