www.nickhodge.com

Grow­ing up on a farm, as I did, provides a free­dom that never leaves you. My par­ents lived on and immersed dir­ectly in their work: the farm. It sur­roun­ded them, day in day out. I am sure I absorbed this envir­on­ment in a way where I expect little to no sep­ar­a­tion between work and my per­sonal life. From this stems work­ahol­ism and ded­ic­a­tion. A deep prot­est­ant work ethic.

There are sig­ni­fic­ant down­sides to total work immer­sion. Espe­cially in this new world of always-on social media. You tweet a response to a work related ques­tion at 11.32pm, and fol­low up with a tirade against an air­line can­cel­ling your flight. The seam­less meld­ing of what is work and what is your life is one of the beau­ties of social media. We are all connected.

Yes­ter­day, one of the down­sides firmly bit me on the bum. One of my per­sonal opin­ions; a flip­pant tweet has caused an ongo­ing ker­fuffle at Microsoft. This is not the first time I have come unstuck on the social media fron­tier; and sadly I am not alone. Nor am I the last to be bit­ten. There are many bums with bite marks.

Until now, I have res­isted the urge to have sep­ar­ate twit­ter iden­tit­ies. To me, cre­at­ing and using dif­fer­ent iden­tit­ies is the anti­thesis of social media. To be frank, I wish that I could be one iden­tity on twit­ter.; but there are forces in the wider world does not accept the sep­ar­a­tion of per­sonal iden­tity and an employer’s iden­tity. As I found in recent events, there is always the risk that someone will take an utter­ance out of con­text, and use this as a cudgel in piti­ful internal office polit­ics. Or, as oth­ers have found, fod­der for gossip.

The cleav­ing of iden­tit­ies is a topic upon which I have struggled through­out my Microsoft career. Being true to myself, whilst attempt­ing to com­ply with the weight of an employer’s expectations.

As stated yes­ter­day, I have cre­ated a new twit­ter iden­tity @RealNickHodge which is a private, for people only account. Each fol­lower is vet­ted. I am being care­ful not to let in bots and sen­sa­tion­al­ist journ­al­ists. I am also wary of “brand name” twit­ter iden­tit­ies. I fol­low real people; people who are smart enough to real­ise my opin­ions are mine, and mine alone.

My old twit­ter account is now clearly iden­ti­fied @NickHodgeMSFT, with a pro­file stat­ing my pos­i­tion and employer. As at the time of post­ing this blog entry, it has 4803 fol­low­ers. I do not ima­gine the fol­lower count will increase dra­mat­ic­ally. Thank­fully, formal Microsoft accounts such as @MSAU are doing an out­stand­ing job of present­ing a formal social face of the organisation.

Within 24 hours of cre­at­ing the new account, I have about 200 real fol­low­ers, less noise and I trust more free­dom to be real. Or at least the free­dom from guilt in speak­ing as me, being who I am.

I have been on twit­ter since Feb­ru­ary 2007 as @NickHodge. Nearly 4 years. In that time, my account has gathered nearly 5000 fol­low­ers. Whilst I have no accur­ate data on these fol­low­ers: it is fair to say a major­ity are spam­bots or dormant accounts. There is abso­lutely no way I am that inter­est­ing to 5000 people.

Con­sid­er­ing my twit­ter per­sona has been cheeky and some­what icon­o­clastic, even to my present employer; and the con­tent of 90% of my tweets are not related to work — I find it sur­pris­ing to gather so many pieces of moss.

5000 fol­low­ers does put the @NickHodge account into the top 20% of Aus­tralian twit­ter­ers. Being an open (not locked) account, this puts my utter­ances on twit­ter into the fun­nel for social media mon­it­or­ing engines. Their sys­tems will determ­ine my fol­lower count (and retweet count, and other met­rics) puts me into a “must watch” list.

I base this assess­ment on my work use of social media mon­it­or­ing engines. Keywords, key people. Asso­ci­ated, and you are prime bait for engines to watch fil­ter and report to their cor­por­ate stakeholders.

Some people crave this atten­tion. In fact, it is their life blood. I am per­fectly fine with their need for fol­low­ers, read­ers, fans if you will. But this is not for me. The dir­ect asso­ci­ation between my employer and what I say and think is not dir­ect. At best, it is loosely coupled.

There is no quick mech­an­ism to com­pletely delete all your fol­low­ers, and who you are fol­low­ing in twit­ter. As an imme­di­ate solu­tion, I have sus­pen­ded post­ing from the @NickHodge account and cre­ated @RealNickHodge. I am being strict as to whom I fol­low; the account is locked.

For me, it is back to feel­ing free to com­ment without the fear of caus­ing col­lat­eral damage.

I hope you found this useful.

In the midst of the 2010 Fed­eral elec­tion, Aus­tralian of the Year Pro­fessor Patrick McGorry has man­aged to place Men­tal Health on the national agenda. ABC’s Four Corners “Hidden Voices” ded­ic­ated a pre-election show to high­light depres­sion, men­tal health: both sig­ni­fic­ant factors in suicide.

Look­ing at the data, whilst sui­cide rates are fall­ing – the rates in males 25 to 45 is still way above the norm. And more people die by their own hand in Aus­tralia than on the roads.

Dur­ing the show, I tweeted the fol­low­ing: I suf­fer from Depres­sion. There. I said it.

For me this has been a long jour­ney. Thanks to excel­lent med­ical care, and can func­tion in employ­ment and society.

So, let me high­light: If you think you suf­fer from depres­sion, are feel­ing ‘down’ – seek help. Start with your GP. Call Life­line or sim­ilar ser­vice now. Do not be ashamed in seek­ing help. You are not alone.

Whilst there is still a stigma

Being depressed, and men­tally unwell is still holds a social stigma.

Whilst pub­lic accept­ance is on the incline: pub­lic­ally stat­ing that you suf­fer from depres­sion will have a neg­at­ive effect on your employ­ab­il­ity. Whether work­ing for a large organ­isa­tion or as a single con­tractor: people around you will treat you with sus­pi­cion. Depres­sion can be a dis­ab­il­ity that dir­ectly effects work per­form­ance; and the career pro­spects of individuals.

Or as is sadly all too com­mon: no job at all..

Whilst remain­ing a sup­porter of vari­ous Men’s men­tal health char­it­ies. Per­sonal dona­tions. Grow­ing mous­taches, I am going to leave much of my per­sonal thoughts to myself for the time being.

I have been rather quiet of late.

Reas­ons:

1. Day 5 of a man-flu. Just can’t shake it quickly.
2. For the fourth time, I am tak­ing a break from the Twit­ter stream. Fun­nily enough, life goes on without know­ing everything else that is going on.
3. Think­ing. There is a rather lot of things to think about, if you per­mit your­self to men­tally wander.

In a G’day world pod­cast I appeared on in 2007 I stated I was vot­ing Lib­eral. It should come as no sur­prise I am doing the same in 2010

At the begin­ning of Tony Abbott’s reign as leader of the Fed­eral Lib­er­als, I will admit I was uncer­tain of his abil­ity to be the Prime Min­is­ter of Aus­tralia. Through this cam­paign, Mr. Rab­bit has shown a wiser and more mature head. Hav­ing met Tony in per­son, spoken to him one:one and in 2004 man­ning an elec­tion booth — I am cer­tain what we see with Tony is what we are going to get. Whilst I am no longer a mem­ber of the Lib­eral Party, I would con­sider myself a “small-L” liberal.

On one of the occa­sions where I met Mr Abbott when he was Min­is­ter for Health (2003 I think), we talked about the import­ance of Inform­a­tion Tech­no­logy. He was no more a tech­head as he was a Doc­tor; and was not con­vinced with my rant­ing on the power of the inter­net. A senior Lib­eral advisor stated firstly that all indus­tries lobby about their import­ance to the future. Inform­a­tion tech­no­logy is no dif­fer­ent. Secondly, that once the politi­cians care about your industry, it becomes a polit­ical foot­ball. Increas­ing con­trol, reg­u­la­tion comes with increased invest­ment. Wel­come to where we have been for the last 5 years.

This elec­tion Geeks have suffered a cog­nit­ive dis­son­ance: vote Labor, get a gov­ern­ment fun­ded National Broad­band Net­work (NBN) but with a coupled Filter/Censorship pos­i­tion. Vote Lib­eral, and you get no Fibre installed into your home but no Fil­ter. Greens sup­port­ers will make the obser­va­tion: “vote Greens”. They’re too pro­gress­ive and social­ist for a coun­try boy like me. Or, their attached policies are not to my lik­ing. Lar­ger Gov­ern­ment, more pub­lic ser­vants and more con­trol of our lives by a nanny state rubs against my grain.

In the 2007 elec­tion, Rudd prom­ised $4.7b for Fibre-to-the-Node NBN. This expan­ded into $43b Fibre-to-the-Home; span­ning 93% of Aus­trali­ans as a mech­an­ism for coun­ter­ing the GFC. Whilst there is no pure busi­ness plan to spend $5.37b per year over 8 years, Labor has failed to sell a com­plete social plan for the need for an NBN. There is no vis­ion. Whilst the Min­is­ter in charge is shackled by the Fil­ter debate, the geeker­ati will not help.

To illus­trate the import­ance of inter­net access, this elec­tion Lib­er­als are prom­ising to invest $6.7b (I think) into inter­net con­nectiv­ity. Not as gen­er­ous on fund­ing, and there­fore speed – but within their budget con­straints. To the Lib­er­als, the lar­gesse of the NBN is a place to grab for­ward com­mit­ted funds to reduce debt. They have no vis­ion for the use of the inter­net and how it has the poten­tial to trans­form. The Lib­er­als best war­rior, Mal­colm Turn­bull, has been side­lined. I would hope that Mal­colm gets re-elected and we find a prag­matic policy that is afford­able. A cut down NBN; cop­per con­duits pur­chased from Tel­stra with smarter nego­ti­ation. And with a vis­ion for its use 30–50 years out.

Fibre, along with wire­less, is the future. Both. This is not an either-or.

Oh, and if Labor get back in, the Fil­ter will arise. Games and apps for phones and other like devices will require expens­ive clas­si­fic­a­tion. With or without a won­der­ful fibre NBN, our cre­ativ­ity will be throttled at the bor­ders. Even if the Greens hold the bal­ance of power in the Sen­ate, Mr Con­roy (if Com­mu­nic­a­tions Min­is­ter) will find another way to imple­ment his filter.

But the NBN is not the main game as far as I am concerned.

My con­cerns with Labor is its propensity to plough Aus­tralia into more debt. Bad man­age­ment by both Rudd, but also Gar­rett et al have res­ul­ted in sig­ni­fic­ant wastage of my tax dol­lars. Less sov­er­eign debt will leave Aus­tralia in a bet­ter pos­i­tion to deal with the shock of a slowly col­lapsing US and Europe. The argu­ment that a Gov­ern­ment can always tax more to repay debt: this is on the assump­tion that busi­ness is healthy enough to be taxed (and employ staff to be taxed) and there is a healthy world eco­nomy that con­sumes Australia’s exports.

Apart from spend­ing hand over first, Labor has a track record of wastage. Reports on the Build­ing the Edu­ca­tion Revolu­tion (BER) state a low wastage %. This is cer­tainly not the case with the Insu­la­tion pro­gram, another GFC pro­gram. Gov­ern­ment pur­chas­ing should be effi­cient and not waste tax­payer dollars.

Inter­est­ingly, the most pro­gress­ive policy that taxes the big end of town this elec­tion comes from the Lib­er­als: Paid Par­ental Leave fun­ded by a levy on large busi­ness. I think that it is import­ant that women can both have kids if they choose, and con­tinue to work if they choose. Within the eco­nomic real­it­ies of today, the Lib­er­als have the most attract­ive policy.

Like all elec­tions, those mar­ginal elect­or­ates are receiv­ing the most atten­tion. This is our sys­tem work­ing. You have to make your elect­or­ate a mar­ginal elect­or­ate if you want the same atten­tion. Simple.

I am not so con­cerned with the “men in smoky back­rooms” or vot­ing by ran­dom party mem­bers that con­trol the levers behind our Fed­eral politi­cians. It is the same on all sides of polit­ics. Con­tinu­ing greater trans­par­ency on dona­tions and lob­by­ists would be nice. But nice never wins.

My wish is for all parties to reduce middle­class wel­fare, and reduce tax­a­tion. Or, at least, fun­nel money into places where the mar­ket will fail. Roads, Hos­pit­als, Education.

And here lies the drum. Both parties are using the flow on tax to wrest con­sti­tu­tion­ally state-based con­cerns (Edu­ca­tion, Health) into the Fed­eral sphere. If this reduced the man­age­ment over­head, I would sup­port this. The model that seems to be cre­ated to increase bur­eau­cracy. More wast­ing of money. Both parties need to not waste money on overhead.

Polit­ics is never simple: A vs. B; black or White. It is grey with mul­tiple dimen­sions. This leaves us all wiggle room to argue and dis­cuss; he said she said style con­ver­sa­tions. Prom­ises kept; changes in pos­i­tion. Hypo­thet­ic­als. Rhet­or­ical con­structs. It is great to live in a coun­try where we can openly dis­cuss, argue and most import­antly: vote.

As I hold a por­tion of my wealth in US$ and loc­ally in cash — higher interest rates and a lower exchange rate that a ALP/Greens Gov­ern­ment is likely to induce. And Fibre to my home, paid for by you bug­gers at $5000, sounds good too. But it is not good for the future of Aus­tralia. That’s why I am vot­ing Lib­eral. As I am now in Mr Rabbit’s elect­or­ate, he has a safe vote in my hands.

My key­note at Pycon-AU. It is good to be back doing what I do best. Present­ing deep tech­no­lo­gies to tech­nical audiences.

From Richard Farmer’s “Chunky bits” in today’s crikey.com.au:

I know that Lord Acton had papal infal­lib­il­ity in mind when writ­ing to Bishop Man­dell Creighton in 1887 but given the flaunt­ing of their Chris­tian­ity by our two altern­at­ive polit­ical lead­ers that per­haps just makes his words more appropriate:

“I can­not accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favour­able pre­sump­tion that they did no wrong. If there is any pre­sump­tion, it is the other way, against the hold­ers of power, increas­ing as the power increases. His­toric respons­ib­il­ity has to make up for the want of legal respons­ib­il­ity. Power tends to cor­rupt, and abso­lute power cor­rupts abso­lutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exer­cise influ­ence and not author­ity: still more when you super­add the tend­ency or cer­tainty of cor­rup­tion by full author­ity. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanc­ti­fies the holder of it.”

In Toy Stor­ies, James Maybuilt a life-size house out of Lego. It was awe­some. On the DVD of the TV series, he skulks around the base­ment stor­age of Lego HQ where there is a box set of every box set Lego has ever made. He pops open 1973 and shows this Lon­don Bus set, which he details as “the most per­fect Lego set”. Someone gave me this set in 1973.

I remem­ber this set well as it acci­dently ended up at the pawn/second hand shop in Lobethal, South Aus­tralia. Being of a tender age, I had care­fully packed my Lego with other items I thought were going on a trip. Nope: they were old items what we no longer needed. My treas­ured Lego bus was gone! Thank­fully, some brave adult retrieved the bus. I remem­ber the incid­ent, and this kit well.

Liam suc­cess­fully com­pleted his HSC in 2009, with one of his sub­jects being Soft­ware Design

Look­ing over his res­ults cer­ti­fic­ate, it seems that 1726 stu­dents sat the HSC Exam from 1759 enrol­ments. In other words, 2.5% of the NSW HSC pop­u­la­tion took this course.

The cur­riculum for this sub­ject area is repor­ted to be weak.

Maybe it is time for Higher Edu­ca­tion, Industry and the Board of Stud­ies to strengthen the con­tent of this course. For the future of Aus­tralia in the digital world.