However, the hype of fear continued. Planes were going to fall out of the sky and missiles would launch themselves. Today, we look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. There has been much comparison between Y2K and global warming of late, so can parallels be drawn and lessons learnt?

Australia is stuck in the slow lane of the information superhighway. Unless we change gears soon, we will end up becoming road kill. The way we interact with the world is changing as we move from push models to pull models (PDF 276KB).

The bookies had Edward Mandla, Liberal candidate for Sydney at 51 to 1. There were those who where questioning why the Liberals were even contesting the seat of Sydney in the recent New South Wales elections. There was talk of a possible upset by the Greens or Labor taking the seat from the Independent candidate - Clover Moore.

No one gave Mandla a chance. Yet he came second on first preferences, forcing Moore to preferences. She eventually won the seat with less than 50 per cent of the vote after all preferences were exhausted*.

Mandla’s strong showing was against opponents with very large budgets and access to greater resources - resources paid for by the taxpayer. His budget was less than $50,000. So how did we compete and, as some say, out campaign? A big part of Mandla’s campaign revolved around a unique online strategy.

The coming twelve months appear to be a watershed year for the media industry. Channel Nine has appointed one of its celebrities to run the network, the ABC will be looking for a new managing director - who will need to be pure of heart - and the Federal Government will once again try to change the cross-media laws.