LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

ADG and AIMIA present Up Close and Digital: Broadcasters & Digital Content - Nov 10

On November 10 I'll be hosting a presentation and discussion night at the Australian Technology Park for the Australian Directors Guild and AIMIA NSW, as part of the Up Close and Digital series. These events are designed to encourage collaboration between Australia’s best directing and producing talent, traditionally working in film and television and the  ‘new media’ creatives of the digital industry. The panel will commence at 6.30pm and run for 45 minutes, followed by a 45 minute Q&A session. If you are interested in coming along, you can register by clicking here. There will also be drinks afterwards provided by AC3.

ZDNet Bootstrappr: When keeping it real isn't enough - Augumented reality in Australia

Augmented reality technology has been with us for more than a decade, but has failed so far to catch on as a mainstream part of our interaction with the web. But technical advances are now seeing AR become more common both in marketing campaigns, and in connection with location-based services. You can check out some of the latest local activities of companies such as MOB, Insqribe and My247 in this story for ZDNet.

XMediaLab Sydney calls for projects

The forthcoming XMediaLab Sydney event being held at the Opera House later this month is now looking for 16 digital media projects to take part in its two-day creative ideas and business matching Lab. The theme for XML this year is 'Global Media Cultures', and it will explore how the world’s emerging markets (China, India, the Middle East, North and South Asia) and innovations in digital media are creating new opportunities, new partnership possibilities and new business models.

The mentor line-up includes mentors includes Deepak Chopra's son, Gotham Chopra, who is an advisor to Al Gore and co-founder of entertainment company Liquid Comics, as well as Animal Logic founder Zareh Nalbandian, Bollywood’s biggest content owner Neeraj Roy, and Susan Bonds, the world’s pioneer of Alternate Reality Games and President of 42 Entertainment.

To nominate your project or register to attend the ProDay conference visit http://www.xmedialab.com/

ZDNet Bootstrappr: Time for start-up investment is now

The cancelling of the Commercial Ready program was a blow to many Australian start-ups. Now Commercialisation Australia has been announced to fill part of the gap (although 18 months too late for some). But is Commercialisation Australia addressing the wrong part of the problem?

Without a robust VC community these companies will never be able to get the funding they need to grow to scale - unless they are able to move offshore quickly, such as ThreatMetrix, which recently raised US$6.1 million. It's a topic that I cover in my latest blog for ZDNet's Bootstrappr column, and you can read about it by clicking here.

SmartCompany Business Start-Up Awards - only one week to go

SmartCompany is currently looking for Australia's best start-ups under four years of age for its Crown Lager Business Start-Up Awards. There are four categories covering best start-up product, idea, green start-up and people's choise, as well as an overall winner. For more information click here. SmartCompany is also offering a profile and $5000 advertising package in its Start Something Special Award. Entries close next Friday - enter here.

Congrats to the inaugural AMBER Award winners

Last night saw me host what I hope will become an annual event - the AMBER Awards for e-services in Australia. It was a great night, with a strong turnout from the finance and travel sectors in particular. If you want to check out a complete list of winners, you can find them by clicking here. I've also pasted in the notes from my speech below. Hope to see you at the Awards next year ...

So what are the AMBER Awards? They are the Applications for the Broadband Economy Recognition Awards. Why do we have these awards? Because increasingly our lives are moving online. In just a decade online services have transformed our interaction with organisations such as banks, retailers and airlines.

It is now possible to go from booking a flight to getting on the plane without ever speaking to a human being – which with some airlines might be considered a very good thing indeed.

As e-services become more important in our lives it is worth recognising those parties who are showing leadership in service delivery and lighting the way for those who follow. For service providers, the AMBER Awards will become the benchmark in both scientific and technical achievement, and in customer service and satisfaction. It is truer than ever that competitors are only a click away – even in traditionally slow-churn sectors such as banking. A highly mobile customer base demands excellence not just in products and services but also in their delivery.

These expectations will only increase as the National Broadband Network moves from conjuncture to reality. And this marks another reason why the debut of the AMBER Awards is timely. With the NBN we have an opportunity to accelerate the transformation of the industries that are represented here, and then see that transformation applied across a wider range of industries in the years to come.

Of course this will mean more awards, but we can deal with that as the need arises.

Overarching this however there is also the possibility of fundamentally transforming the Australian economy. Our prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has already recognised this in a piece written for the Sydney Morning Herald, in which he noted that : “This digital revolution will arguably be the single greatest multiplier of productivity growth."

Furthermore, the development of online services can help to reposition Australia’s place in the world. Today services make up nearly 70 percent of the Australian economy, and employ 75 percent of us, but they contribute only a fraction of our export revenues behind minerals. For example, financial services represents around 7% of Australian GDP, they contribute only 1% of exports. At the same time, the market for financial services in the Asia-Pacific region is projected to grow from US$390 billion in 2004 to US$1.8 trillion by 2020. That’s a huge opportunity.
 
How does this tie back to the NBN? Because everywhere I turn now I’m hearing conversations about what the NBN might be used for? How can digital services evolve when you take away issues relating to connectivity and bandwidth? The NBN is providing a platform for not only how we can think about improving services for our own customers, but how we can take the expertise we have developed and export it into foreign markets. How can we unshackle our conventional thinking and innovate in ways that build both local GDP and export income.

It’s a huge challenge, but it is a necessary one if we are to wean ourselves off out dependency on primary resources and truly become the clever country.

BNET Australia: Emanuel Perdis, the man behind the makeup

The name Napolean Perdis is synonymous with the Australian cosmetics industry. Not so well known is his brother. But without Emanuel Perdis, Napolean couuld never have gotten to where he is today. Emanuel has been in charge of the engine room of the Perdis empire, and is helping the company move into its next stage of growth. You can hear what he had to say about growing a global business in a highly competitive market in this video interview for BNET Australia.

And the MC of the inaugural AMBER Awards for e-services next Wednesday is - me! #amberawards

So it seems that yours truly will be the MC for the inaugural AMBER Awards ceremony to be held at the MCA in Sydney next Wednesday evening (October 14). For those unfamiliar with them (which right now will be most of you) the AMBERs have been established to provide a new, independent yardstick by which to measure and recognise Australia’s best mainstream web and mobile services.They're an initiative of AIMIA (the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association), with founding partners include Online Banking Review, Brandmanagement and AccessTesting.

For further information, you can visit the AMBER Awards website by clicking here, and you can see the list of finalists here. For anyone interested in attending, the ticket price is $129 for AIMIA members and $199 for non-members, but if you email me directly I'll be able to organise a members' discount. Hope to see you all on the night!

ITnews.com.au: Adobe exec warns Apple on closed shop mentality #AdobeMAX

I've been in Los Angeles this week as a guest of Adobe at its annual MAX user conference. One of the biggest topics of discussion has been the relationship between Apple and Adobe and the former's refusal to allow the latter's popular flash rich media software to run on the iPhone. Adobe found a partial workaround through  enabling (soon) applications written in Flash to be encoded as native iPhone applications, but the solution is not an ideal one and carries significant overheads in terms of software code.

Adobe meanwhile has cut deals with Research in Motion and Google for Blackberry and Android respectively, leading Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch to question the long-term sense in Apple holding out. You can read what he has to say in this story for ITnews.com.au by clicking here, as well as hearing the thoughts of Rhys Hayes from Melbourne web development agency IE.

Blogging live from Adobe MAX keynote in LA: Day 2 Sneak Peeks #AdobeMAX

the final session for Day 2 of Adobe MAX 2009 was preceded by an awards ceremony conducted by Star Wars legend Mark Hamill. Hamill stayed on for the Sneak Peeks session that followed, and was joined by Adobe executive Ted Patrick who walked out dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Demonstrations included a thin client game developed in AIR running 3D graphics from a remote server, and Chewbacca (complete with a shaved mousing hand as pointed out by Hamill ...) demonstrating physics capabilities in the design process (rather than in development). The company also demonstrated its developer cloud, and a some potential new capabilities for Photoshop that will intelligently fill holes in images with one simple brushstroke - demonstrated by erasing buffalo from a photo or hairs from an old image, and then taking out an entire power station