Hah! Not an advertising creator Hec?
Actually, there is a local public access channel I have been thinking of joining, just so I could have access to equipment and maybe do something fun (news and opinion pieces for Public Access) or creative (hey, they have animation computers there!) but I look at all the current demands on my time and have a coronary...
EtA: Thanks billytea, I appreciate it. It was hard to come up with something with so little info to go by, glad I hit it...
All the while I was being hit by boxes last night at UPS :)
billytea, I am just catching up with Natter.
I see there were carnivorous roos and man-eating eagles.
So how recently did these suckers die off?
I see there were carnivorous roos and man-eating eagles. So how recently did these suckers die off?
The carnivorous roos, about 30,000 years ago IIRC. I could be out by 20,000 either side. It was, however, after the arrival of the Aboriginals.
Haast's eagle died out only 500 years ago. Maoris arrived about a thousand years ago, IIRC.
I assume the Maoris made it a high priority to get rid of the eagles that carried off their members on occassions...
I assume the Maoris made it a high priority to get rid of the eagles that carried off their members on occassions...
It's a possibility. I should note here that it's really speculation whether the eagles would've attacked a healthy human. They probably wouldn't have had too much fear of us, having developed away from large mammals of any kind, and they'd have been able to do so. We wouldn't have been any bigger than their usual prey, the moas.
Here's where there would've been conflict anyway, though. Maoris hunted moas too, and in fact drove them to extinction - so they killed off the eagles' primary food source. (Plus, if they weren't in a sharing mood, they might have gone after the eagles just to remove the competition for moas.) After that, there wouldn't have been much else to sustain such large birds.
CaBil -- think Big Bird and you won't be far off. However, they were herbivores, so were probably pretty placid.
Not sure what they are.
Large flightless birds. Not as big as Madagascar's elephant birds, but the biggest ones were bigger then emus. (Heavier than ostriches too.)
Thanks a lot for your suggestions, CaBil. I really appreciate the thought you put into it, and some of them were really interesting. I'll put them forward at the next possible opportunity.
The only thing glaringly wrong with the "We are a Public media empire" is the word "Empire". I don't think that term would go down so well!
Taking this away from talking directly about my work, which is kind of weirding me out -- Buffstas.org is what I do to get
away
from thinking about work! (my fault, I know) -- I want to address it in more abstract terms.
The fundamental problem is the very common public conception of a website as an
adjunct
to what a corporation does.
A lot of people see websites acting as brochures, ads, annual reports, contact lists, and have problems making the mental leap to website-as-distinct-entity (of course they have no problem seeing eBay or Google as a thing in itself, but we've been in existence as traditional broadcasters for 70 years).
If I can give an example, there's a number, the ABN, which Australian businesses are obliged to quote in transactions.
Someone from corporate finance once called us and told us we ought to put the ABN on our front page.
I replied that we wouldn't, as it wasn't appropriate (it's on all kinds of other pages, like the "About The Corporation" page and so on).
They were surprised, partly that someone like me was refusing a request from someone as important as them, and said something like "QANTAS has their ABN on their front page!" to which I replied "Yes. But QANTAS is in the business of flying airplanes, and we are in the business of providing information and entertainment to Australians. QANTAS's website is just an afterthought. Our website is what we
do.
If you ask me to put that on our front page, will you ask all newsreaders to read it out at the end of the news?"
They thought I was insane, and promptly went over my head.
OK so, if even people
inside
the organisation haven't made that mental leap to website-as-thing-in-itself, what is it that one needs to do to communicate it to the public?
OK so, if even people inside the organisation haven't made that mental leap to website-as-thing-in-itself, what is it that one needs to do to communicate it to the public?
All I can suggest is bite the bullet and seperate the info/content aspects of the website from the brochure aspect.
As long as they exist under the same roof, so to speak, you will have problems.
Google and Ebay work because their brand was established on the Internet.
Which means you have change from being the ABC website to being a ABC company providing news and other services (that just happens to be a website).
Maybe add an additional front page. With the logo in the center, and going left for corporate information, going right for the news/info stuff. And offering to give people a cookie to make sure that they don't have to do that again.
Also, have you every thought of 'programming' a website?
Website only content, saying to the effect, this week we will feature articles on topic X, and every day at the same time.
Or as the evening news finishes, changing the front page for a half hour afterwards with extended articles based on the news of the night...
