Coronavirus cancellation
The year ahead?
Wow. Merely one month ago we were talking about what was in store for 2020 - and while all three of our panellists said coronavirus was likely to have an impact, I wonder how many of us anticipated what that actually meant.
This month we're not having an event, due to all the advice about social distancing and minimising the risk of infection. Nothing is more important than the safety of our community and the people around us. Please stay safe.
We did think about having a virtual meet-up, but our organisers have faced their own life disruptions - in small ways, such as working from home, or in big ways, such as having an overseas study opportunity cancelled - so that idea got away from us.
Thanks to everyone who completed the survey that was sent out last month - but here's one more question: would you be interested in a virtual meet-up? Especially if social distancing in Australia continues unchanged into next month? You can let us know by dropping us an email.
ICYMI
😷 Keeping track of coronavirus cases: the Financial Times is doing an impressive job visualising worldwide case trajectories; the ABC is across Australian infection rates; and COVID19 Australia is a Twitter account that's collecting all the numbers and tweeting links to more data
🥫 Remember: don't hoard food. There's plenty in Australia to feed us all. You don't need to hoard
📚 I dislike "best of" lists of books, movies, TV shows etc, because I know my own interests and don't want to feel the pressure of what you *should* read or watch. But if you're after some *friendly suggestions* to get you through these times, here are some books, TV shows, films
💻 The Australian Information Commissioner is taking Facebook to court over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, alleging the company breached privacy laws
About last month...
Many thanks again to our speakers last month - Bela Stantic, Susan Hetherington and Peter Marsh - who answered questions from Hacks/Hackers' Sarah Motherwell.
Here are some of the key takeaways from that chat:
When asked about what to expect this year, Bela said coronavirus. He said it was not yet a pandemic in the medical sense, but people were scared around the world
He explained his work as developing methods with computers that look to echo human reasoning, and he does this by looking at what people are talking about, what "sentiment" are they communicating
Bela said he could see how the sentiment of being scared was spreading and how much it was affecting economies, companies, mental health
Susan agreed, saying she expected "more xenophobia and closing borders"; Peter said it wasn't yet clear how the virus would impact other world events this year, such as the Olympics
But when asked if we were ready for a pandemic, Peter said no - social media magnifies things and it's easy for bad stuff to go viral (no pun intended)
Bela said we have credible tools to identify when people are lying and, with regards to coronavirus, he wasn't seeing a lot of "fake" tweets, but real sentiments
Peter was also focussed on covering the US election later this year, saying it was important for him to think about three types of readers - the "hungry" people who want to know all the details; the people who want context, and who dip in and out of what's going on; and then the people who don't care, they just want to know when something really big happens
When asked how she prepared journalism students for the workforce, Susan said so much of it was still "good old-fashioned journalism" - thinking and acting like a journalist, and then deciding what was the best way to tell the story