Australia

Lots of news and reviews to post here soon, but in the meantime here's my latest Indieoma.com post with all sorts of stuff in it...

After a surreal party on Saturday night... It had a Gangster theme, Gangster rap... All police tape, chalked murder scene markings, fake money and loud tracksuits.

Western Australia has produced some of Australia's most talented and popular artists in recent times and it's not all Indie or Rock Riffage as tonight's WA showcase proved.

I Went to my first Footie game... Quite exciting!

Tuesday was World Environment Day, I took part in a protest on excess logging, see some photos here <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrischinchilla/sets/72157600322402682" target="_blank">www.flickr.com/photos/chrischinchilla/sets/72157600322402682</a>

According to a forthcoming research report to be issued by overseas student recruiter IDP Education, International Student demand in Australia will double in the next two decades with Universities struggling to meet the demand. Currently Overseas students comprise approximately 17% of the Australian student body with just over a quarter of those studying in Victoria, how much does and will this affect Victorian students?

Firstly I wanted to share with you a recent experience of editing...

Geoff O'Conner is one of a multitude of Melbournian musicians with a penchant for side projects, his band 'Crayon Fields' already has several tours and releases under his belt, and now his solo persona 'Sly Hats' is rapidly catching up recently returning from a two month world tour with fellow songwriter 'Guy Blackman'. I caught up with a nervous Geoff and over cups of herbal tea we discussed Music, Melbourne (and sadly after the recorder was switched off and he finally relaxed) and the ways of the World.

I finally got my fist experience(s) of Australian festivals this summer, albeit a gentle one-day only festival introduction and I hate to say I wasn't greatly impressed.

As is usual from my blog posts, this may or may not grow as I remember things&hellip;<ul><li>The visual discrepancy between rich and poor in San Francisco is extremely stark<ul><li>Add to that, the gap between white/Asian and black/Latino is even more noticeable.</li></ul></li><li>A lot of the Not-For-Profit sector seems obsessed with money and how to make it.</li><li>The tipping culture is weird&hellip; In that people don&#39;t tip because they want to, but because they feel obliged to. Which makes tipping and the divvying up of bills an awkward and bizarrely scientific process to watch.</li><li>Americans table manners, especially the way they treat servers, are peculiar&hellip; Perhaps related to above.</li><li>Sales people very open and friendly, I assume because they want to sell you something. On the other hand, Customer service, especially civil service, quite unforgiving and unhelpful.</li><li>A lot of things in Australia aren&#39;t as expensive as people think. Especially food and fuel.</li><li>Conferences in Australia are a lot more multi-cultural, with more people from overseas and we&#39;re more interested in those from overseas.</li></ul>

An ever growing miscellaneous list of travel tips and thoughts that occur to me. These are about travel itself, not my actual travels.<ul><li>After flying international, getting low cost flights for remainder of the journey isn&#39;t worth it.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Don&#39;t always go for the cheapest option for transfers etc, often not worth it the long run.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">British airports suck and so do most of the associated services, they have some of the worst customer service around.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Going off the beaten track is worthwhile.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Hotels are the past, airbnb is the future.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Being an English speaker is an amazing luxury when traveling.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">There is a gap in the market for a decent travelers sim card with good data. <a href="https://www.lebara.com.au/" target="_blank">Lebra</a>, and <a href="https://uros.com/" target="_blank">Uros</a> come close, but still not quite, please let me know if you know of anything better available in Australia.</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Is it me or do airlines not want to give away add much alcohol as they used to?</li><li><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">One travel power adapter is rarely enough.&nbsp;</li></ul>

<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">As part of RMIT&rsquo;s sessions in Open Access week I toddled down to &ldquo;Publishing the Open Access Way: The Change in Business Thinking Towards Open Access&rdquo; and a slightly small crowd&hellip; I&rsquo;m a little behind with blog posts, so this will again, be a little bit of a collection of items with some opinions and thoughts.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The speakers and talks were<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Dr Adrian Danks - Senses of cinema</b><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">A quarterly academic journal around cinema culture and commentary. To me it&rsquo;s approach seemed fairly conventional. Their open nature means not Peer reviewed. Their 4th largest&nbsp; audience is Australia, which seems to be a constant, many Australian creative organisations have to be successful overseas to make it at home. Dependent on funding bodies, how does this affect the open nature? Is it any better than an advertiser really?<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Philip Dearman - Communication, Politics &amp; Culture</b><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">An open access journal, I think the title pretty much tells you what the content is. Seems like some publications just become free because they have no other options or are forced to. Again, the journal is backed by Academia anyway, so it doesn&rsquo;t have quite the same restraints others may have.&nbsp;<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Debbie Dickinson - The conversation</b><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">&nbsp;<br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The Conversation is fairly well known, again with some academic backing, but seemingly looking into wider sustainable sources of funding and life. Some of the Conversations interesting features and approaches are republishing their content,&nbsp; sharing is positively encouraged leading to strong worldwide access.<p class="p1"><a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/library/oaw" target="_blank">www.rmit.edu.au/library/oaw</a>

Jonathan Teo (originally from Sydney) from General Catalyst Partners, a leading VC firm in Silicon Valley. Jonathan has personally led early-stage investments in 3 of the hottest companies of recent years including Twitter, Instagram and SnapChat, so a body of great knowledge.

In the past ten days I finally made the second overseas move of my life. This time from Melbourne to Leipzig.

<p class="p1"><em>The more I come to USA, the less I understand it, in fact I could say, the less I like it.</em>Before we explore that further, I had to leave Germany first&hellip;Leipzig airport has a couple of positives and negatives being a small airport&hellip;The main negative is you can&rsquo;t seem to online check-in to international flights that originate from there, but on the flip side, check in and security takes about ten minutes.I&rsquo;ve been in Australia so long that I had forgotten (or it&rsquo;s changed?) that Europe to America flights don&rsquo;t server free alcohol, ah well&hellip;&nbsp;Sadly in Chicago I didn&rsquo;t have quite enough time to get into the city so stayed in the airport which was an extremely busty and stressful airport. It also had atrocious wifi, no shops before checkin and confirmed the typical American stereotype of having no phone stores.&nbsp;Still, got my first beer and burger in :)Back to America&hellip;I guess this was my first trip where I left the major cities (ignoring Portland last year) behind and you fast realise that smaller town America is a whole different world. I&rsquo;m about to make some general sweeping statements that are based on my experience, they may be right or wrong, but they&rsquo;re based on my experiences.Firstly is the massive noticeable difference between the &lsquo;haves&rsquo; and the &lsquo;have-nots&rsquo;. This is not an original observation but it&rsquo;s increasingly noticeable and very confronting to outsiders. Especially in downtown areas and &lsquo;ghettos&rsquo;, there are frequent groups of people who really look like they need help and aren&rsquo;t receiving any (as far as one can tell). Then a block away you will find expensive restaurants, shops or homes that flaunt their exclusivity. Of course you will find these extremes in every country, but it is especially noticeable and when you are aware of America&rsquo;s social security system and attitudes towards private enterprise it&rsquo;s repercussions are very clear.Secondly is the assumption that you drive. Again, this is not unique to America, but much more of an issue. In both Minneapolis and Providence I struggled to find any decent (or affordable) supermarkets in the central areas, they were all in the suburbs in giant malls. This continues into general life where riding on public transport or not having a car available for other trips is considered very odd, even for tourists. Take Providence, I know it&rsquo;s a small city, but there was one grocery and liquor store in the entire downtown area, which were both overpriced.It also seems that visiting America&rsquo;s smaller cities in August (much like many other cities in the world) is a bad idea as they&rsquo;re half empty and lots is closed.Now to get more specific&hellip;&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>Minneapolis</h2>

Last weekend I was back in Tirana for my second OSCAL, an awesome little open source conference that has a massively diverse audience and punches well above it's weight. Whilst in Albania I was conducting some interviews and research for a forthcoming article on the Albanian (likely also including Kosovo) startup and tech scene(s), but more of that later. When I visited Albania last year it was my first trip to a Balkan country and since then I have visited Serbia (twice) and Croatia. Last year, everything was new and novel, this trip I was seeing beyond that into things I might have missed.

Check out this software development conference that's currently catering to devs in Australia, but is soon expanding to Southeast Asia.