Unlimited Potential Event: Tale of Four Cities

Trying to start up your own global web business isn't easy - trying to start it up from Wellington also has its challenges, but its inspiring to see young start up companies going global from the harbour city. There is a definite web startup culture in Wellington that differs from anywhere else I have been in the country. I often think it's comparable to the coffee culture that pervades the city. The good-hearted nature of the local coffee houses that means additions to the coffee community are often celebrated because it all helps to foster the culture.

Attracting highly skilled staff and making sure we educate young people about the benefits of getting into IT are all part of ensuring the creativity that's going on the capital continues to grow. What do current highly skilled immigrants of the IT variety think of living and working in New Zealand? What keeps them here? How can we attract more young ruby developers over to New Zealand? How can we attract young kiwis back from overseas?

Unlimited Potential and the Wellies (a group of 'expats' who have moved here from overseas and chosen to settle in Wellington) are hosting an event on Tuesday night next week - called the Tale of Four Cities. Its a relaxed panel discussion over pizza and beer about why ICT professionals from overseas are settling in Wellington, what brings them here, what they enjoy about living in the city, and what makes them want to stay?

Hosted by Colin Jackson the panelists include Adam Shand who was born in England but grew up moving back and forth between New Zealand and California. He spent three years in Alaska working for one of the largest ISPs in North America and while in Oregon he founded Personal Telco, a non-profit which worked with local communities to provide free wireless internet access to the public. Five years ago he chose to move back to Wellington undertaking a mixture of management and technical work, as current digital operations manager for Weta Digital.

Professor Mark J. Ahn, PhD. is Professor and Chair, Science & Technology Entrepreneurship with a joint appointment from the faculties of Commerce & Administration and Science, at Victoria University of Wellington. The role of the Chair is to focus efforts for research to build understanding of scientific entrepreneurship in international and national settings, and the processes required to enable successful commercialization of science and technology-based innovations. Would love to hear Professor Ahn's views about settling in New Zealand from a personal perspective as well as his views about the capital.

John Clegg CEO of ProjectX and co-founder of zoomin, was involved in the Google Summer of Code initiative, and has worked in on startups in London, Asia, India, and Australia. John is passionate about fostering local talent - in a ProjectX Press release he says - "We are totally committed to getting talented young people working in this city and we are dedicated to making this city a Mecca for technology graduates from all over New Zealand."

When: Tuesday, 6 May 2008 - 5.30pm - 8.30pm
Where: Syn Bar, 4 Bond Street, Wellington

You can RSVP here. Come along and enjoy the pizza and beer, join in audience discussion and mix and mingle with "the wellies".

nectarine and white chocolate muffins

While down south Glynn and I fed ravenous crew members with some recipes from home and a new spin on my favourite muffin recipe. We were lucky enough to get sponsorship from Webb's Orchard in Cromwell. During our stay they let us onto the orchard to pick as many nectarines as we could carry from older trees ladened with fruit too ripe by the time they would be boxed for sale. Consequently, they were perfect for eating and the crew had to contend with a constant supply of nectarines in the fruit bowl, nectarine cobbler for dessert, and the seemingly popular nectarine and white chocolate muffins.

Glynn started a discussion on the pavlova western group on facebook asking crew members for feedback on the catering - sure hope they go easy on us. I'm just glad no one got sick and every had enough at meal times. It was such a pleasure feeding the hardworking, grateful bunch who expressed their thanks with hugs and an appetite for seconds. Missing them all already.

In the meantime for the benefit of the crew and anyone else with an abundant supply of nectarines - here's the recipe for the muffins:

1 egg
½ C milk
1 C yogurt – I use plain natural unsweetened yogurt
½ C melted butter
1 tsp vanilla

3 tsp baking powder
1/3 C white sugar
2/3 C brown sugar
2 C flour
2 C white chocolate crushed
2 ripe nectarines

(I just used small white chocolate buttons or you can bash up an entire bar of king sized white chocolate into good bite sized pieces. Its important to get as much chocolate into the muffins as possible.)

Put the first five ingredients into a bowl and mix together, then add remaining ingredients and blend until just mixed. Fill muffin tin and bake on a high rack in the oven at 200 degrees celcius for 12-15 mins until the muffins spring back to the touch.

please hold caller

I don't know whether it was the dry weather, the dust or just plain bad luck but after three weeks of highlights down south shooting a pavlova western my laptop and phone decided to give up both at the same time. $1000 to fix the laptop which is so not worth doing, and Telecom are mystified about the state of my phone which refuses to turn on but flashes its little red charge light woefully.

So finally, after much avoidance I'm going to join the mac family. Glynn is hopeful we can transfer my Adobe CS3 Flash license over to the mac, and we will be able run windows in parallel. Grateful for webmail and all my online applications which kept me from losing touch.

I'm also using the opportunity to switch to vodafone to get a better phone and call plan and a SIM card. Just charging my new phone at the moment so apologies to anyone who has tried to get hold of me since last week - your calls and messages will be somewhere in the ether. The good news is I can keep my old cell phone number. Hurrah!

making a western - yee-hah!

What a great team Mike and Inge have assembled for this movie. Everyone is passionate about film-making and each their craft, be it sound, makeup, photography or our awesome Assistant Director Rebecca Rowe. Glynn and I on the other hand have lost our own appetite for food and catering. Our ability to judge amounts has become more sporadic as the numbers joining the crew fluctuate, tonight running out of potatoes being a good example. We get hugs from the crew though so we must be doing something right.

Just spent the week in Tekapo which had some awesome locations for cowboys and was such a lovely wee town, reminding me of Wanaka when I was a little kid. Kind of untouched and still serviced by a small Four Square supermarket. Everyone knows everyone and most of the locals double-up roles in the town - like Stuie Inch who pulled up in a scooter one day to tell me he was the postman for the town and had a package delivery for us up at the Post Office, and then the next day appeared across the fence to return a saddle in his role as manager of the sale yards next door to our holiday home.

We've settled in our Cromwell digs and are here to stay for the next 15 days. We now have an internet connection at the house which is just making a huge difference to the amount of work Glynn and I can get done in between catering... and to the amount of posts that can be put up on the mifilms blog. Important as we now have a loyal band of followers pestering us for updates.

There have been so many highlights and its only been a week - the team dynamic, the weather, the fact that Dad has come up and been such a great help, particularly for Glynn and I. The community spirit of Jenny and Peter Rayne who let us literally camp at their at their B & B in Tekapo during the day and work online using their wifi - and made the crew muffins!! The farmers who have been so generous with access to their land and to the stunt cowboys who came 4 days running with their horses and saddles. And tonight seeing a first rough cut of the film - amazing to see the hard work and attention to detail coming to life. Everyone is stoked.

webstock wrap up

What an amazing few days at webstock. An incredible lineup of speakers. My notebook was full at the end with advice, ideas and loads of recommended reading.

Favourite sessions for me:

Tom Coates spoke about how web platforms create best value by being repositories of data, on which other things can be built. Platforms that facilitate connectivity between other third party applications - "must play nicely with others".

Simon Willeson gave a tutorial on OpenID. A practical explanation and a walk through the authorisation process making the benefits of OpenID really clear and understandable. A webplatform can use OpenID in different ways - but I was particularly interested in its use to authenticate third party business applications attached to platforms.

Jason Santa Maria talked about how design can not help but communicate messages to users, whether good or bad. He emphasised that having a strong story is key to a good design structure and providing "high value information" to users an important principle. "Design so web development is driven by the message not technology".

There were several other talks that I also *loved* including the very frank fireside chat Rowan Simpson had with Sam Morgan. It must be weird when people you don't know just start referring to you by your first name, like you're part of the family. I really enjoyed hearing about the types of investments he's made post the sale of TradeMe and the reasons why.

Glad the sessions will be posted on the webstock site so I can see the ones I missed.

Thanks to the webstock team for giving me the opportunity to attend via the scholarship programme - I had a blast and learnt heaps of practical tips I can apply to my own project.

mike culver speaking in wellington next week

Gutted I will miss a talk by mike culver next week at Creative HQ while away down south feeding cowboys. Catalyst IT and Unlimited Potential host on Tuesday from 6pm till 8pm. The spiel sounds great -

"Amazon spent over a decade developing a world-class technology and content platform that powers Amazon web sites for millions of customers every day. Most people think "Amazon.com" when they hear the word; however developers and entrepreneurs are excited to learn that there is a separate technology arm of the company, known as Amazon Web Services or AWS. Using AWS, software developers can build applications leveraging the same robust, scalable, and reliable technology that powers retail business. AWS has now launched ten services with open API's for developers to build applications, with the result that almost 330,000 developers have registered on Amazon's developer site to create applications based on these services.

Mike Culver joined the Developer Relations Group of Amazon Web Services in 2006. Mike brings with him fifteen years of technology leadership experience, including at companies such as Microsoft. In addition Mr. Culver has a strong background running an IT organization, with over a decade of experience in the U.S. Electrical Wholesale Distribution (fittings) industry. And as a Web Services Evangelist at Amazon, he helps developers take advantage of disruptive technologies that are going to change the way we think about computer applications, and the way that businesses compete."

Interested to see his take on the next generation of web platforms and how they are re-orientating the interaction between consumers and third parties. Impressed with what I've heard about Amazon's storage services and would love to hear more about other the many other API's Amazon has released. Word has it that a videocast might be made so that chumps like me that can't make it, can still hear what he has to say. Sweet.

pavlova western

Last time my brother asked me to help him shoot a movie I was given $100 and asked to cater for the weekend on location at his flat. On the way to the shoot Mike called and asked me to bring my hair dryer and make up. On arrival I was instantly promoted to the position of hair and makeup artist and second assistant director. That was a long time ago and thankfully this time they have a slightly larger crew. Last year Glynn and I made a promise to my brother Mike and his fiancée Inge that we would cater their movie. Consequently we are off to Central Otago at the end of the week to film a western. You can follow the exploits of independent film-making at its best on the pavlova western blog that has just been set up - see www.mifilms.co.nz.

Glynn and I will also be working while down there, in between peeling potatoes and making muffins. While we both have an ability to work from anywhere - we will be putting that concept to the ultimate test by heading into rural New Zealand. Today Glynn and the production manager will be checking out whether Telecom New Zealand can deliver the goods and ultimately the bandwidth for Glynn to be able to communicate with his team in San Francisco, and so I can skype and liaise with Wellington. Fun and games.

foofun

Kiwifoo provides a huge opportunity to meet people doing amazing things in technology and other fields - and to share ideas and innovation, and thoughts about the future. All sorts of ideas can come about when you get smart people in a room from different disciplines, firing off each other and kiwifoo feels just like a giant thinktank. Those returning had a keen appreciation of how discussions at foo last year had an ongoing impact on the ICT sector. My observation was that it meant many sessions this year were well focussed on an outcome that meant further action post foo.

Like others have said the conversations sometimes shared in the corridors and over Russell Brown's coffee machine are the gold nuggets of foo. Some highlights for me were a session with thefreenet and others about establishing a free mesh wifi network in Wellington's CBD - mauricio provides a good summary of what's going on with the project. During a break I had a great discussion with Nic Steenhout from Mambo about how a start up like me can go about ensuring usability and accessibility in the development of web platforms. Who knew all these amazing people are working away right here in New Zealand. Lots of fun playing werewolf till all hours and awesome food - Glynn and I took note as we're off soon to cater my brother's movie down south so we listened out for positive comments and there were lots of them.

Nat and Jenine organise a great event, and make everyone feel welcome. Thanks heaps for inviting me and for having Glynn and I around for cockle hunting and kayaking on Monday - great foo related fun.