CRN From the Coal Face

You can’t be everything to everyone, every day. I walked into a large whitegoods retailer before Easter to buy a new DVD player. We still had a player at home that needed updating because it didn’t have Blu-ray capabilities. What should have been a relatively easy process turned into a major shopping expedition. I did what 86 percent of consumers in Australia do and participated in some ‘webrooming’ before I ventured out of my house. I researched various models online  ..

The traditional channel is being squeezed but new tech means new opportunities. Several years ago during one of my regular radio programs on technology I spoke to the host about an umbrella that had some amazing technology built-in. The host joked that there are probably lots of crazy umbrellas out there with some amazing technology built-in and, in a brief moment of live on-air madness, I promised to deliver a new umbrella technology story to him each fortnight when I did the segment. L ..

Resellers should look beyond the raw numbers for the bigger picture. It was at a recent telecommunications conference that I first heard the term "bill shock". This is the greatest example of supplier arrogance that I can remember in recent times. I think only a telco could have such a terrible billing model that they have invented a medical term to describe how their clients go into a state of shock as a result of receiving their bill. Medically, shock is a condition that a ..

We're not dense enough to make sense. Australia is big. For those of us who have ever looked past our front door it seems like I'm stating the bleeding obvious. But it is really big. Excluding places such as Antarctica that we control, Australia's area is 7.7 million square kilometres. By contrast, our population is quite small. At last estimate we only had 21.85 million people in Australia. Our population density is only 2.8 people a square kilometre. That's well below China with 18, ..

After 20 years in this industry and after having attended countless conferences and seminars, I am yet to see the perfect conference agenda. That agenda looks something like this: 5pm: Pre Pre-dinner drinks. 6pm: Pre-dinner drinks. 7pm: Dinner. 9pm: Compulsory networking begins. 3am: Bedtime. 11.30am: Late breakfast. 12.30pm: Free time until 5pm. I am not sure if many employers would approve the attendance at a conference like this, but I personally believe that the most imp ..