I'm very proud tonight of my daughter Alex and her friend Elisha who have just finished a short film for a school project. Alex is 11, and they have made the whole movie below themselves. The challenge was to do an "Olympic Bid" on behalf of their chosen city Japan, and as part of that they did a news item. Unfortunately this movie doesn't do them justice. They were working with a poor green screen (for a start it was blue), poor lighting, and of course all the iterations of change to file format from opiginal capture with Videocue Pro, to iMovie and then moving to youtube means they have lost a lot of the original quality. LOL the scary part is I am sure the girls aspire to have a setup like that at www.geekbrief.tv They did the whole thing from research, story writing, video capture, image selection, acting, editing etc themselves* . Anyway, they may have a long way to go, but they have made an excellent effort. They love playing with the technology, are really comfortable in front of the camera and I think one day they want to be just like Happyslip ProductionsHere is this weeks effort One from last yearAnd one they did when Flat Stanley came to visit. * They get me to hold the camera from time to time and act as the camera man for a little while, basically pushing the start and stop button on the software but on the whole this is them :-)

What a cool weekend. I spent yesterday helping Sonya and Lorraine prepare for last night's Fire Brigade Christmas party. That in itself was lots of fun, but the party was even better. It's always great getting together with this group, but last night was particularly special as it was held at our house. The food was amazing, a few people drank a little to much, but that was harmless, and we sat outside around the fire until the wee hours of the morning talking. Very nice. At 9 am however it was back into professional mode, as we had the important task of transporting Santa around the neighborhood visiting all the kids and handing our bags of lollies. That's always lots of fun, but this time, for the first time, I got to drive, which was very cool. After that Santa joined us for a Brigade party for the children of the Fire Fighters. A little way of saying thank you for all the time we are away from home supporting the community. This year was especially nice. Everyone was in a fantastic mood and the troubles of the year seemed to have been put behind us. The sun was out, everyone was happy and, best of all, the kids set up what ended up being an amazing water fight ... What more could someone ask for? Thanks Santa, and thanks Donna for sharing the photos.

My day job is Managing Director of Queensberry, but about 3 years ago I joined the New Zealand Fire Service as a Volunteer Firefighter. Not long after joining I extended my role to include Medical First Response and I now hold the rank of Senior Fire Fighter. This has offered me an amazing array of experiences and learning opportunities. I hadn't expected it, but there are some incredible parallels between handling emergency situations and running high growth organizations like ours. I use this learning daily and have found the stories of jobs I have attended to be powerful metaphors for what we experience daily at work. I'm also sure I've told stories of how I have loved Business since my early teens, in fact probably my whole life. As a result of this fascination, lots of reading and growing up in a family business the receptors in my brain are hard wired to see connections between running a business and almost everything else and have learnt so much from my kids. Don't tell anyone, but there are so many parallels between parenting and HR, developing strategy, day to day management and of course leadership. Over time I hope to share some of these stories in a series of blog posts, I trust you will find them interesting and thought provoking. Please leave your thoughts as comments to these posts. Please also read my Firefighters disclaimer

Finally the OCR (Official Cash Rate) in New Zealand has been dropped to 8.0%. As an exporter we have been doing it tough for years now and maybe this is the relief we need. http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/news/2008/3376920.html I used to joke, in a black humour kind of way, that what exporters needed was a "mad cow" to take the edge off the economy. Nothing else seemed like it would work ... Then with some sadness I realized we already had one, but she was running the country, time would not be on her side forever ... Unfortunately our relief comes only because the economy overall seems to be screwed. Forex data from : http://www.dukascopy.com/ via the Forex Charts Widget

In my last blog entry I mentioned our ambition to be a "legendary" company. This may sound shallow to some, especially those skeptical of company "vision statements" and empty promises from the board as to how "life is going to be different now" For us however we hold this desire very close to our heart, and although growth is important to us, growth without quality and a focus on sound profitability becomes just an issue of ego. We are a family based company, and some of our focus comes from a division of responsibility, but really it comes from a desire to be exceptional in all aspects of our business. Being world class, is not for us defined purely on the basis of size, but being world leading in - HR - Brand Development - Design - IT - Product and service integration - Social Responsibility and Sustainability Having grown up reading stories of other legendary brands and admired and modeled ourself on the values of companies like Apple it is exciting that now we have clients who now hold our brand as one of their "love marks" To read about "love marks" have a look at Kevin Roberts blog and please please read his book "love marks" ... simply inspiring. http://krconnect.blogspot.com