gatewatching

I’m packing up my cubicle at Gatewatching HQ today, getting ready for the big move to Sydney for the new job at GetUp!

I’m excited about the new challenge, but it’s a sad moment, and the conference that Axel’s been liveblogging here has been, for me, an occasion to catch up with the colleagues who have made this job such a valuable and fascinating experience. My Gatewatching comrades Axel and Barry are included in this, but there’s also Terry Flew (who’s been a valued mentor and friend for many years), and OLO’s Graham Young who’s also become a good mate as a result of this job. I have active collaborations with all these folks that I’m looking forward to delivering over coming months.

Perhaps it’s ironic that my last act in the job before coming onto campus to pack up was attending an excellent plenary by Mark Deuze on the accelerating impermanence of life and work in contemporary culture. Mark’s presentation is part of ongoing research that extends the arguments offered in his book, Media Work. In the presentation, he was thinking through the mobility and liquidity of modern life. It was food for thought for me personally - after less than a year here, and a little over two years in a previous job in the UK, I’ll now have had more employers in half a decade than my father has in his whole career, which he’s spent happily in the city he was born in. What’s gained and lost in the move towards contant mobility?

Other people will be packing their offices today, and thinking about impermanence, including the outgoing Senators of the Australian Democrats. The Democrats have been an important part of Australian political history, but in particular bloggers and blog-watchers will be wishing Andrew Bartlett all the best in post-political life. It’s a great shame that the boldest experiment in Australian political blogging is now coming to an end. Lots of stuff about this around the blogs - I’ll leave it at linking to Andrew’s own post detailing the last question asked by a Democrat in the Senate, on child protection.

It’s also worth noting that Andrew was representing Queensland in the senate, the state in which I’ve lived my entire life (apart from the sojourn in Britain). Suddenly, there is a brace of Queenslanders at the highest echelons of public life, but people like Andrew have been central in incrementally changing the image of the State in the minds of other Australians. I think many of my friends and colleagues have been helping out there, too. I’ll be leaving the State for an extended period now, and I’ll miss it terribly, but I expect to be amazed each time I return at the rapidity of the changes happening Statewide, not least to the landscape of Brisbane.

I guess nothing lasts forever any more.

Uncategorized Andrew Bartlett, Mark Deuze, Milestones