www.nickhodge.com

Fell off the plane, smelt the wet-wool and knew I was home. The smell of wet wool is some­thing that is slightly sweet; and reminds me of school in Adelaide. The blazers and jump­ers we wore were 100% wool; and the fresh rain made a unique smell of damp­ness. Obvi­ously, the car­pets in Sydney air­port are wool and there is a leak­age some­where in the terminal.

After get­ting home at around 10am, beau­ti­ful sleep on my own bed in the heavy rain inter­rup­ted my attend­ance at the Microsoft UPCon­fer­ence 2007 at the Power­house Museum.

Tues­day star­ted bet­ter: up early, and into the UpCon­fer­ence. Choice: head into work and start set­ting up my new and first Microsoft-owned laptop, or go into another day of talk­ing to a whole bunch of inter­est­ing community-minded people and listen­ing. UpCon­fer­ence won, espe­cially as Frank is rest­ing up, and Uncle Mike is in town. A big thankyou from Frank Arrigo and myself to Jill Taylor and Mike Sey­fang for stand­ing in for Frank for the Monday present­a­tion. Get bet­ter Frank; and inter­est­ingly, Jill’s per­spect­ive was per­fect for the audi­ence. Mes­sage here is that there is much work to do in UP group of people to get into this social net­work­ing thing: blogs, pod­casts, vid­casts, RSS and the whole thing. Uncle Mike, the genius Matt Wong and I will push this along through 2007. There were three high­lights today:

1. 
   Steve Lawrence, CEO of Work Ven­tures, present­ing on Lead­er­ship in the Not-for-Profit world. Excel­lent words on social enter­prise, and how these can heal the pains of deep social prob­lems. Steve com­men­ted on how Microsoft’s Unlim­ited Poten­tial pro­gram is an excel­lent example how global cor­por­a­tions can assist in this heal­ing pro­cess. Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Col­lab­or­a­tion are key.
2. 
   Mike Sey­fang dis­cuss­ing Sub­scrib­ing to feeds, Pod­cast­ing. Mike is Australia’s premiere social-networking expert for the learn­ing and not-for-profit indus­tries. A must-have speaker.
3. Senior Aus­tralian of the Year 2006, Dr. Sally Goold telling her story from liv­ing on the fringes of soci­ety to being one of the pion­eer­ing Abori­ginal Registered Nurses. Her story bookended and clearly demon­strated that all have Unlim­ited Poten­tial. No mat­ter back­grounds, per­sonal abil­ity or cul­tural resistance.

Stor­ies, using the soft­ware and net­works we have to net­work between con­fer­ences. Some work to be done here. It is a time in the world’s his­tory where the bar­ri­ers are fall­ing down; and we as tech­no­lo­gists have to help as many people as we can. Just as read­ing and writ­ing was taught in the Vic­torian Era in Eng­land: we must be a part of impart­ing digital know­ledge to lift Aus­tralia to it’s know­ledge poten­tial. We can no longer ride on the sheep’s back.