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Adam Jaffrey speaking at TEDxMelbourne

For those of you who haven’t heard of the amazing conference TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design), it’s a worldwide phenomenon which goes by the mantra ideas worth spreading. TED licenses out its brand in a franchisee-like manner to events all over the world which carry the name TEDx (the x stands for an independently organised TED event).

This Saturday, 20th November 2010, I will be speaking at TEDxMelbourne which will be held at the State Library of Victoria. I’m super-excited to be part of such an amazing event and community!

This TEDxMelbourne event will follow the theme Community & Youth, which makes it perfect for me to speak about the community non-profit organisation I volunteer for called, Step Back Think. Step Back Think aims to put an end to street violence, particularly alcohol-fuelled violence – and it’s something I’m very passionate about.
Unfortunately (due to popular demand), tickets for this TEDxMelbourne event sold out in just a few days but I’d love you to watch me speak via the livestream (register here). Otherwise, here are a few other ways to be a part of the day.
Let me know your thoughts via the comments below, or @AdamJaffrey on Twitter.
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Social Media “slurs” subject “sinners” to censorship

Last week it was reported in the Herald Sun that cricket players from a regional league have been banned from playing for weeks for mouthing off about the league on Facebook.

Let me get this out foremost: I’m not talking about libel, defamation or misrepresentation. I’m not talking about disclosing confidential information. I’m talking about opinions.

Read the article. It is absolutely ridiculous.

Social Media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are simply extensions and digitisations of existing social norms. They are a digitisations of our everyday conversations and social interactions.

All this means is, in addition to complaining to your friends in person about the shitty local cricket league, people will complain on Facebook and Twitter. I fail to see how the comments of players in a local league owe any sort of duty to represent that league positively (especially based on the facts outlined in the article). The league wouldn’t have barred them had they complained to their mates over a few beers, so why on Facebook?

Whatever happened to free speech?

This is alarming, as many companies are developing Social Media policies which confine employees to what they can and can’t say. What gives businesses the right to control what their employees talk about in person? Nothing. So what gives them the right to control what they tweet about?

This is a form of communism run by employers, local cricket leagues and the like. We can’t continue to allow the man to control what we say, off-line or online.

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Google trounces Yahoo!… Again

Search engine Yahoo! has copped a fair smacking over the years from major competitor Google, and more recently Microsoft’s Bing.

Yahoo!’s search has been steadily on the decline for years, and it seems that currently their only successful products are Yahoo! Answers and photo sharing site Flickr. Speaking of Flickr, 2 years after Flickr was acquired by Yahoo! they changed the logo adding a “from Yahoo!” subscript on it’s right hand side; causing a backlash from users.

But if there ever was a bad time for negative publicity, this is it.

Off the back of this week’s announcement that Google is rewarding all of their employees with a bonus and 10% pay rise, today news breaks that Yahoo! is rumoured to lay of over 20% of their employees.

Yahoo! just can’t seem to catch a break. Check out the must read “What Happened to Yahoo” by Y Combinator‘s Paul Graham.