Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Wellington, you win | Feb 15, 2008 12:04

Okay Wellington, you win. You're lovely. The Phoenix Foundation's free show last night in Frank Kitts Park was a happening and a half, and debriefing over a whisky at the Hawthorn Lounge wasn't too foul either. I admit: you wouldn't get that in Auckland.

I only wish we'd arrived earlier, but we were busy speaking geek at the drinks after Webstock Day One. I'm immensely impressed with the style of the conference. The people behind it have correctly deduced that you don't get a bunch of tech conference stars to fly across the Pacific by being ordinary. It's not just the organisation, it's the richness of the branding around it.

Example: everyone who goes to tech conferences already has a wardrobe full of nasty black satchels. The Webstock conference bag is not a nasty black satchel, it's a colourful work of art that you wouldn't mind being seen with in public.

The branding extended even to the speakers' dinner, at Martin Bosley's Yacht Club Restaurant, where we arrived on Wednesday night to find personalised pounamo carvings for the first-time guests and lovely little framed works for the returning speakers. The table was set with Webstock-branded menus. The food was fabulous.

"These people," said one of the visitors, "put more effort into the speakers' dinner than O'Reilly puts into an entire conference."

Perhaps a little harsh, but it underlined the strength of being on the edge, doing it different and caring a lot because you only do this once every two years.

Big ups to People's Coffee too. As one of the visitors put it this morning: "Every conference has free coffee. I've never been to a conference that has free good coffee."

Clearly, they're winning some friends here.

I got my talk out the way this morning, and settled in to hear presentations by Simon Willison on OpenID the the end-goal of decentralised social networking (no Faceook required!) and Tom Coates of Yahoo on "the web of data" and other stuff. It'll be easier for you to watch the video when it's posted or visit their blogs than to have me try and explain it, but I found both of them intellectually impressive and rather motivating.

Not so great: the Museum Hotel dropping the ball on internet, really badly. Honestly, people are paying for that service.

Anyway, that'll do for now. Webstock is very Wellington and I'm most happy to be here.

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Make you crazy like datura | Feb 13, 2008 11:13

Simon Grigg has two thoughtful blog posts ruminating on his recent visit home to Auckland. One on the state of some people: "It's terrifying. At every turn you find people, often old friends, at each other, and others staggering from drama to drama, or worse, completely fried. And, overwhelmingly fucked up or recovering from being fucked up from excessive drug use (both legal and illegal…it's not just the scourge of meth, the booze imbibed daily is both shocking and appalling and we both found ourselves slipping into it again)."

And another on the state of politics: "Everybody, seemingly, wants to change all that. You rarely hear a good word about either Helen Clark or the Labour government, and the word seems to be its time to go. And no-one really, if you ask, seems to know why."

Speaking of which, I thought Helen Clark's speech in Parliament yesterday was substantial and impressive; certainly better than her flabby contribution to the yoof debate last month. John Key, meanwhile, was surprisingly poor in the House. So I was interested to see what the Herald's editorial voice would make of it all this morning. I shouldn't have held my breath. Here's the editorial.

It makes the reasonable point that missing from yesterday's housing announcements is a pledge to remove the tax advantages n rental property investment. This is a widely-observed issue that no political party is presently promising to fix. The editorial rages that such absence "makes it plain that the Government does not possess the courage to tackle the tax distortions which, more than anything, have created the affordability problem. Instead, it has gone for easier options."

The editorial also berates the government for, um, looking to streamline the consent process in construction, although it seems to have missed the fact that the chief instrument here will probably be a standardardised pre-approved design for low-cost housing, as proposed by Shane Jones:

Worse still is the plan to tackle issues in the consent process that add unreasonably to the cost of building. That, again, will enhance demand. The demerit points do not stop there. It is reasonable to ask if the Government should be exposing itself to the housing market during a cyclical downturn. Its participation may have a sickly tinge for the next few years.

ZOMG! The market's going up! And it's going down! But the demand is already there. Won't making it easier and cheaper to build houses increase the supply? Whatever …

A more reasoned account of what the government proposed yesterday can be found in the Herald's own reporting: creating new urban development authorities, which will probably include private developers (modelled on the new Tamaki Establishment Board) and freeing up or intensifying development on existing public land (which seems to make more sense than paving over farmland halfway to Hamilton, as the editorial proposes). Read that and draw your own conclusions. Reading the editorial will make you crazy like datura.

Meanwhile, The Fundy Post finds Fran O'Sullivan so eager to find the malign in Helen Clark that she is now simply making things up. I really don't think this is doing the paper any good.

Anyway, I'm in Welly for Webstock and I'm writing this in a café. (The Museum Hotel's apartment extension is very nice, but the arrival of a mass of geeks has completely overwhelmed its wi-fi capacity) so I'd best be off about my business.

To close, just a couple of bouquets for this week's Listener (that's the one with the cover that looks like last week's, and the week before): the feature exploring the issues raised by the Tea Roptai case is excellent, the more so given that, as I understand it, David Fisher knocked out it in his first two days at his new job. Ditto for Ralston's column on the same topic. Ralston writes so well on such difficult topics, yet his forays into politics and economics in the HoS are so often so much tosh. I think he needs to go more often where his inner SNAG leads him.

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Strange Southern Superman | Feb 12, 2008 06:24

Predictably, Tim Shadbolt was on full noise as he claimed credit yesterday for the Southern Institute of Technology's receipt of $6.5 million from the Quality Reinvestment Fund:

He said SIT had only received $1m in the past two years from the Quality Reinvestment Fund and the huge leap in the amount awarded this year was clearly spurred by his take-no-prisoners campaign.

"To suddenly get $6.5 million is a huge victory," he told NZPA.

A quick look at the paperwork suggests this is beginning-to-end bullshit.

The Quality Reinvestment Fund was established in 2005 to help tertiary institutions improve their services and adjust to the new tertiary education strategy.

Yes, SIT only received $1m from the fund in the past two years. But so did everyone else The first two stages of the fund were early adjustment funding, intended to help institutions prepare a case for funding. The first year's maximum grant was $250,000, the second's was $750,000. Most of the country's polytechs signed up for both. SIT got $1 million over two years not because it has been cruelly neglected by a now-contrite government, but because that was the maximum available.

And if Shadbolt had been the true Southern Superman, surely SIT would have received the full $9 million it requested from the TEC, which administers the fund?

The only potential intrigue around the grant is the timing of the announcement. I suppose it's possible that was influenced by the publicity. But SIT has been negotiating with the TEC for this money for about a year, and has become more agitated since its 18.5% decrease in teaching, learning and research funding since CPIT won its argument about what it regarded as SIT's predatory offering of fee-free courses in Christchurch. It would have expected a result some time soon.

So let us be clear: this isn't the funding he'd been campaigning for, and claims of "victory" are, to put it mildly, overstated.

With Shadbolt's tirade against senior council staff, his subsequent "healing the wounds" party (originally to be funded by ratepayers, until Shadbolt's corporate sponsors hastily picked up the tab), and his curious attempt at polling the public, you really have to wonder where the man's head is at.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's fatuous departure speech is admirably dealt to by Jon Stewart here.

Good news from Iraq: the release of letters from two commanders of al Qaeda in Iraq lamenting that things have turned to crap for them in a very large way. This shouldn't really be a surprise. These people were appalling brutes and the local Sunnis seem to have been happy to defect to the forces controlled by the Awakening Councils and get paid in US taxpayer dollars.

But anyone under the impression that things are sweet in Iraq might wish to consult recent posts on Iraq Today. If anything, it appears that violence is surging again, and that repatriation of the two million external refugees from Iraq has slowed sharply.

Juan Cole runs down Friday's violence, including more US troop deaths, and McClatchy reports Thursday and Reuters does Wednesday. It's actually hard to take in.

But just to cheer you up, I noticed that Boing Boing discovered the notorious "guido" pictures last week. The club culture of New Jersey is dressy in a rather strange way:

And oh no, that's not an isolated case of spray-tan madness. It's a look:

There's much more at Barstool Sports and in the copious archives of Hot Chicks With Douchebags.

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Media 7 | Feb 10, 2008 17:19

I have a TV show. It's called Media 7 and it will launch on TVNZ 7, the new digital channel, in April. Finally, I am allowed to tell you this. I have the official groovy-things-to-say-about-TVNZ-7 cheat-sheet and everything.

The show has its roots nearly a year back, when TVNZ CEO Rick Ellis appeared on the panel at one of our Great Blend events in Auckland (he got a bit of a grilling). Afterwards, I was having a drink with Rick and Brian Holland of Top Shelf Productions. Russell should have a TV show, Brian told Rick. I can't recall what Rick said, but I'm sure it was polite.

You don't get a TV show by buttonholing the CEO. You put together a prop and present it to the surprisingly large group of people who make programming and commissioning decisions, and you wait. With Top Shelf's assistance, I did just that.

The original prop was very much a televised Great Blend, over an hour. We even had a band playing at the end. But it's all about what people need, and the idea involved into a 26-minute media programme.

I'm very happy with what we got: a panel show, recorded "as live" in front of an audience, hosted by myself and punctuated with short, sharp videotape elements and injections of information. There will be a regular archive slot and, in the post-Daily Show era, elements of humour. I have some clear creative ideas.

We've hired Jill Graham to produce it and Simon Pound (formerly of Agenda and presently of bFM's Sunday Breakfast show) as reporter and researcher, and have a list of some clever people to help with writing, and a broad roll of likely panellists. I go on the payroll a week from today. I'm very excited, and only a bit daunted by the rather short time until launch.

Yes, it's on Freeview, and reality dictates that the broadcast audience will initially be limited. But TVNZ ondemand was an important part of the prop from the very first draft. You'll get to see it one way or another.

Ironically, I'm at liberty to tell you all this because some of it has been broached in a column in the Herald's business supplement on Friday morning. The first I knew of it was in an email from a reader that said: "John Drinnan seems to imply you have the programme because you support the Labour Govt and the EFA."

John and I have had a frank, but personal, exchange about the story. He insists there was no such implication, and I take him at his word. But the Electoral Finance Act still seems an odd and arbitrary thing to associate with the show, which is part of my professional life: not "founding host of Mediawatch", or "made panel discussions sort of hip" or "wrote 'digital future' papers for public media agencies", "won the first Qantas award for blogging", or even "blagged the beer for Kiwi Foo Camp", but …the EFA?

And it's not even true to describe Hard News as a "a strong supporter of the Government approach to the Electoral Finance Act". My opinions can hardly be a mystery here, but I haven't even written about it very much, largely because the issue is so viciously partisan. I do support the aim of transparency, and I have characterised some of the opposition to the law as hysterical. But I have also described the government's approach as a "shambles" and a "debacle". Whatever. Welcome to TV politics, I guess.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to getting air. As was the case when Tom Frewen and I launched Mediawatch on National Radio, Media 7 might take a short while to find its voice, but I'm flattered and motivated by the good, long season we've been allotted. We're going to be there a lot this year. I trust you'll like what we do.

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John Aravosis has a post responding to complaints about advertising on AmericaBlog, including those from Republican groups. It's worth reading. Advertising and editorial are separate, he says, and he can't be drawn into vetting every ad for editorial compliance. He doesn't even know what ads are coming most of the time. On the other hand, he will veto ads he considers racist or sexist.

It's much the same here. A reader emailed me recently:

Russell, can you please take that offensive ad for Jack's Point off your blog. This development is one of the worst imaginable - destroying a pristine lake edge so a few absurdly wealthy individuals can play golf in their backyards.

Sorry, just can't. The ad, like many of the agency campaigns placed here, are a response to our reader profile: well-off and well-educated. The buyers don't exercise a "chardonnay socialist" category, although they probably should.

What does bother me sometimes is the quality of the creative, especially in the case of the cost-per-click ads that fill space when there's nothing sold. I'd do it differently, but that's not my gig. Although you shouldn't be seeing again the banner that read "One of Your Friends Thinks Your Hot Find Out Who!". A chap has to have some standards.

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Until Saturday, I'd been a fan of James Milne's various musical ventures without once having seen him play live. I was glad to remedy that with a visit to the King's Arms to see Milne, back for a summer break from London, play in a variety of guises.

The first act up -- and the only one in which Milne didn't play -- was the oddball pop of the Nudie Suits. They set the tone for an evening in which everyone who took the stage was, let's say, quite a character.

Lawrence Arabia is Milne's vehicle for darkly comic social observation, most notably in 'Talk About Good Times' and most recently in the "song about Grey Lynn -- and all the Grey Lynns of the world," 'The Beautiful Young Crew'. [Milne's current reading is listed on the Lawrence MySpace as Evelyn Waugh's Men at Arms (Sword of honour).]

Playing with a band that included EJ Barnes (yes, Jimmy's little girl), Milne kicked off by breaking a string ("it's been a vexing day") but just borrowed a guitar and played on. Breaks between songs were opportunities to spend two minutes shambling around and musing out loud about the progress of the gig. He seemed to enjoy the air of chaos this produced. At one point, he tossed a coin to determine which of his bands would take the stage next.

Which turned out to be the Reduction Agents, Milne's vehicle for dazzling wall-of-sound pop. They kicked off with the supremely upbeat '80s Celebration', which you may know from the Eagle vs. Shark soundtrack, and forged on into a set marked by infectious melodic inspiration and whole new heights of shambling. There were conversations with the sound engineer about foldback and spontaneous onstage hugs. Shit occasionally broke.

"You need a roadie!" chirped someone in the crowd.

"We need a lot of things," Milne shot back.

The set culminated with the anthemic 'Waiting for Your Love'. Several young women in the audience wrestled down a microphone and bawled the chorus into it. Two of them got on stage and danced. The bass-player -- a card-carrying freak who probably works for the Freak Foundation as a day job -- finally fell over. Andy and I laughed ourselves silly. Just when it seemed to have irrevocably fallen apart, Milne gathered the threads and led an a capella coda of the song's refrain, the crowd joining in. The man's a genius.

With work to do in the morning, I made the prudent decision to leave at 1am, which meant missing Milne's Paul McCartney tribute band, Disciples of Macca (no, I am not making this up). But I'm confident life was affirmed and a good time was had by all.

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