We have recently launched our We’re Looking For Talent website, which represents a new phase in the growth of the companies in the AHT Group.
The first role we are very actively recruiting for is a genius projects/ marketing/ web/ publishing assistant or manager. The ad says in its capabilities section:
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This post was first published on the Getting Results From Crowds book website.
Today the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) issued a wide-ranging guidance on crowd funding.
The guidance in essence recognizes crowdfunding and clarifies the current legislation that applies to the area. It notes that if crowdfunding activities “produce financial benefits” then they are regulated under the Corporations Act and will require a disclosure document.
In the case of crowdfunding being effectively “pre-purchase arrangement of a product or a service”, then it will be regulated by the Competition and Consumer Act, that applies to all retail sales.
These points were pretty obvious, so this part of the guidance simply clarifies the relevant legislation for those involved in the space.
Where the guidance gets interesting is on what they expect from crowdfunding platforms in helping to manage risks:
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I’ll be in Perth, WA the evening of 13 August after a client workshop.
After a quick pow-wow on Twitter, a few fine folk have agreed to catch up for a drink and conversation about Twitter, media, the future, startups, or whatever else we feel like chatting about.
When: Monday 13 August, 5:30 – 7:30pm, and then bite to eat for whoever’s up for it
Where: The Trustee Bar, 133 St Georges Terrace, Perth
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Crowds and crowdsourcing are increasingly at the heart of entrepreneurship, represented by the burgeoning crop of crowdsourcing companies, the rise of crowd business models, and the fact that a large proportion of entrepreneurs today draw extensively on crowdsourcing in building their businesses.
Ignacio Rodriguez and Enrique Mena, CEO and COO respectively of Chile-based Spanish-language crowdsourcing platform MeritusPro (which I am an advisor to) will be in Sydney this week, so I thought it would good to organise a crowdsourcing entrepreneurs drinks for any entrepreneurs involved directly or indirectly in the crowdsourcing space, though all are welcome.
BlueChilli has kindly offered their new city space as a venue.
Here are details:
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Australia’s Department of Broadband Communications and Digital Economy has just provided a submission to the government’s Inquiry into IT Pricing.
I was interviewed on ABC24 about the findings, and more generally the reasons why Australians pay more for digital goods. Click on the image to view the video of the interview.
Incubators and accelerators are blossoming all over the world, with in Australia the seed accelerator space represented most prominently by StartMate, PushStart, and Melbourne-based AngelCube. I wrote about the Australian accelerator scene when PushStart was launched.
Yeseterday afternoon I went to PushStart’s demo day for their first intake. I was very impressed by the calibre of the startups presenting. I took notes through the presentations of the 8 startups, as below, which hopefully offer a fair representation of the companies and what they said. I expect to see more from this impressive crop of incubators.
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Today’s ‘Fairfax of the Future’ announcement from Australia’s second largest newspaper publisher Fairfax is massive news in Australia, and very significant in a global media context.
It has been a busy media day for me, so far doing interviews for SBS World News and ABC24 News as well as a number of radio stations, due to my earlier predictions of the extinction of newspapers. My Newspaper Extinction Timeline was launched in October 2010, at the time getting mainstream media coverage in over 30 countries and being seen by well over 1 million readers within one week.
Click on image to download full framework
Recently I have been reconsidering some of the forecast extinction dates for a number of countries, notably after my recent European speaking tour. Fairfax’s announcements today significantly shift forward the likely loss of news-on-paper as a significant media format, and in fact make 2022 seem an exceedingly optimistic timespan for newspapers to survive in Australia.
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On Saturday I was interviewed on ABC24 about the news that Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had said that it is acceptable for celebrities to do paid promotions on Twitter without disclosing their affiliation. This followed the announcement on ABC’s MediaWatch program that celebrity chef Matt Moran, among others, had accepted payment from South Australia’s Tourism Board for tweets.
I was asked why there was any difference with the “cash for comments” furor from 1999 when radio personalities were charged and fined for making on-air endorsements without disclosing payments made by the companies concerned.
There is of course no essential difference. Twitter is media. As attention shifts from traditional channels such as TV, radio, and newspapers to social media, naturally advertisers want to shift their presence to the emerging channels. That is absolutely fine. If advertisers want to use social media to get their messages across, that’s OK – users have many ways to deal with that. However there are clear regulations and norms on advertising in traditional media, where commercials are clearly delineated.
The US Federal Trade Commission has provided detailed endorsement guides, specifically revised to include social media, “because truth in advertising is important in all media – including blogs and social networking sites”.
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Below is a brief interview I did when I spoke at TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam recently.
Some of the points I cover:
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Following the launch and fantastic response to Getting Results From Crowds we will be running a series of workshops around the world on creating value using crowds and crowdsourcing.
The first ones will be in Sydney on April 16, followed by a number to be announced shortly in Europe and the US (see our call for crowdsourcing workshop partners).
See the event page for full details on the workshops.
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