It’s been a very significant couple of weeks for online journalism, with the first instance of Australian journalists using Twitter to report live from the Federal Court in the iiNet trial (#iitrial), and The Guardian crediting social media for helping to overcome a gag order on their reportage of the Trafigura affair.

The iiNet reportage by The Australian‘s Andrew Colley was made more remarkable by the fact that the Oz pulled the plug on his reporting, out of concern over possible legal exposure. This concern wasn’t shared by CBS Interactive, whose reporter Liam Tung continues to live tweet the trial for ZDNet:

Looks like the Fed Court is cool w/ #iitrial Tweeting – a matter for Justice Cowdroy to decide, it says. http://tinyurl.com/56uszw

Naturally, news of these developments broke via Twitter, but Margaret Simons has been doing a good job of following up both stories for Crikey and on her blog . (She also covered ABC Managing Director Mark Scott’s recent AN Smith Lecture at the University of Melbourne).

So I think the timing of Sydney’s first Media140 event couldn’t be better. This two day conference is bringing together journalists, academics and online media experts to discuss ‘the future of journalism in the social media age’. There’s a really exciting lineup of speakers, including Jay Rosen (via webcast only, sadly) and Mark Scott. I’ll be participating as a “roving expert” during the Day2 workshops. Really looking forward to this event.

Smart Company has published an article on Online Reputation Management which quotes me talking about crisis management. Brad Howorth kindly edited my rather stilted interview (it was my first ever as an interviewee!) so I sound coherent. And he called me a social media advisor, which I much prefer to the cringe-inducing “Social Media Expert” moniker. Thanks, Brad.

I’m also one of the presenters on Byte into IT, the weekly tech show on radio RRR here in Melbourne.  If you can’t catch the show Wednesdays at 7pm, it’s released as a podcast too.

The latest podcast includes discussion of new open source blogging and social community, Dreamwidth, as well as some news about tools for Google Android developers, and nice examples of Drupal in use. You can download the podcast here. I should mention here (since I forgot to say on air) that the Drupal sites were done by Development Seed, which is based in Washington DC.

Welcome to students visiting from today’s NEWS09 conference. Please feel free to ask a question or leave a comment. Keep me posted if you decide to try out any of the ideas or tools that were mentioned today – I would love to hear how you get on.

As promised, here’s a copy of the presentation I gave today on How to get your student publication online.

I’m going to be keeping an eye out for free and cheap cool things to do in Melbourne – whether it’s arts events, classes, or concerts. I’ll tag these posts ‘free in Melbourne’

So far I’ve learned that Port Phillip council offers a range of free classes (including cheese making!), the awesome City Library in Flinders Lane has a series of free gigs coming up and the Melbourne Library Service offers a book club at a few of their libraries where you borrow the books from the library rather than buying them – clever!

I was vaguely disappointed by the Melbourne City Council’s “That’s Melbourne” website. So where do you find out what cool free and cheap things are on in Melbourne?

Hello internets. I’ll be on RRR’s computing & technology radio show Byte into IT tonight from 7pm til 8pm.
You can tune in on the old fashioned radio (102.7FM in Melbin) or you can stream it live from the new fangled internet radio here.
Cheers!

The podcast of my first RRR show is up. I didn’t get much of a word in edgewise until my segment near the end. I talked about OLPC, digital archiving at the National Library, and Geek Girl Dinners Melbourne. I’m on again on Wednesday 9th July.

In point form, because I’m a dirty lazy blogger.

*Ended up sitting back in the corner at "that table" with the other dirty bloggers & Crikey types.
*Twittered from the event, until my broadband *and* mobile phone crapped out. (twitter name: stokely)
*Heckled Joe Hockey, twice.
*Met & had a drink with Antony Green, the ABC’s pollster.
*Got to meet Senator Andrew Bartlett and thank him for his work (he’s leaving the Senate this week).
*Got to enjoy hearing Joe Hockey say publicly that he hates to admit it, but Crikey is one of the best sources of political news in Australia.
*Got to pimp OpenAustralia.org to the forum. w00t.
*Met someone who’s starting a communist party in the ACT.

Since Crikey doesn’t have the ability to host proper blogs yet, I thought I’d dust off this old thing and start using it again. Hello.

VoIP short on skills
by Sarah Stokely
From The Age, December 5, 2006

The burgeoning voice over IP industry is struggling to find staff with the right skills, industry members say. They are calling on training and educational organisations to keep up with the technological curve and break down the traditional barrier between different strands of engineering such as voice and data.

Because of the relative youth of the VoIP market, it’s rare to find someone with years of VoIP dedicated experience, says James Spenceley, chief technical officer of VoIP network provider ISPhone.

“When I’m trying to hire a data engineer I look for five years of experience,” he says. “In the VoIP world I look for a minimum of five months.”

Read more…

Talking ’bout neXt generation
Published in MIS magazine at http://www.misweb.com/magarticle.asp?doc_id=25944&rgid=2&listed_months=0

VoIP is well-entrenched in the corporate vocabulary. But spin doctors are still building the road NGN will travel into the IT lexicon.

Next Generation Networking may need a little more spin doctoring before it becomes a bona fide buzzword, but a survey of Australian chief information officers and chief network officers shows they are planning on investing in higher capacity networks and embracing the IP-based functionality, which is at the heart of NGN.

The Next Generation Networks study, conducted by Fairfax Business Research (FBR), asked CIOs and CNOs about their network infrastructure and planned upgrades.

It found just 54 per cent of them were able to spontaneously provide a correct explanation of the term NGN, and specifically identify key features of the technology.

Read more…