I love the idea of Kiva and have just made my 170th loan. If you'd like to start doing the same you Kiva is giving away free loans for people to try out the service.To sign up to Kiva, click here To View More >>

Early last year I had three things on my mind. I was researching the possible use of Amazon AWS for a project we were working on; I was watching the events at the Auckland Startup Weekend wishing I was there; and finally I was preparing for a presentation I was due to give at the College of Business at Massey University. It was a holiday weekend, so much to Sonya's dismay, I wondered if I could run my own Start Weekend. The question I asked myself was "Could I launch an internet business in one weekend, in the process write all the code, learn AWS including EC2, Route53, To View More >>

I've been so excited by this story since yesterday I just had to share. Yesterday Danny told me that one of our developers, Simon, had launched a game on the iTunes app store. I was interested but to be honest, at least initially, more polite than excited. That was until Simon introduced me to "Nutty Bugs", and then I was blown away. I am not easily impressed, but it's not an overstatement to say that I was stunned. Stunned, not just because I had no idea about the project, but because what they have created is so complete and professional. In six months they have not only developed a game, they've To View More >>

I just had a wonderful evening with CEOs from some of New Zealand's best companies. The group was brought together by Better By Design to visit some of the USA's best Design-led and Innovative companies. It's going to be an amazing week, challenging I am sure, but an interesting thing happened tonight: if you like, a small distinction became clear to me. There I was talking to Diego Rodriguez a partner at Ideo, a brilliant design company, and Perry Klebahn a consulting associate professor at Stanford Design School, two great people who were truly gracious in the knowledge they shared. To be honest, To View More >>

Wikipedia describes Empathy as the capability to share and understand another's emotions and feelings, and is characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes". This connection to others is both an honorable and natural feeling, but can also often drive us to do something that, is the completely wrong thing to do. Since joining the Fire Service I've seen many situations where peoples empathy for another has not only caused them to be unable to render help, but on occasions has actually put everyone in danger. In a blog post the other day Seth Godin talked about empathy and asked To View More >>

People with dirty jobs are happier In this movie Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs does two things, first he talks about a day he worked on a farm and amongst other things docks lambs. I saw this show and couldn't believe he did what he did. I thought it was inhumane and as it turns out initially he did too, but in an entertaining fashion he talks through his learning and explains. The second thing he does is he makes the point that in his opinion people with Dirty Jobs are happier. He puts forward a strong case that following the advice "Follow Your Passion" might be bad advice. For some it will To View More >>

'How did you become so wealthy?' is a question I've asked plenty of people in my life. But the answer I got from a very successful colleague of mine when I worked at Xerox wasn't about a product, or a service, or a sales  or marketing strategy. It was about a belief that underpinned everything he did. His answer was this. "I got rich by making other people rich... I add value to peoples lives." He took it upon himself every day, to go out and add value to peoples lives - whether it was his clients', or his customers' or his friends'. Now you're not necessarily going make people rich simply To View More >>

Don’t just sit there! Do something! Over the years I’ve been and done many things. Everyone has. In my case, I’ve been a Xerox salesman, a volunteer firefighter, and a successful entrepreneur. Believe it or not, all these seemingly unrelated personas had at least one thing in common, what I’m going to talk about today, and that is: A bias toward action. What do I mean by this? I mean, if there’s a choice between sitting in a conference room planning what I’m going to do, and getting out there and doing it, I hope that I choose action. This is not to knock planning, To View More >>

I'd like to think that I am more of a Greenie than some of the Greenies I know, so here is the good business stuff you can learn from the environmental movement. Only a little is about being green, and for some this might be only about the profit baby :-) I don't believe it's right to assume business is anti-environment, although our track track record could be better. But what we can learn from our environmental friends is that our environment is a reflection of us ... a reflection of our choices ... a reflection of our behavior and most importantly a reflection of our values and focus. Not the To View More >>

I came across this slideshow on Mashables website today. It explorers the question of what is Social Media? Just look at the stats, this isn't going away, and more importantly it's so exciting and powerful you've got to get involved. Of course please excuse the reference to teen sex and you know I don't know how to use F**K in a sentence but enjoy the story anyway.   View more documents from Marta Kagan.   To View More >>