Blogs

Creative September

Diapason creative - September Newsletter

Diapason’s resonances this past month

Wind of Change

I rarely listen to multipart podcast series. I tend to binge rather than schedule, so this would be too competing with my workload. I stumbled though last month on Wind of Change from Patrick Radden Keefe. The song that gives it name to the podcast has been part of my teenage years - and this is when (teen+early adulthood) we forge our deepest sensory memories and tastes in music, as is known and used by music-based therapy for Alzeihmer patients. I can’t even remember if the song itself was played to get my attention to it, or whether the name only was sufficient. Either way, I ended up hooked. Full disclosure: I listened at 1.2x and 1.5x speed as I found it incredibly slow - but that may be just me. The investigation is fascinating, full of colourful characters, pieces of historical trivia, and I really recommend listening to the story.
The 2 bonus episodes are also great, illustrating how musing can influence our lives across and in spite of political and geographical limitations.

Continue reading

Balance

A Quality Management System is often represented as a pyramid. Which is a relevant analogy. It has some “depth”, it is not a flat structure, and it matches well the hierarchical nature of many human thinking processes, of organisational structures, and of many information system paradigms (e.g. folders/subfolders).

Consultants and other experts who use this analogy typically describe from 3 to 6 levels. All these options are valid. A QMS does not have - by essence - 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 levels. It is a design decision, not an analytical result.

Continue reading

Customer-No-Service

After some spam issues already with my first email SAAS (Namecheap) for diapason.consulting, I had moved my email services to my Google Workspace subscription, which I had upgraded to the second tier, including a supposedly professional level email server services.

Several weeks of frustration later, after having setup SPF, DKIM, DMARC, with my emails still ending up widely in spams, I contacted google workspace support.

The support chatbot questions, over a couple of minutes, led me to this point with a human support person.

Continue reading

Workflows

Workflows

The invention and spread of writing did not turn everyone into a literary creator. Neither did the printing press, typewriters, home printers or word processors. The democratisation of home studios, electronic music equipment and pro-quality plugins did not turn every bedroom muso or DJ into Jean Michel Jarre or Deadmau5. Like Jordan Tanner @jrdntnnr explained to John Flowers, “having the latest, flashiest Nikon camera […] doesn’t automatically make you a professional photographer”.

Continue reading

Creative August

Diapason’s resonances this past month

CreativeAI_Sydney

I just received my invitation to DALL-E 2 and have started playing with it as you can guess from the images on this post. I haven’t used Midjourney and Gaugan yet. Beyond the “fun” of it, I have been blown away by the quality and depth of some of some of the artworks I have seen recently, like this journey or this landscape.

I am so looking forward to explore this field further at the upcoming Creative AI Symposium. Prof. O. Bown has designed an exciting program with many talented artists, researchers and practitioners over 2+ days here in Sydney (and online). Free registration here. I am honored to chair one of the industry panels where we will hear more from Tomasz Bednarz, Johna Barthelemey, Bhautik Joshi and Jess Edwards

Continue reading

Creative July

Diapason creative - July Newsletter

Diapason’s resonances this past month

Dope news from Lili Alaska.
Nice concerts recently in Bondi and in the iconic Powerhouse;
Glad Lili went through the French tradition that has been forging characters at the real #FeteDeLaMusique since the 80s: packing a band setup in less than 4 minutes under the rain :D
When the Roots are Deep, new single just released with Santino Salvadore. Give it a spin here as well.

Continue reading

Creative AI Symposium

Sydney Creative AI Symposium.

At Diapason we are really excited to be part of the organising committee for the upcoming Sydney Creative AI Symposium. This will happen in August 18th-20th at UNSW School of Art & Design, Paddington Campus, on Gadigal Land.

This event will bring together technologists, artists, arts organisations and researchers based in and around Sydney to showcase work, to take stock of what impact AI and generative technologies are having, now and in the future, to solve technological problems and to design the best world we can for arts communities. We are calling out to artists, entrepreneurs, cyber-musicians and AI whisperers to let us know what you are experimenting. Your ideas will shape the format of the event. The full annoucement is there.

Continue reading

Diapason Offsite

Melbourne festival off.

Great day today in a cold and wet Melbourne. Very excited to meet up the next two days with the many participants, speakers and panelists of the Digital Health festival 2022.

For the occasion, I got inspired by the European/French “festival off” tradition and decided to organise a couple of get-togethers, after hours and in parallel with the official festival program.

For starters, I will welcome all early founders, including founders so early that they haven’t flicked the switch yet, to a cozy “blues counseling” session. And what better for that than a blues-inspired venue? From 5:30 to 7pm, Tuesday 31 of May, meet up at Beneath Driver Lane

Continue reading

Regulations never sleep

Regs never sleep. And they can wake you up early. Early in the day and early in the startups life-cycle.

When pitching for an early round, it’s tempting to think “Investors at this stage just need 1 slide or 2 to present our classification and a vague regulatory plan. In any case, they can always ask later, during the due diligence”.

Experience proves that investors have done their homework:

Continue reading

Tiro Cruzado

Groove of the day - Tiro Cruzado - Cross Fire

A groovy bassline is the best possible start for a Wednesday.

I discovered the track on Remi’s Delirium, an Orbital Radio show, also available here. Released by Sergio Mendes on Brazil 1988. This infectious bassline is from Nathan Watts, who has played on many of Stevie Wonder’s hits and tours.

I experienced for the first time with this track the fact that music.youtube is different to “regular” youtube.

Continue reading