A slightly off-topic post but I’m steaming. Union employee Shawn Tan is currently undergoing disciplinary proceedings with his employer due to the fact that he has decided to stand as a candidate in the upcoming general elections in New Zealand.
Bear in mind that unions in New Zealand have a long history of involvement with the Labour party - so what’s the problem here? Only that Mr Tan decided to stand for the right-leaning Act party.
I’ve long thought that unions were one of the last bastions of the old days of rabble-rousing and professional protestors this sort of carry on does nothing to reduce that perception.
I’d always been pretty amazed that spammers even bother putting in the effort they do - convinced that it never works so what’s the point.
However if you subscribe to Chris Anderson’s long tail theory - the extension for spam is that a spam offer sent to millions will find a few souls who convert (for whatever reason).
I was gobsmacked to see that Marshal has just released a study that fond that a whopping 29% of Internet users have purchased items from Spam adverts.
29% - holy smokes! Over on RWW Marshall points out some thoughts arising from the report. Marshall contend that perhaps with a conversion rate of 30%, the market has in fact spoken and values spam. Of course Marshall’s analysis omits to take into consideration the fact that a number of people buying from spam fall into one of two categories;
They are purchasing illicit goods
They mistakenly make the purchasing decision
Both of which of course negate Marshall’s original contention.
So here’s my attempts to get a more meaningful metric from this discussion;
I’ve been talking about the upcoming Office 2.0 conference a fair bit lately - mostly because it very much seems to be a blueprint for how to organise an effective, collaborative and nimble conference.
A couple of advisements from the organisers caught my eye. The first was a very open and honest post about the trials and tribulations they’ve faced at the conference - only days before the event they lost their headline sponsor (to the tune of $75k) but, undeterred, they’ve seen the silver lining to the cloud and have carried on and used the setback to spur them to new levels of passion.
Secondly was the announcement that there will be a launchpad opportunity at the conference where small start-ups (less than five staff) get the chance to demo their offering in a receptive and economical forum. The launchpad gets the startup into the conference, the chance to pitch to a bunch of top-shelf VCs and the attention of a veritable who’s who of the tech press scene. The organisers are also hopeful that launchpad companies will get the same HP mini-note that other participants receive - this is dependant on VC sponsorship so get in there VCs - it’s a most worthy cause!
As some of you know I write for (gasp - does it still exist) print media as well as online. My post last month for Unlimited magazine looked at cloud computing from an newbies point of view. I think it gave a simple and understandable explanation to what going cloudy can do for a SME.
Unlimited is a great mag and well worth a subscription…..
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