Well.... a surprise this morning in the keynote... and I don't just mean Oliver Driver's glasses. Microsoft extended an invitation to National (John Key) and Labour (David Cunliffe) to present their IT/Broadband strategies.

I genuinely enjoyed both these presentations, but then I am a bit of a political animal. A few of the thoughts that struck me:

1. Both these two gentlemen are smart, well spoken and have actually had a real job outside parliament.
2. They agree on more than they disagree on
3. Cunliffe was a bit disingenuous when he said National will be dicking around for 18 months. Key is on record saying they'll have diggers laying conduit by Christmas
4. Cunliffe didn't wow me as much as a spekaer this time as he did at the CIO conference last year-  that said I could still see myself voting for a Cunliffe lead Labour party
5. Key had the call of the day about people needing to use broadband for more than porn and online poker.
6. I'm not sure if Key is going to 'own' the digital strategy himself when they win the election. Not sure I'm much into Maurice to be honest.
7. Not sure how much depth National have. Key is brilliant, my observation of the rest is they are pretty mediocre.
8. Despite being a pretty hardcore Libertarian, I think the most efficient and effective approach will be for Chorus to own and managed a regulated return infrastructure network and make this available under open access. The irony is this is the National policy.

I didn't hang around for the last half of the keynote as I was presenting in the session afterwards. Photos below.