Famous New Zealand blogger, writer and radio personality Russell Brown was in town recently to attend CommunicAsia. We met up over some cold Hong Kong Perfect Match Tea/Coffee and chatted a few days ago, and had a good time catching up. He is now a fan of this Hong Kong tea house drink, I think.
Russell will also be moderating at the international conference, Bananas NZ Going Global, organised by the New Zealand Chinese Association (Auckland Branch), to be held at The University of Auckland School of Business from 18th to 19th August 2007.
By the way, I was invited by the kind folk from Bananas NZ to speak at this conference, on New Media, with other distinguished panelists. If you happen to be in Auckland at around that part of August, do go to the conference. It's nice to know they listen to the mrbrown show over in New Zealand.
Speaking of New Media, in his CommunicAsia article, Russell also rants about telcos, about Singapore, and about a User-Generated Content forum made up of mostly folk from Mediacorp, world leader in User-Generated Content.
You can read his rant over at Public Address, where he writes.
Excerpt:
Frankly a week at CommunicAsia has me not loving telcos. Hour after hour it was carriers blathering at each other, or being blathered at by consultants, about how content is king, and must be "compelling" and "exclusive" if consumers are to be wooed to new mobile and "quadruple play" IP services - without a single content person in the house. Not one.Apart from Spiteri, the BBC's excellent Dr Chrichton Limbert (I've written him up for a Listener column), a useful briefing on social media by Joe Colgan of Spectrum Strategies, a talk from the CEO of Korea's mobile TV provider TU Media and purely technical presentations like that on spectrum management by Kordia's Ian Goodwin, the fare at the four separate, confusingly overlapping conferences here has been generally disappointing. As a frustrated audience member pointed out from the floor at the IPTV Forum, "this is all about you guys trying to defend entrenched positions."
I actively boycotted Friday's User-Generated Content forum, because it was so stupid. Check out the programme: a day on user content dominated by executives from Mediacorp, the monolithic company that owns, among other things, every single radio station in Singapore. The day was sponsored by Singapore's Media Development Authority, which is part of the same official system that makes Singapore's media the lamest in the region and bans satellite dishes. It would be a joke, if it were funny.
Conspicuously not invited: the Singapore's blogfather and creator of one of the best podcasts anywhere: Mr Brown. Look out for him in New Zealand in August, at the Bananas NZ Going Global conference and possibly elsewhere, and for coverage in Public Address Radio and The Listener. Top guy.
