www.nickhodge.com

Blue Day means a clear day. I could see the sky. After leav­ing a dark and rainy Sydney, 4degC Mel­bourne was a rude surprise.

Up at 4:00am. A cat wandered out, stretched and looked at me quiz­zically seem­ingly ask­ing : “WTF?”

After check­ing the online world, my new res­id­ence, drive off to the air­port. Megan’s bat­tery is stuffed. Oh well, time to jump in the other MINI (Scar­lett) and off.

Vir­gin Blue to Mel­bourne left only 10 minutes late due to Mel­bourne being fogged in. The in-flight magazine “Voyeur” has a one-page art­icle on Social Net­work­ing. LOL. It’s main­stream now.

There are two reas­ons for being in Mel­bourne: PR Sum­mit run by Fro­comm. I am a pan­el­ist along with Mar­ilyn Chalkley, Man­ager, CSIRO Media Liaison and Andrew Par­sons, Dir­ector, Pro­duc­tion and Digital Com­mu­nic­a­tions, Depart­ment of Immig­ra­tion and Cit­izen­ship. My title merely said “Pro­fes­sional Geek”

(for those watch­ing my Twit­ter: here is the real Air gui­tar You­tube: Dr Richard Helmer’s Every wanna be rocker’s dream come true)

The ses­sion prior to the panel was by Abi­gail Thomas from the ABC. Abi­gail talked about ABC’s Second­Life island.

So, the panel was inter­est­ing. There is a big gap of exper­i­ence and under­stand­ing of the “online nat­ive” world. Just pod­cast­ing a Press Release will not cut it for Pod­casters and Blog­gers. Cre­at­ing a Second­Life island will cost, and attract 3 dogs and maybe a man (as much as I tech­nic­ally love Second­Life, we have yet to see the future)

My opin­ion on this in a forth­com­ing post.

Inter­est­ingly, the recent exper­i­ence of Cameron Reilly, Twit­ter­arti (includ­ing myself, I admit) and Tel­stra was men­tioned in almost passing. Dr Hugh Brad­low from Telstra’s response is an excel­lent step into the conversation.

Had a break-chat with Gab­ri­ella Stern, Senior Editor from Dow Jones News­wires Singa­pore. Chat was about Journ­al­ism in this new online world we find ourselves. Enron, Stock Option Repri­cing and all sorts of dis­cus­sion around blog­ging and journ­al­ists. After watch­ing the PBS doc­u­ment­ary, News­war, it was enlight­en­ing. One part of our dis­cus­sion related to the “main­stream media” and blog­gers work­ing together.

On the sub­ject of the fam­ous (The Bul­letin fam­ous) Cameron.

So, I have a few hours to kill. Twitter-friend Andrew Barnett was in the Mel­bourne CBD. After con­sult­ing a map of Mel­bourne streets, I nav­ig­ated my way to Star­bucks on the corner of Bourke and Queen street. Twitter’d to all that I was there, ready for anything.

Any­thing happened. Cameron Reilly popped in for a few moments. Later, Froosh and Andrew Barnett popped in for a chat on life, uni­verse, wed­dings, parties and anything.

Upon return­ing to the impromptu Twit­ter meetup, Cameron derided me for my choice of corporate-coffee and insisted we move to Nick’s on Little Bourke Street. Let me say, it’s my new Mel­bourne food joint of choice. We are joined by new Twitter-friend, Garth.

So, off we trot to Nick’s.

Cameron inter­views us all on Twit­ter: ques­tions related to how it has changed our blog­ging; gen­eral Twit­ter stor­ies and if cor­por­a­tions should “adopt” Twitter.

My opin­ion on this in a forth­com­ing post. Same post as above as the topic inter-connects.

Taxi, Jet­star, Sydney, Home. Cat looks at me com­pletely refreshed. I write this blog with the cat asleep. Oh for the cat’s life.

Mel­bourne was beau­ti­fally blue today. Cat missed that.