500 Words

Friday, 22 February 2013, 9:34 am
Column: Alastair Thompson

500 Words

#kiwifoo #webstock #multicoreworld
Industrialised ignorance, creative constraints, the 100 days project
Information overload

And so it begins
This is not the 100 days project
But it is an exercise in creative constraints

I need this
I need the creativity, I need the discipline
I embrace change/improvement

#KiwiFOO

Mega
Is much bigger than people think
Pause for thought

Wikilegislation
Is probably part of the answer
And its easy (so easy)

Clay Johnson vs Aurelia Rose
A battle of wits, a game of power
We revel in our humanity

#webstock

@cjoh : News these days
Is industrialised ignorance
Go on a diet

To answer a question
The solution is to find a better question
Creative constraints FTW

@bruces : The Stacks
Are enormous, powerful and unstoppable
They are also unstable

#multicoreworld

Multicore
Changes everything
Now

Computers
Of the near future are different (much smarter)
Than they are now

Mobile tech has passed
The inflection point, and this is how a new
Boom begins

**** 193 words *****

Covering Notes: All of which is to say that when you write in something like verse - 500 words starts to get pretty dense. And when you write it fast probably a bit loose. I do not intend to edit this as that would just take more time.

The words above relate to events of the past 13 days - three conferences:
#KiwiFoo which is held annually in Warkworth and hosted by Nat Torkington (@gnat), Jenine Abarbanel (@justjenine) and Russell Brown (@publicaddress) is pure magic. It would be fair to say that a few years ago At KiwiFoo I discovered my people, many amazing New Zealanders who make me want to stay here and work here and converse here.

The magic of KiwiFoo is in its nurturing supportive environment which (sadly) is not the standard mode of communication in post-colonial NZ with its roots in suffering both here in NZ and back from where we came from in Ireland and Scotland. Here in NZ we all too often bring each other down.

As night follows day #webstock follows KiwiFoo (the following Thursday and Friday).

And this year's Webstock was for me the best yet. To me anyway. I mentioned to someone at the after party that it had been rather "mindblowing", "the best one yet", and "it felt like the internet was growing up a bit" and she replied "yeahmmmmm but that's what we say every year".

Ubiquitous awesomeness is such a drag sometimes!

Webstock is always for me a bit like an operating system update….
…. But that story will need to wait till tomorrow as I am approaching my word limit for today.

Fortunately here at the beginning of my "writing 500 words a day before I read my email" project I have lots to say. I can see now that it's going to have to be top of the head stuff. But there is plenty of that needing a home and it will be fun.

And so it begins.

- Alastair Thompson 9.33am 22/2/13

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Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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