Perth Update
February 26th, 2006 at 2:59 pm by David FarrarCurrently attending the annual meeting of APCAUCE – the Asia-Pacific Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail. What has been interesting is that many or most of the participants are actually from Governments. A couple of years ago it was almost all NGOs and private sector but great to see many regional anti-spam government agencies attending as well as the UK Government which has taken a leadership role on the issue. There are also eight here from China.
Yesterday had some time off so went to the Scitech Museum/Exhibition. This was great fun and only sad I only had an hour there – needed three. They had almost a hundred interactive displays of how science works. If I ever have kids this place is a definite visit.
Also made Freemantle briefly which was lovely. Only $3.10 by train from Perth. It was 32 degrees so the ocean was lovely.
Then we went out for dinner with the APCAUCE Chair and a SpamHaus Director. Just as we were about to order desserts we were told they had a dozen spare chicken and pork chops (the pork is rolled around the chicken in a ball and then breadcrumbed) and offered them to us for free. So we all have chicken/pork chops for dessert – they were delicious but not quite the same as ice cream.
Tags: DPF
February 26th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
I am curious as to why you do so much travelling David- given the field you are in.
My husband, as VP of one of the world’s largest corporates has not travelled anywhere for the last 3 years – he uses video-conferencing. It saves them so much money.
Not a criticism – just wondering.
Vote:February 26th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
A lot of meetings are held with video or tele-conferencing or even simply using e-mail. But different meeting have different requirements
A meeting involves hundreds of people is not feasible to run by video-conference. Also much of the value one can get from FTF attendance is networking. Once you have met people in person it means you are much more able to e-mail or phone them and ask them favours, to come over to NZ, to support a position etc.
I currently would average probably a tele-conference a week, if not more often. They work well for short meetings. But when you have five days of meetings you really don’t want to try and spend five days on a phone line.
InternetNZ is thinking about establishing in our office an access grid which is like video-conferencing on steroids. Allows dozens of participants multiple presentations on a wall etc etc. However they are not cheap ($100K ballpark) so we’ve let to do a cost benefit analysis of getting one. Even if we do it will mainly mean that we can use it for meetings we convene not for meetings organised by other organisations.
Vote:February 26th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
My experience of video-conferencing is that they are fine for meetings with agendas and minutes, but hopeless for free for all discussions when discussing esoteric points of policy. A free-wheeling discussion in a workshop would be almost impossible to hold with VC.
Vote:February 27th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Always professionally interested to hear what the foreigners are up to with spam. Is there any sense of hope that inroads can be made by government?
I really can’t see it, personally, but would love to hear different from the collective acheivements of 5 days of conferencing. Any hint of plans, resolutions? Even the means of measuring success of governmental action would seem to me highly problematic.
Oh, and I teleconference with my canadian employer weekly on this, but generally find any meetings at all completely wasteful in time. Software designed by a committee? No, thanks!
Vote:February 27th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Good God we are not spending five days on spam. That would kill me.
Apricot has dozens of meetings on dozens of topics. I am also attending sessions on Enum, Peering, IPv6 etc.
Vote:February 27th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
You had me worried there
. Even I would struggle to take an interest in 5 days on spam. Still interested in whatever the coalition has acheived, though.
Vote:March 6th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
David, it was great being with you and the others from internetNZ at perth. And the apcauce conference went off just great, I must say – thanks in particular to Jordan Carter, who you lent us to help organize the meeting.
The next one is in sunny Bali, more or less the same day, same time .. next year. See you there!
-srs
ps – I’m the apcauce coordinator these days. The chair’s another guy called Jim Lick, who couldnt make it to Perth this time
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