SplaTT's Blog

facebook is like ebay...

Ain't that spam just craaazy...

Here it is for your enjoyment...

Is kick with the squander squander sphagnum or wherein description?

The moser betty not colosseum but saint butterfly dhabi and boca compote. Sometimes wherein is sturbridge but sphagnum, apposition boca burette moser smother probabilist congratulatory sphagnum!

How propagate? christ! betty liquid elm probabilist!

Is dominion description the forbes frambesia prentice or wa cuttlefish?

The bevy coattail not houdini but bestselling impatient elm and potatoes pomegranate. Sometimes elm is impatient but dayton, mollify smother nih desuetude himalaya saint classy apposition!

How crete? cuttlefish! distributor houdini receive forbes!

I love the line that says "probabilist congratulatory sphagnum"...what the???

Mick 10.0

Mick 1.0 - Theatre / Live Events / Touring
Backstage Productions / The Crew, Too Faze, Australian Business Theatre (ABT), Geelong Performing Arts Centre (GPAC), Haycom, Concert Lighting Systems (CLS), Mirovision Design, Upper Yarra Arts Centre, Arena Technical Services (ATS) & various others

Mick 2.0 - Multimedia / Internet
SplaTT Technlogies & VRX (Internet Archive link) & Virtual Reality Association of Australia (VRA)

Mick 3.0 - VR / Simulation & Training
SplaTT Technologies (working for CagedVR, Australian Military and various other entities)

Mick 4.0 - Multimedia / Internet
Australian Business Theatre, CapitalPR & Hothouse

Mick 5.0 - Media
Next Online

Mick 6.0 - Advertising
Singleton OgilvyInteractive

Mick 7.0 - Technology Evangelism
Principius

Mick 8.0 - Media
The Podcast Network (TPN)

Mick 9.0 - Stuff
;)

Mick 10.0 - Media / Internet / Web 2.0 / Emerging Technologies
Dreampool Digital

Having spent 15+ years in the interactive media business dealing with small companies right through to international blue-chips, surving the dotcom years pretty unscathed but all the better for them, maintaining a pretty popular Australian tech / geek / marketing blog, running organisations like Singleton OgilvyInteractive, setting up Principius (and living the role of a Technology Evangelist) and then co-founding not only Australia's but the world first commercial podcasting network, The Podcast Network, have all been essential steps for me that have helped to lay down the vision and the direction of the next few years in my own mind.

So when the opportunity came to take on the role as General Manager of the newly formed Dreampool Digital, I didn't really even have to think about it...the questions gave all the right answers straight away and importantly it aligned nicely with my intended vision and direction, so my response could only be one thing...YES.

So what is Dreampool Digital and what exactly does it do I hear you ask...well...here is the company spiel..

Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, and part of the Dreampool Group, Dreampool Digital was formed in mid 2006 to provide quality and compelling content through the innovative emerging digital media channels.

Utilising both in and beyond the browser technologies such as the web, desktop applications, mobile devices, home media centers/gaming consoles, in-vehicle and other out of the home platforms, Dreampool Digital is well positioned to lead the market in providing access to quality material created both for main-stream-media and digital-specific-channels to an increasingly content hungry and technology savvy audience.

Dreampool Digital is working closely with the other two organisations from the Dreampool Group to achieve its objectives;

Dreampool Productions – providers of quality programming such as Melbourne Weekender, Feast, IFISH and Huey's Cooking (to name just a few of their shows) for both the Australian and Global, free-to-air (FTA) and pay TV markets.

Dreampool Technology - a leading technology innovator focused on the development of IP solutions for video distribution and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).

And for those that you want the plain language explanation heres a quotable quote from me..."the long term goal is to raise the bar in the design, development and distribution of digital content not only in Australia but around the world".

We realise that this is not something we are going to achieve quickly with just a few brands produced for main-stream distribution channels...this is something that we know will take a while and will involve all types of content creators and distribution platforms and importantly will aim to achive what i have been calling the "cross-over effect".

We have some housekeeping to do initially, but over time you will see Dreampool Digital push the boundries of what is the norm in todays media world...just remember to look at everything we do when you try to see the big picture...because individual pieces of work are just that...individual pieces of a much bigger picture.

So sit back, or lean forward, and I hope that you enjoy the coming new world of media as brought to you by Dreampool Digital :)

A look at the future

More detailed info on Dreampool Digital soon :)

A peek into the future - part 3

Last weekend we launched our first real content property (a redesign of an already existing site) and i am waiting till we iron out all of the bugs before i announce it here...it should only be a few days away.

If you hunt around using the various tools on the web it shouldn't take you to long to find a reference that links a few new content sites to me in one way or another ;)

A peek into the future - part 2 (or The Cross-Over Effect)

Dropping a bit extra into the logo is easy..but telling you a bit more about the project...well...let me give it a go without giving to much away yet...apologies for the length and possible rambling to follow :)

Digital media distribution and consumption is the future...I think we all agree with that...but as I have stated before, both on this blog and at conferences I have spoken at in the past, especially at the 2005 ACMA Broadcasting Conference in Canberra where I did the whole "we walk like a duck and quack like a duck so we must be a duck...just a new sort of duck" spiel about TPN to the old media world attendees...the old world media is not about to die any time soon...its just going to morph dramatically over time as new content creation and distribution technologies, like blogs, podcasts and vlogs take hold and the long tail plays itself out to to its fullest.

Taking about the long tail, I am part way through reading Chris Andersons recently published book of the same name, and his logic that the old world of "hits" is dead is pretty sort of true, but I think it still has a while to play out until it dies completely. On second thought, I actually put "hits" in the same bucket as old media...they won't die completely...but the way that the old "hit making factory" works will continue to morph and change dramatically because of the long tail and other developments. I believe that "hits" will still hold a place in our world because that is just human nature. The office water cooler might be replaced by blogs and online communities, but it still creates the same outcome...people talk about stuff they have heard, watched or read and recommend it to other people...those people check it out and if they like it they recommend it to other people and pretty soon you a have a hit...or at least something with a large and entrenched audience. In all honesty, I think that the long tail, while being hugely important and the biggest and important part of the chain, will also become one of the filters for the hit factory.

Stars and hits will continue to rise and shine from the old world distribution channels of TV ,film, music and print but stars and hits will also rise from the new digital channel. I think what we will start to see is a "cross-over effect" start to occur more and more often. The stars and hits from the old world channels are appearing in the new world channels by starting websites, blogs, podcasts, etc. and this will start to be true in reverse.

The best, and most known of the bloggers will, and have already, started to appear in traditional paper print by writing books and being asked to write columns for magazines and newspapers. The best podcasts and podcasters will, and are already, being lured to do work for radio. Musicians who stick songs on myspace and into podcasts are being wined and dined by the record labels. How long will it be before the best vloggers start to have their material shown via terrestrial and digital broadcasters into TV land or a hit movie comes from two pro-ams with a HD video camera???

Both the old world media and the new world media companies and economy have many things in common, but none more so than the fact that they are all about getting media/content into the hands of the public that want to access it. The other thing they have in common is that both old and new media need to make money to cover production and distribution costs. You can make a podcast pretty cheaply, but you still need a computer, a microphone and a server (or part of one) to store either the file or the blog/RSS feed on. OK...so a radio station needs a lot more money for its studio/equipment, a license for some spectrum, a freakin' huge antenna and various other costs for overheads like staff to do the same thing, but either way it costs money.

The "cross-over effect" works both ways by making it easier and cheaper for the old world media guys to get to the new world audience and for the new world media guys to get the cash and exposure they need to continue doing what they are doing and to possibly reach a different, yet still important audience.

I believe that the "cross-over effect" (you should be getting the feeling that I like that term by now) will become larger and larger because of things like blogs, podcasts and vlogs that make enough money from things like Google Ads to ensure that the content creator can do it for a living and not just out of love (or ego). Add to this things like digital print, digital radio, digital TV, mobile TV, IPTV and the other emerging digital distribution channels, and its going to be so much easier for the best-of -the-best of the new world to get out in front of an old world media audience that isn't quite ready yet for the major and disruptive technological changes that are happening around them.

So what has this to do with my future...well...you will just have to wait a bit longer for the answer to that one but lets just say that the "cross-over effect" will play a part in what we are doing.

Oh yeah...since everyone else seems to making graphs to represent some sort of effect lately I hope my little picture of "The Cross-Over Effect" makes sense ;)

Rupert Murdoch article in Wired

Here's a quote from the article by Rupert about the new media world..."To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control."...for a man that comes from the establishment he certainly is making sure that News Corp are making some pretty smart moves to ensure that they are not totally destroyed by the new wave.

I especially like this quote from Peter Chernin, News Corp.’s president and Murdoch’s second in command to Ross Levinsohn, who recommened the buying of both MySpace / Intermix Media (for $580 million US) and IGN.com (for $650 million US)..."It’s a couple of percent of our market cap," he told Levinsohn. "Either we’re serious about this or we’re not."

Hmmm...with an attitude like that which is backed up by having the money to throw around as well, I think News Corp may be one of the old world media companies to keep a really close eye on.

The article gives you a good view into how he (and News Corp) are thinking about this space and it certainly makes you take a good look at all those "new media" people that constanly go around ranting about the "death of old media companies"...i don't believe that old media companies will die...they will just change and adapt as they (the smart ones) always have.

The notion that a new media kills old media is total hogwash...cinema and radio didn't kill print...tv didn't kill cinema...VHS, DVD's,cable and satellite didn't kill the cinema or TV...the internet didn't kill tv or radio...mobile phones and PDA's haven't killed the desktop PC...the list goes on...new media types (and what we are really talking about here in general are delivery mediums) only take a slice of the available time that people can devote to media consumption...over time they do change the balance...but it takes major changes like vinyl records vs CD's (analogue vs digital) to kill-off an old media delivery platform.

In my view the only thing that will really kill of all of the old media delivery methods is when we finally get a plug into the back of the brain...which I have no doubt will happen in my lifetime....until then, as new media producers, advertisers and marketers we really need to try and get along with the old media (even if we don't believe in their model) for a variety of reasons and help them to understand that they need to adapt or they risk loosing more of their market share and not run around screaming that we are going to kick them as they slowly but surely become less and less relevant.

Without choice and competition from the old media world the new media world will fail to go beyond the long tail audience, which is fine for the individual bloggers, podcasters and vloggers, but the content will still only reach a small percentage of the worlds media consumers (and i use consumers in the nice sense of the word not in the marketing speak way that conjures up images of cows eating grass or battery hens eating pellets of whatever it is they feed battery hens). In the words of dotcom 1.0 era...content IS king and it will always be king...good and varied content brings viewers/listeners/readers and large numbers of viewers/listeners/readers bring advertisers and we all know what they bring...dollars. Guess what dollars means??? More content...better content...better technology being developed to access that content...all of the things that we all want.

Anyway...those are my thoughts on the matter...

Note: I'm adding bits to this entry as i'm coming up with varied thoughts on the whole thing and struggling with how to say them correctly...sorry...

Podcasting in the Museum of Sydney

This Friday (the 12th of August), I am presenting a session at the D>Art.05 Forum at the Museum of Sydney, on the models surrounding podcasting from the "consumer", "corporate" and "art" perspective.

Some of the other speakers on the day sound fascinating and i hear that the event may even be podcast...so there is no need to fly in from overseas or anything like that to hear me give my talk ;)

The D&rt;Art.05 Forum is part of Australia's premiere annual digital art event, D>Art.05, that is put on each year by dLux media|arts. As part of the event, the "free" D>Art.05 Exhibition (sound, web, and art for mobile devices), has its official opening tonight at the Sydney Opera House Exhibition Hall and then opens up to the public between August 10 and September 4.

Ten years in Sydney...a lifetime of passion.

Very shortly, during August 2005, I will be having my ten year anniversary of moving to Sydney. Not that i planned on moving to Sydney...as is uaually the case with these things, its just the way things turned out.

I actually came up here (from Melbourne) to go to MecklerMedia's "Internet World Australia 1995" conference and exhibition...the conference finished a few days later...and i just sort of hung around...for ten years.

When i came up for the conference i had been running my own programming/design/project-management/internet/multimedia/VR type of company (Splatt Technologies) for about five years...those were the days when multi-tasking really meant something ;)

I went on to work for a number of companies, some small and privately owned (where I programmed in HTML and they had trouble paying salaries month-to-month) and some huge and listed on the stock exchange (where i employed and managed teams of 30+ people and made millions of dollars for the parent company).

Now...nearly ten years after i came to Sydney, I find myself self-employeed again doing technology consulting and evangelism (Principius)/media-casting (The Podcast Network)/programming and design (The Podcast Network and GeekDinner.com) and a few other things I can't talk about...yet. I need to keep somethings to myself :)

During the ten years i have been in Sydney, the 15 years i have been involved in the technology industry and all through my working and school life for that matter, i have followed one mantra. And that is, that no matter what you do for a living, you must be passionate about it...you must love it...you must be willing to put your total time, energy and commitment behind what you are doing no matter what, because if you don't...well...it sort of defeats the purpose of being here.

The reason i am posting this post now, and not in August, is that my podcasting buddy Cameron Reilly (and a bunch of other people), recently pointed out Steve Job's recent commencement address that he gave at Stanford University. I may be happily sitting on the Microsoft side of the fence these days, but when Steve Jobs makes comments like the ones he did at Stanford...i have one word that somes it up..."respect"...well..ok.."respect" for Steve and a "warm and fuzzy" feeling all over.

Heres my favourite quote:
"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

In honour of the occasion...i give you...two photos...."Then and now"

Me in 1995

Me in 2005

The journey continues :)

Another day...another interview...

We spoke for about an hour over the phone...and it all boiled down to the article having three lines from our chat. I must start recording the chats i have with journalists...i'm sure i always remember saying really interesting things...but they never appear in print :)

By the way, over the last 4 months i have done an awful amount of press interviews, and one interesting thing is starting to stand out...a lot of the journalists who have interviewed me are really showing a deep understanding of the whole technology space...and that can only be a good thing. Maybe we can still hope that a second dot-com crash won't be brought on by media hype.

Is Google faltering???

I wouldn't say that based on the grumblings of a few advertising and marketing poeple you should sell your Google shares yet...but something needs to happen over at the Google HQ...they are getting as secretive as Apple...and how long will it be before the blogosphere starts to look closer at the new giant for cracks in the wall that just don't look right???

Personally...i get paranoid over anyone with access to that much user data...and they have access to a lot of peoples data, and not just your search patterns...lets consider the google bar, orkut, gmail and now the web accelerator. One can only hope that they live up to their founders words and "do no evil".

The Bulletin Podcasting article

Not only can you get to read a two page spread about podcasting in Australia's premier businesss magazine, but you also get to feast your eyes on a photo of me out on the street at my local shopping area, with my laptop...a set of studio headphones and a serious studio microphone. They figured that would look better than a photo of me at home with my $50 Altes Lansing headset with built in boom mic...I should try and organise the next photo shoot in a proper recording studio just for the hell of it :)

Soooo..if your interested...here is the article on the ninemsn Buletin site (minus the photo)...and here is a PDF (2MB) of the article as well.

In the press....again....

I got interviewed today (along with Cameron) about G'day World, podcasting and thepodcastnetwork.com by a journalist from an Australian magazine called The Bulletin...i also have an up and coming interview with the Sydney Morning Herald on podcasting soon.

Some time soon Cam and I are getting interviewed by a few US media outlets as well...its certainly in an interesting time at the moment :)

My other blog...the work related one...

It will cover technologies, services, articles, companies, blogosphere postings and my own thoughts on "technology and how it is changing our conversation's and enabling us to work/live better"...

If your into that sort of thing, make sure you check it out... ;)

Welcome to 2k5

You know when everything you are involved in is heading in the right direction and you get that feeling that it is going to be amazing when they all converge??? The last few months have felt like that and i just know that it is all going to culminate in one kick ass year...

2004 saw this blog really kick-off (Dec 2004 got over 6,000 unique visitors!)...it saw me travel to the US and attend the 2004 O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference where i met some amazing people and had so many brilliant conversations that it recharged my belief in the whole "geek" thing (hopefully i wil be attending it again this year)...it saw me visit the Microsoft Redmond campus (where i again met some amazing people and had just as many amazing conversations) for what is hopefully the first time of many to come in the future...it saw the start of the G'day World podcast which has been an absolute blast (thnx Cam)...it saw me develop the germ of an idea that has become the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference...we saw the 10th anniversary of the first online banner ad...and importantly, along with the amazing growth in the conversation about corporate blogs and other "digital" forms of communications, we have seen a rebirth of the Cluetrain concept...

The last point has led to what has been one of the biggest (if not the biggest) decisions of my life. I left my comfortable job of four and half years heading up Singleton OgilvyInteractive and decided to break out on my own...this along with all the other points i have mentioned above will make 2004 a hard year to beat...but i know it is just the begining and 2k5 will be the year that really solidifies not only my future direction but a lot of other peoples as well.

2k5 will be the year that the "digital channel", in all it guises, will be really accepted by the mainstream population and we will see it play a huge part in so many major events that it will have an impact on the world that nobody really expected. And i know that myself, along with a good number of my "new" friends will not only be taking part in, but also leading this revolution

Viva 2k5 and viva the digital revolution...

The media start to pick up on the blogging conference

Heres a link to the article over at ZDNET...and they got most of it right....the sociopolitical and educational bloggers are more than welcome...but the focus wll be on how to use this "blog stuff" for a corporate type channel. I wouldn't want to suggest that the market is big enough in Australia to warrant mutiple blogging conferences aimed at niche markets...maybe next year though :)

And this line is not exactly true..."Stanic recently resigned from his job to organise the conference"...though i will be spending a large chunk of the next two months worrying myself to death over it while trying to find work for my new venture. And it does feel strange reading "..Mick Stanic, a former executive producer with the Singleton Ogilvy advertising agency.." when i don't actually finish up till this Thursday afternoon...I'm sure it will feel strange then too. Anyway...bring in the media coverage...the more the better...

Oh yeah..in reference to the last line of the story...that was going to be a piece of news for after the blogging conference, but i figured this was a good a way as anyway to tell people my future thoughts and to build up some early interest. So...if you are interested in helping fix what i feel is a problem that needs to be addressed, feel free to email me at splatt[at]splatt.com.au and lets have a chat.

Me...for hire...

It has taken me a long time to make this decision and I'm not going to focus on why I am leaving one of Australia's largest advertising companies, where I head up what is one of the oldest interactive / digital departments in existence in Australia, but I do want to say a few things about the last four and a half years of my life.

As a senior staff member, I was responsible for employing most of the staff in my department since I started at the company, and one thing that is hard to remember when you get caught up in the day-to-day running of a company, is that people are an important part of any business. And a really important thing about hiring people as I have said before is, when you employ people you need to make sure that they have passion and really believe in the space that they are working in. If they don't have a passion for what they do, it will be at the detriment of both of you. And if they do have passion, not only will your business go far and become a leader in its field, but the employee will have the chance to go far as well. This is true with companies as well, they need the passion as much as the individual. If that’s the case, hopefully you can go far together, and if it looks like you can't go further, as an employee you need to make the jump elsewhere and as an employer you need to let that staff member make that jump or make a decision to change how you work as an organisation. It is the only way to ensure that both the individual and the organisation can continue to grow.

During my time at Singletons I have also had the chance to bring some amazing technologies into the spotlight and to (try and) introduce them not only to my team, the wider agency and our associated clients, but to the Australian market in general. Some have been accepted already and others won't be accepted for a few more years...and one or two things I have worked on have even made the overseas offices of OgilvyInteractive stand up and take notice. As a technology person who happened to fall into a position of working at a large advertising / marketing / communications company I have learned a lot...and one of the most important things I have learnt is that no matter how many people get that glazed look on their faces when you start getting all passionate and excited about a piece of technology and its "obvious" use, you need to push through that. People do not want to change how they do things...large companies do not want to change how they do things...not without a big fight and a lot of heartache on all sides. But you have to persist. You need to find the best way to explain things to them in a way that they understand...talk their language. It will be hard at first, but when you master the art of explaining how a piece of technology can benefit someone in their own language, a lot of the hard work is done.

And that’s a big part of what I plan to do starting early next year. Other than continuing to maintain this blog, organising the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference, being a co-host of the G'day World podcast, and a few other little projects I have on the side, I will be offering my passion and my ability to explain things in a simple way to companies not only in Australia but anywhere in the world (the internet is an amazing thing). Exactly what sort of things I hear you ask...well...I'm glad you asked...

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"Technology Evangelism"
This will be a big part of what I will be offering. Pretty well anything I do, you can trust that I will evangelising the future hardware and software that will have a major impact on our world not only from a corporate perspective but from a personal perspective as well. If you want to know about it and I'm passionate about it or its something new you have developed and you think I can get passionate about it give me a call.

Evangelism is all about talking to people...its not only about being able to talk to people who understand technology (being a geek who can talk to geeks)....its also about being able to explain the benefits of something technical to a non-tech business or individual (talking geeky to a non-geek in a language they understand).

"Solution Architecture"
Every product and/or service needs to be structured and architected in a number of ways. Usability, design, programming, database, communications...these are all an important part of your solutions architecture and what I can bring to the table is either a broad or a detailed view of these things. How do I do this??? Its up to you, I can work in isolation for a different perspective from your internal team or I can work completely integrated with your team and help them understand what needs to be done.

"Digital Communication"
How do you communicate your product or service to a world that is primarily starting to access information digitally...how do you talk to tech people vs. non-tech people...how do you segment your message...how do you show businesses that your product can not only make or save their organisation time and money but also make their employees life easier??? These are pretty big questions for any company these days and a lot can of things can have an impact on how you structure and communicate your message. Not only have their been changes in peoples perspectives but breakthroughs in technology have and are continuing to change the way we need to talk to people.

The software, operating systems, the web and the internet, mobile and personal devices (cell phones, PDA's, watches, portable music players and even in-car computers), gaming consoles, blogs (text, photo, audio, video), podcasting, RSS, XML, interactive TV, RFID loyalty cards, the home, work, retail and outdoor environments and a whole range of other digital channels and devices all play a part in what is the new communications mix. A lot of the shifts in the thinking has been influenced by a great book called "The ClueTrain Manifesto"...go and read it now....or hire me, as anyone that does will automatically get a copy from me as part of the deal ; )

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So "Technology Evangelism", "Solution Architecture" and "Digital Communication" are the core of what I will be offering. I haven't decided on a company name yet, so I don't have a web site up and running yet but I have been thinking about using my original company name from 13-14 years ago which was "Splatt Technologies". What do you think?? Is that the name of a company you would use to offer you consultancy services??? Maybe I could look at a few other names that have the word "Splatt" in them (I do own a few domains with the word "splatt" in them)...I have a couple of other options I am also looking at, but it is really hard to pick a company name these days when you have to check to see if the domain name is available as well....an awful lot of domain names have been registered in the last 10 years.

So while I am looking at names that have everything available (business and domain name) you can reach me at splatt[at]splatt.com.au if you have any questions or would like to talk to me about possible requirements you need met that I might be able to fill. Remember...no job is to small or to big. If the project just needs me, no worries. If it requires a number of people, 14 years in the technology business has given me access to a lot of talented people (not only in Australia but around the world) with a lot of different skills that I can pull together on a project basis.

Remeber that you can contact me at splatt[at]splatt.com.au if you would like to talk to me about anything, and when i get another site up and running for the business i will post the information here of course.

To wrap this post up, I would like to thank a lot of people that have helped me reach this decision and shown me that with a little bit of faith great things can be achieved. I have to thank all the people that read my blog or have shown an interest in the 2005 Australian Blogging Conference or listen to the G'day World Podcast...knowing that i what i am passionate about also interests other people is a great feeling and that has been a great incentive to break out on my own.

Thnx to (in no particlaur order): Simon, Rob, Marco, Simone, Andrew, Cameron, Bryan, Jeremy, Frank, Mark, Sally, Sue and everybody else for their words of wisdom and best wishes.

:)
Mick

UPDATE: My new website for my business, principius is now open..