[kerno]

Coming back to Oz from London put into perspective how far behind we are. With HN London now attracting so many people they've had to start charging a fee to get in, and the community built around Silicon Roundabout, it is very sad to come back home and see the fragmented efforts to build a startup group in Australia.

With Silicon Beach on and off, Startup Grind, lots of small meetups, and Fishburners in Sydney, there are certainly groups to build this community around but I still think we are years behind the critical mass of something like HN London. And that's just to talk about forums for people to gather in - it says nothing about our skills shortage.

I agree with Matt's points regarding our reliance on the resources industry. So many people head off to the mines on a fly-in-fly-out basis, and make incredible coin - but it won't last long-term and then our skill base will be incompatible with value-adding services industries.

However, I think we need successes before a great weight of people will shift towards STEM disciplines, in the same way that the dot-com frenzy saw Web Development course demand explode.

[jacques_chester]

Nitpick: labour isn't a homogenous, fungible good.

People who are good at trades are not 1-to-1 exchangeable with people who are good at STEM subjects.

[kerno]

No, probably not 1-to-1.

However, before the industrial revolution we were all toiling in fields, so I think perhaps labour is more fungible that you give it credit.

[jacques_chester]

Well now we sail off into matters of comparative advantage, division of labour / gains from trade and so on.

But the general point that labour and capital are highly heterogenous still stands. You can't pluck a boiler fitter out of the Pilbara, drop him at a desk in Perth, and expect to see anything useful for your web business any time soon. And vice versa.

[kerno]

I think we agree with each other.

I wasn't trying to claim that we can immediately shift these resources, but that this shift won't happen en masse until services has a bigger profile and more to offer than mining.

[jacques_chester]

Hostile agreement is a common thing hereabouts.

[kerno]

When Startup Aus have a meetup we should both go, so I can agree with you personally ;)