In between seminars and hunting for lunch at Sydney's CEBIT conference, I met with Laurel Papworth to ask her all about the Australian web scene. Laurel Papworth is a social media strategist, Australia's top blogger, a keynote speaker and teacher. She has an interest in psychology and anthropology and a strong technical background.

Laurel is what they call an ‘early adopter’ of the internet, catching on to its possibilities back in ’89, while working on the internet backbone. But it was the US series Twinpeaks that really got her hooked on it; as she became a moderator for its forum…loving the way people gathered there to discuss the show and share ideas and insights. Her vision for today’s internet has come from that experience; “two years ago I was asked about my vision of the future of the internet” she says, “but my vision was what I saw back in 89” it is “not about going to a webpage and viewing it passively” she says, it is about “conversation and communication”.

Laurel is in the "business of being social”. The tagline of her blog used to be ‘the dialogue is the content’ which centred on her idea that the internet should be about “creating discussion around content,” but as she got involved with more companies using the internet for marketing purposes, she moved to a more business focused dialogue, sharing her insights on web conferences and marketing seminars on “how to use social media for work and how to make money from it”.

Preaching to the converted is not what Laurel’s like, nor does she teach students that are merely interested in “what they need to know to pass the exams”. “ I enjoy going to conferences where people do not know all about the internet options”, she says, “conferences with accountants or doctors where there may be one or two people on facebook and none on twitter.”
Her speaker assignments have taken her all over the world: to the Middle East, teaching Saudi Arabian women how to blog or giving internet workshops in Singapore. There are definite differences in these countries approaches to the internet, she says: “the Singapore government does not want to do anything on third party networks, preferring to do everything “on their own branded site” an approach springing from the Singaporean adversion to inserting themselves into and their affinity with “defined boundaries”..whereas legal issues in the Middle East dictate that many companies prefer to do marketing fully on third party sites so as to avoid direct responsibility.

The Australian webscene is full of people with “good ideas” and the possibility to find pre-angel funding amongst friends, family and fools (the three F’s as she calls them) but the Australians lack the determination to “follow-through” Laurel says. This is partly to do with the lack of infrastructure support for web companies by the Australian government and industry, but also about many founders’ intention to be acquired by larger companies such as Google. There is funding for early stage start-ups but not much to grow, is Laurel’s experience, so many companies sell or move abroad, a recent example being Rising Sun Pictures which sold to Warner, who then took the product worldwide.

Laurel has stopped thinking about the men-women divide in the Australian internet scene a long time ago; “I learned early on to ignore it, because I realised that when I went to conferences where there were only men, and I started thinking about it, it made me a really bad presenter”. Those days are far behind, although she admits that all too often the “community managers are women, and the men are the high level experts, the speakers at conferences. Traditional role patterns exist here too, she says: “many web companies consist of one male and one female founder: the man taking care of the back end technology and the woman working on the community and the marketing.” But, there are women founders that do this well, she says, for example Kylie of Australia’s largest parenting community Essential Baby.

In her work Laurel comes across a lot of misunderstandings on how important online communities are, and companies that just shut down sites without informing or migrating users to other sites, frustrate her, after all she believes: “the internet is all about interaction”

Thank you for interacting with thenextwomen at CEBIT, Laurel!