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Talk of the Day
Paul Kaan was introduced by the Chairman of the day Kay Stevens. The theme of Paul’s presentation was the way in which the digital age is transforming our world, with a thoughtful link between Twitter and his experiences in making wine in Moldovia, Burgundy & Champagne in the 1990's.
When he initially moved to Europe to study viticulture, Paul travelled to the Bordeau region of France, working in a Cooperative and running a winery ad interim. His biggest challenge was the language and communications.
He then traveled to Moldova, a very poor and undeveloped country where the contrast with the wealth and resources available in France was stark. The Moldovians used old wooden vats, large but inefficient and antiquated pumps, primitive technology. He often found wild dogs wandering around the winery that would occasionally become the main meal. Paul was confronted with having to learn Romanian, Turkish and Russian.
On returning to France, he worked in the Burgundy region at a chateau where he learned the language of wine in French. Again his biggest challenge was learning the language and communications, eventually becoming quite proficient.
Since his return to Australia, Paul has been working as a wine consultant to independent wine retailers, Slow Food Victoria and Melbourne Food & Wine. By contrasting his experiences in the 1990s with those now Paul endeavoured to open members’ eyes to the possibilities that will come from embracing the digital age. He explored three themes: the impact on language and communications; markets and exchange of knowledge; and imagination and disruption. He explained how Twitter was helping to create new market places, both for ideas, and products & services. These market places crossed all boundaries, enabling innovations and changing the way business is done. Despite such networks being considered less personal, it takes time to develop them, building goodwill over periods of time for mutual benefit.
To understand the power of these new tools, Paul gave the example of the Scottish schoolgirl Martha Payne. In April 2012, Martha, a 9 years old, began a blog called Neverseconds as part of a school writing project. Much like a restaurant review it features daily entries on the £2 school meal, her thoughts on the food and its quality, a count of the number of hairs, a health rating, a picture, and marks out of a score of 10. Her blog hit local and then national headlines after gaining support from Jamie Oliver. By 15th June 2012 it had gained 3 million hits, attracting considerable media interest and the opportunity to generate revenue from the publishing rights. The consequential revenue generated was donated to the charity “Marys Meals” with an original target of £7,000, by late Novermber 2012 she had already raised £123,000.
Paul described how such sites are less about advertising and more about community, a point which was taken up in question time concerning the risks of obsessions with viral networks and the loss of personal communication skills. Paul agreed and finished by advising us to learn how to use the technology for the advantage of the Club’s activities. He recommended investing time using and developing the right community networks and sharing information of value, adding that if it does not add value to our lives, do not do it.
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