“I do a lot of counselling work with men,” explains Aladdin Jones, a psychotherapist and community facilitator. “I recently spoke with a guy whose dad was a farmer who used to work flat-out seven days a week. ‘Oh yeah, I remember my dad played with me once,’ he said to me. ‘It was with a tractor at Christmas.’ It wasn’t that his dad didn’t mean well, but he just wasn’t available.

A lot of my career has been focused on digital media and managing the rapid transformation that often demands within businesses. I’m signed up to the idea that new media provides unprecedented opportunities to connect with customers and solve problems. But as exciting as technology is, it’s just the enabler, it’s not the idea.

Ever seen Kiss play live? I have. A couple of times. And I’ve also seen a Kiss tribute band. Every time it’s been a great night out. But I’ve always been struck by how crap their songs are. I mean, really, really crap.

“Mateship” is a concept that’s as fundamentally Australian as drinking cold beer or sniggering at England’s top order. Long associated with the WW1 Diggers, it’s an idea that suggests men offering resolute support for one another during tough times. Plus the distribution of really dumb nicknames.

There’s a whole lot of hype when it comes to digital media. Lots of stats, lots of comparisons, lots of videos with Right Here, Right Now as the soundtrack. Cutting between the hype and the reality can be confusing. Above all, one thing is clear to me – the amount of change we’re experiencing is unprecedented.

I’m a man. I grew up in a family of three boys. I went to a boys’ school until years 11 and 12. The vast majority of my best friends are men. I work with the men’s health charity, Movember. And I’ve created The Father Hood with two other dads. So, I spend a lot of time hanging out with men and thinking about ‘man stuff’.

Yesterday I was trying to get a taxi, in the market of getting from point A to point B. I was in the city, in a hurry for an important appointment, it was raining, I only needed to take a short trip and price wasn’t high on the consideration list.

A quick email planted the seed for The Father Hood. Andrew McUtchen and I had been working on a project together. We’d met through work, but quickly connected as humans and talked about dad and life stuff more than work stuff.

A couple of years ago, 1000 musicians from Cesena, Italy came together in a field to play Learn to Fly, their way of asking the Foo Fighters to come to their town. The could have writer letters and signed petitions. But new technology makes filming a sharing a video like that so easy.

I attended a Parental Leave Equality Roundtable discussion on behalf The Father Hood, led by the fantastic Emma Walsh from Parents At Work. We heard about the huge disparity in availability and take-up of paid parental leave between women and men and how workplaces such as Medibank and Spotify are successfully getting on the front foot to address this.