Here’s a blog you should  be reading instead of mine. MyCEOLife is Simon Baker writing, the recently-made-former-MD of realestate.com.au. Simon is probably one of the most insightful, strategic and innovative internet business leaders I’ve met. He took REA from nothing (in fact less than nothing, it was losing money), to a profitable, ASX listed business with operations around the world. Outstanding stuff. And now he’s got a little more time on his hands he’s cranking up the blogging output.

Simon was the victim of one of the most dis-respectful sackings you could imagine. He’s also the guy who bought our ArtsHub business – and there’s no better hands in which we could imagine placing our baby.

My big brother Paul’s new documentary on the terrrible plight of Iraqi refugees has been released. Paul says’s he is “arguing that helping the refugees is not just a humanitarian cause,
it’s critical to national security. These 2 million refugees are the
bulk of the educated middle class of Iraq. If they collapse into
poverty and continue to fail to send their children to school, Iraq
will remain wrecked for a generation, and there will be a new vast pool
of semi-educated, angry and hopeless refugees in the Middle East
alongside the Palestinians.”

The documentary, and issue, is being picked up in a number of places including:

A dangerous crisis of invisible refugees: Bernd Debusmann
Informed Comment

You can watch part 1 of “The Hard Way” on YouTube. There is a higher res one here.

Fiona and I went out to Calder Park race track this morning, and drove V8 race cars. Just for something different! If you’ve never had the experience before, it’s completely unbelievable. It’s so out of your comfort box. Strapped in tight, heavy helmet, instructor’s voice in your ears, and the sound of a race tuned V8 Holden. None of which you notice after the first 10 seconds, because all you can hear is the instructor yelling ‘floor it’, as you do 170km+ down the straight, then ‘brake brake’ as you approach the corners. Lot’s of people seemed to manage to wind the car up faster, I think I might have nudged 180km, which was of no interest – I was concentrating too hard.

Don’t think for a moment this is an exclusively boy’s club thing. Fiona drove, and had a ball, and there were several other women as well, albeit somewhat outnumbered by the blokes.

Here is the video, souvenir photos at the bottom. Give it a try – book through www.v8race.com.

I am sympathetic:

You can contact me using:

Email:
david at eedle dot com

Skype:
davideedle

Telephone:
+61 419 876 942

Fax:
+61 3 8677 9933

IBM has an ad in today’s Financial Review for special offers on some of their servers. I’m interested in a new web server, so paid attention. The ad is headed ‘uptime comes standard’.

There are two contact channels, a web address and a 1800 telephone number.  So I go to the web URL. It has a bunch of offers – but they are old ones expiring 31 March. Not the new ones – someone’s not updated with the latest to coincide with the print campaign.

So I ring the 1800 number. It’s answered with the usual canned voice, ‘all our operators are busy please hold’ then it goes click beep, and a voice says ‘there is no voice mail service please contact the main number for this location’ (or somesuch) and hangs up.

So instead I ring the 1800 number (different to above) on the web site. I get a voice mail saying I’ve rung the marketing response centre and pre sales department, please leave a message and they’ll respond within 3 business hours.

IBM’s servers may have uptime as standard, but their marketing and
sales systems just have downtime. Makes it pretty difficult to buy
anything from them….