I used to work for Fairfax Digital, some 8 years ago, so come from an advertising background (was previously a sign writer before this). I now run a small Web Design & Development / Advertising Agency in Queenstown.

I contract to several developers / designers and find while they produce great work, they don’t always have perspective on real world business needs.

Business Staff are hard to come by… I think a lot of it comes down to their background, and normally find that adaptable people, who have been “jack of all trades” are the best. Someone that has an understanding of the technology, but are not necessarily a specialist, can normally see the big picture rather than the code.

cheers
Glen

Here is a list of the best resources for teaching Scratch http://www.kidslike.info/scratch_computer_programming_tutorials

However, Scratch has severe limitations, most
importantly not teaching functions.

This encyclopedia article on kids like . info compares Scratch, Alice, and Greenfoot. To me, they make a logical progression.
http://www.kidslike.info/computer_programming_educational_programming_languages

I don’t live in NZ (though thanks to my sister in Wellington, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a couple of times). I’m based in Scotland but see some parallels: now that Scotland’s devolved parliament is ‘bedding in’ after a few years, the Scottish people are starting to have to think about how they really want the country to be run (instead of just complaining about how things are done in London). And that of course involves deciding what our national priorities are.

Everybody wants pretty much the same state - where values matter is in how we think we can get there, ie ‘intervention’ vs ’self-reliance’, rather than where we are trying to get there. Sort of associated is the question of what values represent - are they what we want or how we want to act? To my mind, your statement “If we can’t say what we want, we’re unlikely to get it” speaks of a grasping sort of values that focuses on taking rather than giving. Those who are poor in spirit ask “what can I have”, those who are rich ask “what can I give”. Rather than ask what the next generation can give I think we should be asking what they should have to give to future generations. This approach has the benefit of being potentially recursive, whereas the other must be repeated with every generation.

That’s my 2 cents worth for today.

If Zuckerman is a notoriously difficult interview, what’s wrong with the interviewer trying whatever technique is at hand to get him to open up for the paying customers? She’d've surely failed if she hadn’t, true? So why penalize taking a risk in an already doomed situation? Sounds like she was in a Kobayashi Maru scenario.

(Unfair of me to comment two months later, I suppose, when Dave may not be back to look in on his comment, so, as an exercise for the reader, come up with your own refutations.)

1) most of us did go in not expecting much, as has been the case with previous zuckerberg interviews, where the conversation is typically brief & not particularly revealing.

however, what we were NOT expecting was a) an interviewer who was overly focused on herself and/or her personal relationship with zuckerberg, and b) wasn’t very focused on asking [relevant] questions & instead spent more time expressing commentary.

2) valleywag didn’t “break the story” at all. owen live-blogged the event, but there was limited editorial commentary about what happened. in fact, owen is a friend of sarah lacy, and arguably downplayed the negative impact.

check techmeme river for the actual chronology: nick o’neill was the first notable critical voice that came out strongly against lacey, about 20 minutes after the keynote ended. next was daniel terdman at Geek Gestalt about a half-hour after that. my post was out about 2 hours later, and finally Valleywag’s slightly more critical piece (Twitterati lashes out…) another hour later. and again, note that Valleywag fingered the audience more than sarah.

so to be clear: we didn’t have our heads up our asses. we were reporting what happened. Valleywag tried to cover it up & redirect the source of the uprising to a “geek lynch mob”, which arrington later echoed.

so if you please nat — don’t downplay this event and blame it on some twitterati / digerati pulling a fast one on sarah, or on zuckerberg for being boring, or anything else.

this was all about sarah, and about her interaction with the audience.

for fuck’s sake.

- dave mcclure

check Techmeme river for the chronology. nick’s story came out after valleywag’s, but valleywag w

sure SXSW is a tech conference with people letting their hair down & blood-alcohol levels up, but STILL there are plenty of panels that have serious technology discussion. regardless, when 2,000 paying attendees are present at a keynote, it’s not unreasonable to expect a little bit of relevance in the keynotes.

Who can i pay to punch Mark Zuckerberg in his whiny piehole mouth, anyway? And when did SxSW turn from indie rock mecca into Trendy Techno-Fuckhead City?