Essays and observations on work, technology, suburban Australia, creativity and modern life.
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Why we still need a minimum wage
My first job was as a dish-pig in the long since closed Yarra’s Restaurant in South Yarra. I got $10 cash per hour and a knock-off drink. The hours were long, the work dirty, and the chefs were either belligerent or incompetent. Sometimes both. I rolled up hungover one morning and was told, “don’t bother”. While it was…
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The myth of being indispensable
When you first get a job, you turn up early, take instructions, work diligently, keep your head down and try and do your job as best you can. If you do a good job, one day you might make team leader, become a manager, and help other young people develop up through the system. The…
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Does the .melbourne domain name have a future?
Melbourne has always been both the hippest and most normcore Australian city. Obsessed with cafes, coffee, fashion, sport, the right schools, and real estate Melbourne is either incredibly hip or dull and boring depending on which end of the Hume Hwy you live. What Melbourne does have, is a vanity domain space – the new .melbourne domain name. I…
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What would Seth do?
Seth Godin is an Internet legend, the master of short, focussed and very entertaining paragraphs, an author of an incredible 17 books, and a revolutionary into the transformative force of technology. It’s probably not fashionable anymore, but Seth is an inspiration. A free thinker, a visionary, an amazing communicator. Seth is the man unafraid of…
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What wearables need is a unifying purpose
The hype about wearables is pretty relentless. At the latest CES, smart watches (I know wearable watches, what will they think of next) were everywhere with CNET calling it a “swarm of smartwatches”. I’ve been lukewarm on smartwatches and wearables because nothing I’ve seen justifies the buzz. There hasn’t been an iPhone/Tesla/iPad moment when I’ve thought, Wow, I…
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The world is becoming more unequal, so speak truth to power
When I first saw the HTML title of the tech blog Pando – Speaking truth to the new power – it grabbed me by the throat. Recently Oxfam have announced that by 2016 the combined wealth of the richest one percent will be greater than that of the other 99 percent unless serious action is taken. To…
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Learning how to ride a bike
I was nervous to start with. So was Gabe. The training wheels were off, it was dusk, and there was a warm breeze blowing in from the bay tousling his hair. He was desperate to become part of a club he had been obsessed with from his time wobbling around in nappies. He was desperate to start…
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The importance of poetry
Poetry is important. My wife is a poet and fights against those who think poetry is irrelevant and an outdated mode of expression. WordPress say that “code is poetry”. Poetry helps kids learn how to read better – Dr Seuss.
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If you use a donotreply address for your emails, you deserve to fail
There’s a convention that corporate transactional and promotional emails are sent from donotreply@bigcorporation.com or no-reply@bigfacelesscorporation.com. This is normally followed with a nice message that goes something like: Please do not reply to this email. Any emails to this address will not be responded to. How rude and passive aggressive. What they are actually saying is: Don’t even…
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It’s simple, all the best innovations are
I’ve been reading a lot about simplification recently. About removing stuff and improving products, disrupting markets, and smashing the lazy incumbents. It’s the kind of thing which when you see it, it smacks you in the face and you ask yourself why someone else or you hadn’t done this before. Some of the great innovations have…
