A few days ago, I had the privilege of being invited to attend a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Internet in Australia. The event was held in Sydney and was organised by Peter Coroneos, the former CEO of the Internet industry association, and was supported by the “who’s who” of the Australian Internet industry.
As a former director of the association it was great catching up with past colleagues and journeying down memory lane together as we recounted how the Internet has transformed our lives. For the first time in Australia’s history we were no longer isolated by our geography as the Internet brought us within one hundred milliseconds of everywhere in the world.
I chatted with a director of the association who is now running a university business incubator program. He asked me what he should say to the budding entrepreneurs under his charge. I said to him, “Get them overseas as fast as possible and open their eyes to the fact that Australia is no longer geographically isolated.”
Amongst many other things, the speech made by Paul Fletcher, who is the Minister of Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, picked up on the point that Australians had embraced the global marketplace. They had done this not only as consumers but also from businesses investing in reaching overseas markets via the Internet. So watch out world, here us Aussies come!
Paul Fletcher - Ministry for Communications, CyberSafety and the Arts
During the evening, many industry luminaries were highlighted for their efforts, either as entrepreneurs, technical experts or from a policy perspective. It was also sad to hear of the passing of others who had contributed so much to not just the Australian Internet industry but played valuable roles on the global stage.
