heaps going on

After settling ourselves in Wellington and beginning to enjoy new opportunities and the coffee, Glynn and I are now back down in Christchurch for a short while looking after Sam, Lily and Mia - while Brett and Sarah enjoy a much deserved trip of a lifetime to Europe. After a traumatic first attempt Glynn's now changing Sam's nappies like a pro. Unfortunately he's on his way back to San Francisco for another week of meetings and escaping the daily duties. The grandparents are around as well though, so we are all pitching in.

Glynn and I have had a productive time in Wellington so far. I've been picking up some more government consulting work for Fivepeas Limited, and networking with some great people in Wellington for lifebox - silicon welly is a such small town. Glynn's been enjoying meeting the folks at the Sun Head Office, and having fun on the fishing expeditions even though we've really only had success at Castlepoint so far. Our bad run with the fishing has been totally surpassed by the fact he won us a trip for two to Martinborough for a couple of nights at a five star resort! I never win anything. It must be the luck of the irish ..or the 6 bottles of wine he had to buy to be in the draw at a local winetasting we went to at the Boatshed. According to certain irish folk, the luck of the irish means you have good luck one day and then bad luck the next (i guess that could count as the hangover?).



xero IPO

High levels of interest and excitement in the city about the xero IPO. I've been using xero and really like the interface and the simple step processes throughout the application. For me personally the *real* excitement around xero is the future potential uses for the online platform model, its not just "software as a service"... but "software as part of a live platform".... which can provide the user with all sorts integrated and hence convenient, internet-based tools. A very basic example of this is that ASB is already signed up and feeding realtime data into xero for its customers - I intend to ask my bank whether it will do the same for me. Imagine what other payment or administrative services can be linked to your online business accounts using the internet or mobile devices?

Whatever the future holds for xero and its IPO (and I wish them well), for the moment the real benefits of the product for me are:

* The reports are done for me so I limit the time my accountant has to spend on them
* My accountant can view my accounts and reports information from his home in CHCH, without having to send data up and down the country via email
* I can generate and send an invoice with the push of a button - from within xero
* I know that if anything happens I have a backup of my account information elsewhere, that's invaluable to me.
* I don't have to worry that I'm using the latest version - I know that for my monthly fee its constantly being updated and improved, with new features added.

I just don't want to go back to a desktop application.