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 >>

Hi everyone, I've got busy and having so much fun living life with my direct and Queensberry family. I wish I could get back here, but right now may I just share a video that echoes my desire for us all to be grateful :-) 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 >>

Every so often I come across a project that speaks to my interest in celebratining human interaction, story telling and technology. This one certainly does that. You too will see why I feel curious about how the world is feeling right now and how long it will be before you are curious too? Once you've watched the movie, go and play at http://www.wefeelfine.org/, it's fascinating. Thanks to Justine for sharing this video. It's funny, we must have been on the same wave length tonight. I saw Justin's tweet about this TED video, excitedly I wrote this post and then found he'd done the same. I think To View More >>

Derek Sivers did a talk at TED about this crazy dancing guy and what we can learn from him in terms of leadership, and more importantly about the importance of the first few followers. "If you want a movement, a leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous". What you really need however is the first few followers, you need to nurture these people as they indicate to the masses that following is ok. Because they help to establish momentum, we need to love and embrace our followers as equals. In the video watch a movement happen in under 3 minutes as Derek dissects some lessons To View More >>

I'm a believer in education, I really am, and my children's eduction is very important to me. I've pursued high-level tertiary education myself, and I regularly attend business and personal development courses. But I'm also a believer in determination, passion and experience. A huge believer in fact, and sitting next to a guy in the Wool business one evening  after speaking at an Icehouse event, I was reminded of why... His story went something like this: He was sacked from his first job packing shelves at K-Mart when he was young. I believe he left school early as he suffered with dyslexia and To View More >>

I love drawing and outlining at my white board or in my note book because I connect emotionally with my thoughts so much more powerfully and with more clarity than if I use my computer alone. In this video Milton Glaser talks about drawing while he is drawing, and makes an observation of art schools where drawing has been removed from the curriculum to allow time to learn software. It seems increasingly that students now have the creative tools, but not the emotional connection with their craft. MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo. To View More >>

Take a few minutes, sit down, switch off, listen and think as you watch this ... share it with your kids and consider your own life ... deeply cool. From the YouTube Video "For complete lyrics, audio and video clip please visit PersianDNA™ Website at http://www.persiandna.com/4u.htm Wear Sunscreen is the common name of an essay, (actually called "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young") written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the successful music single released in 1999, accredited To View More >>

Without a doubt the currency of the Fire Service is Trust. Without it all emergency services, and especially the Fire Service, would struggle to operate. I am sure it's true in all countries that the Fire Service almost always tops the chart of "Most Trusted Occupations", and I'm very proud to be a part of an organisation with that quality. This is important, not just between us and the public but also amongst members of a crew. Our job can be dangerous and you need to be able to rely on the people you respond with, and your ability to trust their integrity and courage is essential ... If not, To View More >>

When I say danger, I am not exaggerating. If you are online and geotag your photos you risk being robbed, raped or murdered if you aren't very careful. I do apologise, I don't like having depressing stuff on my blog, but you do need to be a little scared; you do need to consider how you work online. If you value your property and especially your life read on. So what is Geotagging Wikipedia describes Geotagging as: the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, or RSS feeds, and a form of geospatial metadata. These data usually To View More >>