LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

AIMIA announces New York City trade mission

In February this year I took myself off to New York City to follow the inaugural AIMIA TradeStart digital media trade mission to that city. The visit was a great chance to see how Australian digital media companies fare in the US market, and led to this story in Digital Media magazine. AIMIA has just announced that it will be hosting a return mission in March 2009 - for more information, click here:

Update: Australia's best business bloggers

A little while back I posted a note saying that I'm writing a feature on business bloggers. I'm still keen to hear more suggestions of good Australian business blogs, so please send through any ideas you might have.

Update: Australia's best marketing bloggers

A little while back I posted my intention to write a story on Australia's marketing bloggers. I'm currently in Europe (attending the Broadband World Forum in Brussels), but I assume that that story has run in B&T now (it hasn't as yet gone up online). I just wanted to say thanks to the many people who contacted me with ideas of who should be included. I wasn't able to mention all of them, and I understand that B&T compiled its own list of Australian marketing bloggers to accompany the story, but I've listed below the various suggestions of LagrangePoint readers (and apologies if I've not spread the credit on the contributions appropriately).

Rohit Bhargava
Katie Chatfield
Julian Cole
David Gillespie
Andrew Grill
Gavin Heaton
Nic Hodges (and there is also the NetX blog here)
Stanley Johnson
Lexy Klain
Frank Lang
Zac Martin
Gerry McCusker
Nick Ratsey
Ashley Ringrose
William Scully-Power
Jye Smith
Paull Young
Trevor Young

Of course you can also find a more comprehensive lists here and here.

Story in development - Building the 3D web

A new project that I have been commissioned to write has me investigating various efforts to create a 3D version of the web. The idea was sparked by the recent launch of ExitReality, which is a set of tools and a search engine for turning 2D web environments into 3D, and for searching for and working with 3D content. Anyway, the story is seeking to cover a range of 3D web efforts through history, so if you have any interesting stories to tell, please drop me an email.

Story in development - Seeking the top 10 Aussie Web 2.0 entrepreneurs

My working life right now seems to consist be a long list of  ... well, lists. The latest is a quest to identify Australia's top 10 web 2.0 entrepreneurs. Once again, I'm keeping the definition of what makes web 2.0 fairly open, but will be focusing on sites that allow consumers to contribute in one for or another. Any suggestions welcomed via email ...

Story in development: Seeking the best corporate/business blogs in Australia

Hot on the heels of my recent project seeking the best marketing blogs in Australia (and I'll have an update on that shortly ...) I'm now working on a new feature on corporate blogging, and am seeking input into the question of which are the best corporate and business blogs in Australia. I'm keeping the definition broad - that means I can take both blogs operated by businesses, and blogs operated by individuals that talk about business - so if you have any suggestions, please let me know via email ...

Click guide for parents launches

Late last year I received a call from the NSW Department of Education and Training to help them edit an online brochure they were putting together to help parents better understand the digital tools that their school-age children are using. The guide launched in hard-copy form last week as Click - A Technlogy guide for parents. You can read more about it here, or download the magazine as a PDF by clicking here. Thanks to all the writers and staff who helped put it together. I'm hoping that the project may evolve in time, so please let me know if you have any ideas for additional articles.

New publication - Pathfinder Business

Just a quick note to let you know that I am in addition to everything else, I'm now working as the Asia Pacific stringer for the UK-based publication Pathfinder Business. The publication has a mission to help guide businesses that are moving into international markets, and while it is London-based, is designed to provide information to emerging exporters from any country.

Initially I'm preparing articles on the Fijian and Vietnamese markets, so if anyone has knowledge of companies that are working in these markets, or of people who specific expertise in doing business in these markets, please let me know. Indonesia, India and Laos are also on the horizon.

MIS Australia - Silver lining and Take control (plus and idea under development)

The latest edition of MIS Australia magazine contains two feature articles of mine. The first, Silver lining, is an exploratory look at the emerging field of cloud computing, where services are outsourced to providers located on the world wide web. It's early days for cloud computing, but its a topic that is discussed in depth in Nicholas Carr's recent book, The Big Switch, which I wrote about some time back in this article for Next.

The second, Take control, looks at the somewhat technical field of desktop virtualisation, where all of the applications that we take for granted on a desktop PC are actually held resident at the server, and delivered to us over the network. If all goes smoothly, we never know the difference, but from the IT manager's point of view, it means that control is once more centralised back in the data centre, saving time and cost related to desk-side service calls amongst other things.

The articles were not intended to run together, but both touch on a theme that I've been looking for some time - that IT has done a great job of automating every business process - except for itself. The rapid progression and rollover of technology has meant that the systems and processes used to manage IT have often failed to keep up with IT itself. Both cloud computing and desktop virtualisation are finding favour, as they either return control to the IT department, or hand away responsibility altogether. Either way, they make life for the IT manager easier.

I'm currently working on an idea that looks at process and services that help to automate the management of corporate IT environments. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know ...

Story in development - Who are the best marketing bloggers?

I'm currently working on a feature on blogging in the marketing industry, and while I've been able to put together my own list (some of them pasted below) of some of the most prominent marketing bloggers in Australia and New Zealand (and a few outside who have an Australian twist). I'm not close to convinced that I've found all of them. So here's a shout-out to anyone who wants to raise their own hand or point me in the directions of others they know in the blogosphere whose writings on marketing are provoking thought or otherwise raising interest ...

Adspace Pioneers

Andy Lark

BannerBlog

Brand DNA

Creative is not a department

ettf

Get shouty

Lexy Klain

Uneven distribution

Young PR

This is by no means comprehensive, but it's a start ...