tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69663201212549259422024-03-16T00:08:29.167-07:00Pragmatically DigitalBreccan McLeod-Lundy's personal blog.Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-672683664322672132021-02-24T03:58:00.002-08:002021-02-25T03:29:56.723-08:00The Countdown<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">2020 was tough for many people. For me it included a different challenge although luckily one with a happy ending in the arrival of my son Finlay. My partner Fiona suffered from her waters breaking early, which is medically known as Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes(PPROM) . From there she ended up spending 10 weeks in hospital followed by Finlay arriving early and having his own 7 week stay.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-3e04cff9-7fff-4ec2-3a68-0668bee2daf0"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One thing that struck me throughout was the degree to which I'd never really heard people talk about this kind of experience, but once people started finding out what was happening with us a huge proportion of people had similar personal stories to share. I hope documenting the experience might help other people going through similar situations.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>4 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 4 weeks Fiona found me in the front room of the house and while crying slightly said the classic and unforgettable line "We're going to have a baby". We then began all the normal bits of early pregnancy, like suddenly stocking the fridge with non-alcoholic beverages and thoroughly washing the salad while not mentioning anything to anyone.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>7 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7 weeks was the first scan. We were still at the peak of lockdown, so Fi went by herself. Everything was looking fine, but the fetus was measuring a little smaller than smaller than we had calculated in terms of gestation based on Fi’s last period. Given it was the first scan it meant the official due date was moved a few days further forward than our previous estimates had been. At the time, moving the date didn’t seem like a big deal but it would have significant implications for some of the goals we faced later on. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>11 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 11 weeks Fiona had a small bleed that triggered the first scary visit to the hospital. Luckily while the ultrasound did show that there had been a small hematoma it didn't seem to have damaged anything and the tiny potential human was still happily growing and swimming around without seeming to notice everyone outside freaking out. It did lead to Fi getting the first of a number of anti D injections that would become a semi regular occurrence due to her negative blood type and concerns about risks that could be shared between parent and child.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>16 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 16 weeks we started telling people that we had a baby on the way. The numbers said we were past the risky bit and growth on scans was looking good. We were also starting to be able to hear the heart rate on a doppler which was always a comfort.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>22 Weeks and 1 Day </b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Around 6 PM on a Wednesday Fi yelled for me from the bedroom and quickly said she'd just had a large bleed. She was in obvious shock and we knew she needed to get to the hospital. She tried ringing our midwife then sent her a message to say we'd be at the hospital when she couldn't get her. I gathered up our stuff and our flatmate drove us to the hospital.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Arriving at the hospital we ran into a Covid related complication as the after hours entrances had just changed how they were handling the visitors and shuttled us back and forth between multiple entrances before eventually letting us into the first one we'd gone to. Luckily in our case it didn't end up mattering, but it really highlighted how directly the need to respond to covid had directly affected other health provisions.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once inside, we were found a bed in the delivery suite and our midwife came in to do an initial search for a heartbeat with a doppler. The tense seconds while she tried to find a heartbeat followed by the immense sense of relief when she found it coming through quick and strong is unlike any other experience I've had. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Over the next few hours doctors and midwives came through steadily with various examinations, antibiotics and theories about what could be happening. One of the front-running theories was that Fiona's waters had broken but it could also have just been another hematoma. The prospect of broken waters was especially scary as in most cases labour will begin within 72 hours of waters breaking early and at 22 weeks and 1 day the chance of having a successful delivery is extremely low(Although with progression in medicine no longer exactly 0)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One poor midwife who had the unenviable task of taking rather a lot of blood got very worried when Fi went very pale and flopped backwards onto the bed during the test. Fi had always hated blood tests and the extra stress very nearly lead to her fainting when they were putting a line in.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Somewhere in the course of this process we were officially admitted and Fi was issued a patient wristband. Records show 9:53 pm as the time this occurred, but we’d been in the hospital for at least a couple of hours by that point. Eventually, as everything seemed stable they left us to sleep for a bit before waking us at 6AM to say they needed the room as a dozen women had all shown up in labour at the same time.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>22 Weeks and 2 Days</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After being woken up we were moved down to the Ante-Natal ward, a place we would become very familiar with over the coming weeks. Fi was given a bed in a room with one other and various followup tests were booked including more ultrasounds and further blood tests.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We also started to get numbers and ideas about potential outcomes at this point. Most of the time people think of of gestational age in weeks but the difference between 22 weeks and 24 weeks in terms of birth outcomes is nearly 50%. Not 50% in the sense of a 50% improvment but 50% in terms of going from a near 0% chance of survivial to 50%. If the baby had come on day one of our stay our chances would have been at the level of winning the lottery and only 2 weeks later we would be flipping a coin.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>23 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We actually got to go home for a couple of days in the weekend with instructions to come back immediately if anything happened and to come back on Monday with anything Fi would need if tests showed enough areas of concern that they'd want her to move into the hospital. We were also still in heightened alert levels so while extra freedom was good it didn't open up a window to see people one last time.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Monday rolled around and the tests reinforced that Fi's waters were mostly likely broken and the medical recommendation was that Fi spend the remainder of her pregnancy in hospital. At that point the doctor's really focussed on a one foot in front of the other approach and clearly believed that we would be doing well to make it to 30 weeks(one of the big cut off points where long term outcomes start getting close to full term outcomes) </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next few days we started settling into the hospital while dealing with the challenges of hospital lockdown from covid still being in effect so I needed to spend a lot of time in the hospital both for the normal level of supporting Fi and to cover for her not really being allowed visitors. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>23 Weeks and 6 Days</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 23 weeks and 6 days Fi's infection markers started going up alongside a slight temperature. With her waters broken any infection would be extremely dangerous, the doctor's were concerned enough that we were taken down to the delivery suite and briefed on scenarios. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the infection didn't respond quickly to antibiotics then they would recommend delivery and while the odds at 23 and 6 were starting to increase they weren't good and there were two different numbers to track. Both the chance that a baby would come out alive and how badly damaged it might be from what it would take to keep it alive. While the earlier discussion of how far we might go to keep a baby alive seemed distant, in the waiting room of delivery suite the numbers suddenly got much more real. All we could do was make some basic decisions and hope the infection markers went back down.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Making the evening even more tense was the knowledge that 24 weeks was a significant cutoff in policy around approach to delivery. At 24 weeks the team would equally balance there treatment to achieve the best balance of outcomes for mother and child, while at 23 weeks and 6 days the balance was kept firmly on the mother. They'd still try and save the baby but with a set of surgical decisions that further decreased the odds of success. In an already stressful situation it's very weird to then have an extra reason to watch the hours tick by with the knowledge that every hour is changing both the actual health situation as well as the policies that will affect the outcomes.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Luckily, as the night wore on, it became clear that the antibiotics being pumped into Fi were doing their job and her infection markers stabilised.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next day we were trundled back down to the antenatal ward to return to our previously scheduled waiting.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>28 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By 28 weeks Fi had been in hospital for nearly six weeks and we'd settled into something of a routine. I was there daily and often took a many of my meetings from the hospital while on other days I got there a bit later and then quietly stayed in Fi's room until we started getting hints from the midwife's that maybe visiting hours had finished an hour ago and they'd need to stop turning a blind eye to my presence sometime soon.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Somewhere around this point the covid related visiting restrictions also started to ease up which was a huge boon as more people started dropping by both to help Fi keep sane and also to deliver various snacks(Snacks are a high value commodity in Wellington hospital ever since a change in "healthy eating" policy lead to the removal of vending machines from most of the grounds).</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 263px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; overflow: hidden; width: 259px;"><img height="341.90000000000003" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/yanlSiRvaRKT03NLv3g3kWDPNoj0LItKU-7mOF0HgLzron5IsoNzt0ek0PDgH0ypaGWrCblXP_J7pnP6QAZfrckKMwnEKFcDhlIH9S41ptOlzzFhTFQgUgFmJlk_7iu2fPAz5Gem" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: -78.9px;" width="256.1267828843106" /></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>(“Meatballs with seasonal vegetables”. Some dishes were quite a bit better than this but plenty were worse as well.)</i></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>30 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">30 Weeks was a big milestone as by this point most numbers said that our long term outcomes were nearly the same as a full term baby. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our biggest ongoing worry was still around his lung development as the lowered amniotic fluid could be hampering that development. Fi had also been leaking a bit more so ultrasounds showed less fluid available but luckily the baby was managing to sit in a way that kept his mouth in the fluid to keep breathing it in and developing his lungs.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We'd also thoroughly adapted to a hospital based routine at this point - where earlier we were feeling the pressure of responding to events and being worried about each day, now we were ticking along. In some ways this was more challenging as it left more time for boredom and frustration to set in. One bright side was that Fi had got so used to her regular blood tests that instead of nearly fainting in response she was now carrying on work calls while the phlebotomist wheeled in their trolley.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>32 Weeks and 1 Day</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 32 weeks Fi started feeling a bit sick and the doctors did an extra round of bloodtests. The first day they saw some infection markers going up but decided to hold off on any major decisions, overnight Fi was fine but the next day the markers were up again and Fi wasn't feeling so hot.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the day progressed Fi was asked to fast "just in case" which progressed to, "probably" the baby needs to come out, and then to "Yes you'll be going to delivery suite tonight". From the time that everything went from keeping a watching brief to us getting shuffled down to delivery suite there was probably only 2 hours in which I quickly finished doing things like the day's payroll and Fi emailed her boss to say she wouldn't actually be dialling into any meetings tomorrow.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As always with hospitals we then had a good few rounds of hurry up and wait as some more drastic emergencies bumped us down the surgery list. What had originally been a 8pm slot came and went with some information that we'd be soon. Eventually at around midnight our slot came up and we wheeled down to the theater. The c-section itself took less than 7 minutes from the first cut to the baby being out and in the corner with his own team to look after him(At peak there were about 15 people in the room covering both the team looking after Fi and the team for the baby). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team looking after the baby immediately started working on supporting his breathing(We only found out in his discharge notes how bad a condition his lungs had actually been in) while the surgical team started putting Fi's insides back together.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once they'd completed their immediate work it was time to wheel Finlay(We'd finalised his name in the operating theatre when Fi looked over at me and said "What do you think, does he look like a Finlay?") down to the NICU.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The NICU is a relatively busy place even at 1 in the morning with both a very high nurse to baby ratio and a pretty steady stream of parents who are still there or have come in to drop off milk or breastfeed if their baby is old enough. Not that you notice when you're carefully helping to wheel in your own tiny child though.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I stayed with Finlay until he was settled in and had all his monitoring ticking along at a consistent level he seemed both astonishingly tiny and not since he was sharing a room with babies that were half his size again(He'd come out weighing 2.52 kg which is big for a 32 weeker and also big for the higher risk room that he started his NICU journey in). That first night he had: 4 monitoring wires, 2 iv's, a breathing mask, a feeding tube, goggles and a bright blue lamp to help with jaundice. Many of our small celebrations over the coming weeks would be each time one of those got removed.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the time I got back to delivery suite Fi had finished being stitched back up and was sucking on an iceblock while automated massaging pillows slowly pumped up and down on her legs.</span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>33 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first few days in NICU were something of a blur. Finlay looked tiny and was surrounded by so many wires that just touching him seemed scary. We had to adjust to the constant beeping and frequent alerts that popped up on our screens and the screens around us. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most concerning for us was when his heart rate and blood oxygen would suddenly drop. A nurse would immediately come over and fiddle with the oxygen dials but it took a while to become used to seeing the numbers suddenly start to drop(They would regularly drop as the goal was always to steadily reduce his dependance on oxygen for which the main strategy was lowering the extra oxygen he was receiving and seeing if he was still getting enough). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While the NICU experience was stressful in its own right it was a lot less stressful than the experience of having Fi in the hospital and not knowing what would happen. The biggest remaining risk had been birth and getting through that put us on a much more stable path as the days started to add up and Fi managed to come home.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>34 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next few weeks we were visiting the NICU constantly but also didn't have much to do when we were there. A premature baby should still be in the womb so they're still mostly asleep, don't make a lot of noise, and don't really interact(although they can do the finger grabbing thing). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We learned to interpret the large charts that were kept next to the incubator to understand how much he was eating, how much he was growing, and if anything concerning had happened between visits.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From here it was a steady series of improvements with the two biggest goals for getting him home being no longer needing breathing support, and his feeding and growth being far enough along to safely feed him at home. The breathing was a steady series of improvements as he went from full mask to tubes, to little nostril pipes and we could also check the dials each day for how much supplemental oxygen and pressure he was needing each day. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feeding felt like it took a lot longer to progress as he stayed dependent on the tube for all his feeds for weeks and also had the most difficulty breathing during feeds. Luckily he was managing to eat a lot despite these challenges so his growth was steady and doctors were confident his eating would come right eventually.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>37 Weeks and 6 Days</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With Finlay's health improving we started to prepare for the end of his stay in the NICU. One of the final activities was "rooming in '' a process where parents and baby get a room to themselves to adapt to childcare and taking over cares(cares has a unique meaning in NICU to cover all of the regular activities that happen on a regular cycle as part of taking care of the baby such as: wiping the eyes since prem babies don’t have their tear ducts going yet, wiping the face, nappy changes, temperature checks etc) while still being checked on regularly by nurses and with help on immediate hand if anything goes wrong.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Initially, our goal for this week was to get completely off the feeding tube and be able to go home without it. Unfortunately, after a couple of distressing 2am marathons trying to get him to do his night feeds under his own power, it became clear he was still a few days away from not needing the tube. Happily for us the nurses felt we'd gained enough skill at managing a feeding tube that we could take him home with it still in.</span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>38 Weeks and 4 Days</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 38 weeks and 4 days, after essentially 16 weeks of being tethered to the hospital we got to take Finlay home. He was making good progress on growth and although we did take him home with the feeding tube(and needed it the first couple of nights) he managed to transition to normal feeds within a week.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>40 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the time Finlay's original due date came along he'd been out of the womb for nearly 8 weeks. But it had been a different kind of experience, as while he'd started interacting in some ways he was only just finishing off a lot of the development that should have been happening within the womb. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People asked about things like his affect on sleep or keeping us up but in reality he only started being able to make a level of noise that wake up whichever parent wasn't with him once he reached about 40 weeks. While most people tracked their child on a growth curve we essentially had three different ones:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> His age since birth - which was a good track of some types of development like neck strength which had improved as soon as he was out of the womb and needed to use his muscles to lift his head.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> His corrected gestational age - i.e. the age he would have been if he'd gone to full term. Which was a good indicator of many of his more mental milestones and things like sleep.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A messy number somewhere between the other two ages that over time seemed to be what everything was averaging out in to. This was a good guide on things like weight where his CGA weight was extremely high and his weight for his age since birth was quite low. It also seemed to be where his milestones were slowly trending towards the longer he was out in the world. </span></li></ul><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>46 Weeks</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At 46 weeks Finlay's hospital checkup included the words "You couldn't even tell he was prem". </span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks</b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are a lot of people to thank for seeing us through this whole thing:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our Midwife Holly who was amazingly supportive throughout. (If you need a midwife in Wellington, find her <a href="https://www.findyourmidwife.co.nz/midwife/11be847c-5174-4824-a015-c24ae135767c/holly+fisher" target="_blank">here</a>)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team at Wellington Hospital in both antenatal and NICU</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The neonatal trust who were supportive throughout the journey</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team at Ackama who covered for me being a less attentive CEO at a time that they could really have done with a lot more of my attention rather than less</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fi’s work for making it easy for her to keep working while trapped in the hospital and being flexible throughout</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our friends and family</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fiona who had it way tougher than I did</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finlay just for existing really</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 325px; overflow: hidden; width: 349px;"><img height="465.40447504302927" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/jKWA3i_a_w8v5qh5jQRZmrxMcWA4VRDZbwgmyX0w0uMCWVY9qwII27vNpF9MPdI2u6AJm5bdIIOR_UJN-6TtZxdIv5kInbeyk233aHuFwlXTxjZeUA-AXQOXYJQRyIQJPOya7l0V" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: -84.4664px;" width="349" /></span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 325px; overflow: hidden; width: 349px;"><br /></span></span></div></span>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-75557874918361782182020-12-27T08:53:00.000-08:002020-12-27T08:53:09.450-08:00Changing the NZ Economy Post Covid<p> <span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the initial shock of Covid-19, New Zealand can now focus on how we want our industries to develop and what the future holds. We can be purposeful in shaping the work and industries we want to have as a country, or we can just keep reacting to crises as they emerge. If we wait until the crisis has finished to think about changing our economy we will have lost the momentum to make changes and the opportunity to benefit from being ahead of the rest of the world on the recovery.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a0c6e69f-7fff-b776-b19e-47a89db066b7"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: -18pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In any discussion like this, the first step is to discuss what a successful New Zealand economy looks like. I suggest the following basic outcomes:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Food Security</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - Separately to any discussions of the productivity of our agricultural industry it is important that in situations like Covid-19 we can react quickly to produce enough food to keep the country running. Being at the end of supply chains makes this more important for us than many other countries.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Productivity </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- That for every hour worked we should produce as much value as possible. We can achieve this by making work we’re already doing more efficient or by favouring getting people involved in areas that are more productive. The exact measurement of productivity has some complex edge cases around the potential measurement of work that isn’t captured within industry measures, but the historic case has been that higher measured productivity leads to additional capacity for non-billable activities.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poverty Alleviation</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - A high performing economy can ease poverty both by employing more people and having more funds available for social welfare. I think we should assume that as New Zealand grows, we will continue to tax top earners and look towards more company tax from NZ businesses, and then spend a portion of that tax on welfare in line with that growth. </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inclusiveness </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- As we review industries, paths to employment, and paths to wealth, we should make sure we keep helping people up. We could meet the conditions of food security, productivity, and poverty alleviation by having a wealthy upper class that funded a generous welfare scheme for everyone else but that isn’t an acceptable outcome in terms of the long-term social consequences as work like Michael Marmot’s research into the ongoing health effects of high social inequality shows.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Environment </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Environmental outcomes and protection are a key consideration in any policy we create. It makes sense to create and grow industries now that are better prepared for a future where environmental concerns have become even more important than they are today.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long Term Planning </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- Economic and social changes happen over decades. Many of the most impactful social programs (schooling, healthcare etc) take upwards of twenty years for New Zealand to fully benefit from improvements. China has a 100 year plan; Grant Robertson said that Covid-19 was a once in a 100 year shock - on a ten year plan we might say it’s only a 10% risk and not think too hard about preparing, but on a hundred year plan we’d assume there’d be at least one and that might change our preparation.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maintain and grow our international status</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - New Zealand is well respected internationally and our strongest growth opportunities rely both on export and having uninterrupted access to offshore markets. This means signing healthy trade agreements that support all of our industries (both current and future) while maintaining our ability to take principled stances on social and political issues that matter to us.</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With these goals in mind, there are plenty of changes we could make now to improve our position in the future. For now I’ll focus on those around business in New Zealand but there is potential in every area. </span></p><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What Does a Good Business Look Like?</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having outlined a general picture of what good looks like for New Zealand at a large scale I think it helps to also be clear on what good means in the case of business. By doing this we start to dig into a little more detail which can then lead to a conversation about the direct actions and approaches that the government should take with business. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s been a lot of good thought in recent years about the future of business when it comes to concepts like the triple bottom line or corporate social responsibility. The focus for a country in setting policy around business is, however, a more complex puzzle as minor changes can dramatically change which industries grow and which shrink. There can be sudden pressures to favour certain industries whether that be roading under certain governments or a fixation on a shiny new technology as we see occasionally when ideas like blockchain or AI are at the peak of hype cycles. What is needed is a stronger theory of the kind of business the government should encourage based on the long term outcomes for New Zealand.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I suggest the following criteria for judging whether a business is good for New Zealand (Or any country):</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The creation of new high wage jobs</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - This covers both that new jobs increase the productivity of New Zealand and also that they don’t just hire people who are already earning well in the industry. To quantify, in 2018</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 0.6em; vertical-align: super;">1</span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the median salary in Aotearoa was $49,868 vs the median salary in the digital technology sector of $82,000. </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a strategy to bring a diverse group of people into that business or industry - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a joint responsibility with the government but even if an industry currently has a poor record on diversity there should be a plan to improve that situation.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That the business and industry around it will grow - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many of our most successful growth stories are important not just because of the particular businesses that lead the way but because entire industry areas have sprung up around them. For example, Xero has directly lead to dozens of businesses being created and become a key channel for many New Zealand software businesses to sell internationally without having to grow to that scale. On the flipside of this Stretchsense and Rakon have both shown the risks of having some cutting edge tech but being in industries that have not achieved critical mass in New Zealand as sudden changes in other markets are both more difficult to react to and more likely to catch participants off guard.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That taxes are paid by the business appropriately and in the countries where the business trading - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are some challenges here but the future of taxation must be cooperation with our key trading partners to divide taxes appropriately and jointly favour businesses that are good tax citizens of all the countries in which they trade.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Economic Sustainability - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We should encourage businesses that will exist for the long term if they succeed. This isn’t to limit ourselves to sure bets but that businesses should have an intention to exist for the long term. While there are totally valid short term businesses such as entertainment joint ventures the focus of “business” policy should be on growing businesses that aim to exist for the long term.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Environmental Sustainability - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We should favour businesses with better environmental outcomes than not.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The broader community will see the benefits of success - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is much better in the long run for New Zealand to grow businesses that continue to operate, create jobs, and pay taxes than for a single founder to see a sudden windfall and the business to disappear - some people suggest that big paydays still benefit the local community through investment, but I’ve yet to meet the wealth manager that recommends a locally focussed investment strategy over an internationally diversified one so while there can be a benefit I would argue it’s not as big as some people would like to believe. This is particularly challenging as NZ entrepreneurs tend to sell or stop growing their business at a smaller size than some of our other trading partners.</span></p></li></ul><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1: Source “</span><a href="https://www.digitalskillsforum.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/digital-skills-for-a-digital-nation-online.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Digital Skills for a Digital Nation Report</span></a><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">”, Digital Skills Forum. </span><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="display: inline-block; position: relative; width: 100px;"></span></span></p><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Supporting the Future of NZ Businesses</span></h2><br /><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tax Settings to Support Business Growth</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tax settings should support businesses that continue to invest in New Zealand and create New Zealand based jobs. That means favouring taxes that trigger when cash is removed from businesses rather than taxing the day to day running of a business. For example, favouring personal income taxes on high earners over company income taxes or wealth taxes. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For an illustration of why this is important, look at the surprise from many commentators when it came to how quickly small businesses found themselves short of cash under Covid-19. Part of the reason for this is if you have a growing business you could either build up your cash reserve and then hire additional staff or just hire additional staff immediately. High company income tax is a disincentive to building up healthy cash reserves as you’ll have to pay tax immediately on the “profits” while pouring the money immediately back into more staff won’t be realised as a profit. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This graph shows the difference in employee count after 20 quarters or 5 years between a small services business that decides to only hire employees once it has 90 days of cash reserves to meet in a company tax versus no company tax environment (assuming that an employee costs about $100,000 a year and generates $120,000 revenue and the business starts with $10,000 and a founder that works until there is enough cash to start hiring).</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 300px; overflow: hidden; width: 486px;"><img height="300" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/nxLhRrYwYcA-py6hfhLeQZG0hpZGfvcNzEk66qdXgZYw4lBoSgIXsIZIfVdOho9umHM9aPglT47963_yGdyaYsJItGc8Ow_WDOCyKxyRUB-8S4ml7moWRCZejX4FkdZ4wXGpjFrX" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" title="Chart" width="486" /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This means that the effect of paying company tax is the difference between a small business with 4 employees and a business with 10 - a sizable difference in overall business and tax take. While the smaller business will have generated an extra $43,000 in company profit tax, the company that could accrue capital without paying it out in tax will have created jobs with a minimum income tax component $217,000 higher than the smaller business. These are also both good businesses in that they’re holding responsible amounts of cash to cover downturns and providing high-paying jobs. For an even more extreme example a business modeled on the same assumptions that keeps winning work but decides to hire as soon as it can cover the next salary rather than holding a cash reserve could theoretically reach 400 employees in the same time frame, although a stiff breeze would put it at risk of falling over. (Note: Singapore achieves a similar outcome by issuing a plethora of tax credits to growth businesses rather than a blanket allowance.)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This isn’t an argument against tax but an argument that we should target taxes at money moving out of the business(whether to a shareholder or to an offshore parent) rather than at cash being used to grow the business. Better taxes include: personal income tax, fringe benefit taxes, dividend taxes, and capital gains taxes. All of which time the taxation to the point that the funds are being taken out of the business and no longer being used for growth.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Making early phases of starting a business more efficient is also a key component of making business more equitable. As those from more privileged backgrounds are more likely to receive an early investment of “friends and family” capital while those from less privileged backgrounds must slog it out until they reach the investment criteria of external investors or qualify for debt finance.</span></p><br /><br /><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Employee Share Schemes</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Employee share schemes are great for spreading the eventual benefits of success in a business around more people as well as giving employees some extra insight into the business through shareholder rights. In cases where a business becomes extremely successful, they also help create a community of people who become active in supporting other businesses and investing. A very successful business making one person a billionaire seems a lot worse for New Zealand than the same business making 100 people have 10 million dollars as the second one will lead to a much more diverse set of follow on investments and choices being made. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately, New Zealand has done a disappointing job of employee share schemes as apart from a small $5,000 dollar a year carve out employees will be taxed on an employee share scheme when they are issued shares. Which might sound okay except that startup shares are generally illiquid (no one will actually buy them from you) and extremely volatile in value (they could go up a lot but they also have a greater than 50% chance of being worth $0). By taxing at issue we disincentivise using stock as a significant portion of employee compensation which misses a splendid opportunity to spread risk and reward across businesses. In comparison, in the US, where people talk about the high salaries of software engineers, companies like google are often paying 40% of those packages in company stock rather than cash. </span></p><br /><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Government Procurement </span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Government is a key client of many NZ businesses and a careful approach to procurement can deliver better outcomes for all of New Zealand in terms of both better outcomes and secondary economic effects of funneling money back into the local economy. Unfortunately, New Zealand has traditionally feared being seen to favour bids from New Zealand businesses on the basis that it might run afoul of trade deals. This is cowardice and contrary to what most countries do, in terms of local purchasing preferences. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Labour Government has introduced minor changes to the rules of sourcing in this term, many lack teeth and as a sector we are yet to see the resulting changes in capability or behaviour from government agencies as buyers. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many countries have succeeded with strategies to make sure work paid for by the government benefits the local economy as much as possible without running afoul of trade laws. Common provisions in other countries provisions include:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Weighting economic benefits, particularly local employment, as an outcome of a project.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Structuring projects in a way appealing to local businesses. Such as building a smaller solution that is exactly what the problem needs rather than buying a large generic solution, or breaking a problem up into smaller pieces that suit local providers but multinationals might consider “too small”.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Requirements for involvement with local indigenous peoples.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Requiring high levels of staff availability both during the project and for support afterwards.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tax compliance and regulation so that businesses are incentivized to employ locally or have to payout a larger portion of their earnings back to the government in tax.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Encouraging the capture or sharing of new intellectual property generated through a project either through open source licensing or by requiring local ownership (this can include a multinational’s local office owning the IP but making it clear that in that case they’re expected to pay tax in the country where the IP was developed based on fees it might generate or the revenue generated by “selling” it back to the parent).</span></p></li></ul><br /><br /><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Create a more cohesive approach to long term investment in New Zealand</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whenever decisions are made about investment by the government there is a key challenge in comparing different projects and investment opportunities. One of our challenges is that we don’t do a good job of comparing investment in different areas and really focussing on the long-term outcomes and potential for a changing world to materially change which investments will be the most valuable.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To give an example, the government views investment in roads and software differently. But, as we have seen during lockdown, working from home reduces the load on core infrastructure dramatically. A key question we should ask is “What needs to happen for more remote working to happen across the country?”. This includes both working from home and incentives towards regional offices to take the load off Auckland. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I believe a change in the government approach to view many large technology projects as more in line with roads and less in line with building a website will better reflect both the longevity of many of these systems and the costs in maintaining them. To give an idea of the kinds of projects I imagine in this space (some of which are already in train):</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Completing work on bringing digital identity standards and capabilities up to both an appropriate level of access and ease of use for all New Zealanders to interact directly with government services.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eradicate paper forms and replace them with appropriate digital approaches across all levels of government. This especially is a needed step for many government functions we would like to improve with technology in the future - the latest newfangled AI system is not much use if big chunks of information don’t exist in a machine-readable format.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Make interaction with government through online systems easier and better than working with them in person. For instance, someone on a benefit should be able to complete all of their required activities online including everything from signing up for a benefit through to job seeking and training. This experience should be so much better than going to an MSD office that it serves as a motivation to sign up for the required digital identification.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Business intelligence and analysis should be flexible and easy to manage across departments. Over time the approach to storing both data about government actions and the rules and regulations it follows should allow for not just easy interoperability but also a complete programmatic simulation of as much of the overall economy as possible. For instance, if the government were considering a change in benefits, that change should not just be modelled in a spreadsheet but simulated against the actual data of earning levels in New Zealand at the time. This is especially important as we become more aware of the negative effects of inequality - with a simulation we are much more likely to detect when a suggested change will create outliers (either people unfairly harmed by a policy or people given too much advantage) than with a distribution based model.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Key service areas should have cohesive overarching digital strategies. For instance, health should have a single easily connected patient record database with data controls, and inefficiencies, such as ongoing reliance on faxes, must be eradicated.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Technology and digital record keeping should be empowered to become a key part of tracking and managing the results of long term social investment in areas like education and healthcare.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Investment should enhance digital systems for maintaining privacy, limiting the impacts of data breaches and providing dynamic controls over personally identifiable information.</span></p></li></ul><br /><br /><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Support R&D and commercialisation more broadly and systematically</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New R&D and product development is one of the best ways for New Zealand as the returns and growth in jobs can be large (consider how many high-wage jobs one Xero adds to the economy let alone any of the benefits from the success of the business for shareholders). Unfortunately, at the moment, many of our policy settings don’t support the long view of R&D that could lead to really capturing the benefits.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The current R&D tax credit still refers to novelty or “newness” as part of the test of whether something counts as true R&D which effectively reads as excluding most software based innovation. This thin view of R&D raises several issues and possible responses:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many excellent ideas are the application of existing approaches to different problems -</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Xero was not a technically difficult idea. It was a great idea at the right time, but if you’d found a good developer and described what Xero needed to do, they wouldn’t have told you it was pushing the boundaries of human knowledge which seems to be what the current tax credit suggests should be the case. We should absolutely be supporting businesses to not just research, but also apply that research into services and thriving industry.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Without ongoing support of research through to commercialisation, New Zealand is unlikely to see the bulk of the returns on R&D - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any piece of research is a long drawn-out process, but even more difficult is the next step of market research and commercialisation. Because we define the research phase so narrowly, we too often see good early stage ideas or businesses being sold to larger players at a cheap price rather than the potentially larger businesses accruing their benefits to New Zealand. </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By incentivising complexity rather than results we don’t “fail fast” - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In startups it has become standard to fail-fast. Or in plainer terms to stop doing things that aren’t working sooner rather than later. When our main categorisation for R&D is being globally “new”, we reward complexity rather than results. Bad early stage ideas receive ongoing R&D funding because no one involved in reviewing them understands them well enough to say they aren’t good R&D. A good example of this in recent years has been the propensity of startups that really didn’t need a blockchain adding a mention of blockchain to their R&D programs because it made it seem more “novel”.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Create clearer educational pathways to R&D - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the challenges with universities responding to a focus on preparing people for the workforce is that R&D as a capability doesn’t match up nicely to a career path and is generally better served by the more traditional academic pathways.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is another benefit to reinforcing the role of vocational learning for those who do want clear career paths so that those who want to be on a research path are not so heavily tied to courses within universities that are steadily trending towards job readiness.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Without broad access to funding and support, entrepreneurship will exacerbate rather than close social divides - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the key challenges when looking at entrepreneurship as a social level is that starting a company is a really really terrible idea for the founder. Anyone who has the skills to found a business could competently do a much more stable job that produces a stable income, so entrepreneurs (and particularly “growth” entrepreneurs) will disproportionately be from backgrounds that are already well-off. R&D funding comes into this as well since a simpler and more broadly applicable fund is more likely to support people at the right time.</span></p></li></ul><br /><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Growing capital in New Zealand</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wealth is security. While it is commonly noted that money doesn’t buy happiness it’s nearly always followed up with the note that the lack of it surely brings unhappiness. New Zealand needs a wealth strategy for the long term. While we have strong individual wealth in New Zealand a disturbingly large proportion of that is based on our eye-wateringly high property prices (39% of household net worth currently being property). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have been very lucky that the NZ Super Fund has performed as well as it has over the last few years and Kiwisaver is building up the balances of many New Zealanders to help mitigate the challenges of an aging population. But that’s only one of the many challenges we can expect over the next 100 years, whether it’s global warming, changes in agriculture, disease, or sudden shocks in the global economy - we should expect constant change, and we should expect at least some of those shocks to be worse than any we’ve experienced so far - A resilient New Zealand is not just one with a functioning economy but one that can handle a non-functional economy for as long as possible. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We need to have a plan for there to be enough capital in New Zealand to allow us to maintain our position globally and not become a dependent state. That doesn’t mean it all has to be private wealth, state owned capital counts, but if successive governments alternate between selling off state assets and discentivising private wealth, then the end result will be no one in New Zealand having any money while states that can leverage their wealth slowly pressure us either financially or politically. Consider the current challenge between the fact that of our major trading partners only China has managed to hold steady financially during Covid while the US is pressuring us to ban Huawei as a supplier. Protecting our independence requires that we maintain relatively high levels of wealth, especially as aggressive financial pressure becomes more accepted as a modern approach to diplomacy. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2013, Piketty’s</span><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 0.6em; vertical-align: super;">2</span></span><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> book about the growth of wealth inequality outlined the challenges presented by the wealthiest people reaching the point that their wealth generates income at a pace that will steadily increase wealth inequality. This same pattern of wealth inequality will also apply between countries as much as it does between individuals. If New Zealand does not act to encourage the accumulation of wealth inside of New Zealand then for all our good intentions we are at serious risk of creating a country where everyone is more equal internally but we have fallen behind the rest of the world. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Piketty’s suggestion of a global wealth tax might work if there were ever the global motivation to do so. But a national wealth tax as suggested by the Greens without alignment with the rest of the world would create another disincentive to the local accumulation of wealth. In some countries that might not be such a problem, but in New Zealand we already have difficulty incentivising and building the businesses that will make New Zealand wealthier in the long run. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2 Source: “</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Capital in the Twenty-First Century</span></a><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” by Thomas Piketty.</span></p><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Education</span></h2><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Financial Literacy</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many would expect digital literacy to go first in a list of challenges in this list. But I have been consistently shocked by how weak the level of financial knowledge in New Zealand is across the board. This ranges from people’s ability to understand investment or long term effects of their choices through to business owners with weak understanding of their own balance sheets. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While there is plenty of support for business owners on the entrepreneurship front it constantly surprises me how modern tools like Xero mixed with accountants that happily take care of the day to day financial reporting of a business have made it possible for people to not have a firm grasp on the financial position of their business while mostly being able to carry on trading. Improving financial literacy across the board is to my mind a key part of improving the proportion of attempts at entrepreneurship that are actually successful.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Separately, growing businesses depend on their staff having strong financial literacy. To take an earlier example employee share schemes are only valuable if the people you’ll offer shares to understand what shares are and how they work. Even more importantly, growing businesses rely on being able to hire staff into management roles, from my experience one of the key challenges to hiring for these roles in New Zealand is a relatively low level of base financial acumen even among professionals within New Zealand. </span></p><br /><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Digital Literacy</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Digital Literacy is much more lacking in New Zealand than most people realise. I include in this topic everything from basic usage of computers and the internet through to an understanding of how systems work in whatever industry someone is part of. Separate strategies are needed across multiple fronts to improve digital literacy across society. Some key groups include:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those Suffering from the Digital Divide - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a lot of work happening here which I won’t relitigate in a bullet point but it remains deeply important.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Government Officials - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many government officials still need additional training to become confident around technology to the degree that is necessary in their roles. This often leads to risk averse choices that have worse long term consequences than a risk aware choice would have led to.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Governance Professionals - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Boards in New Zealand still frequently lack technology expertise or have only a single “tech-savvy” board member. It’s my view that future boards should treat digital literacy more like finance in that all board members should be expected to have basic capabilities and one or more specialists may also be on the board if necessary. The technology sector changes so fast that there is never a single “correct” answer so enough people around the board table need to be confident enough about technology to create discussion.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Older Generations -</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A key part of getting the greatest savings from moving to digital solutions across government is in slowly turning off non-digital solutions. That means we need to provide the right training and access to take people who’ve got used to those processes along with us to the newer approaches. </span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Younger Generations - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Many people assume that younger generations are automatically tech savvy; however, this is steadily becoming less true as modern devices hide more of their internal workings and the algorithms behind them become less intuitive so young people now have less opportunities to understand how the systems they use work. This becomes even more critical as they become more politically active while not able to make strong judgements about what’s actually happening around them versus what’s projected to them by the systems they use.</span></p></li></ul><br /><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vocational education pathways into high-wage industries </span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the moment there are plenty of careers where the default study path is university but vocational approaches would also be suitable. For example, at Ackama we’ve hired a mixture of people that have done everything from 3 month programming bootcamps to PhD’s in computer science. On balance, we need some people with deep computer science backgrounds when we hit tricky problems but a good chunk of our work is just not that complex. Most modern startups should focus on delivering the simplest solution to a particular customer problem before investing time in making that solution particularly efficient.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a lot of discussion currently going on in this front for tech. I believe there are three key components:</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Short Entry Courses - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enspiral Dev Academy for instance provide an excellent 3-6 month course that get people up to the skill level necessary to start as a developer.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Employer Incentives - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In any vocational model there is a longer period when someone first joins the industry that they are a net cost to the employer, potential answers here include: training wages, government subsidies, and minimum contract lengths.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ongoing Training and Microcredentials - </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of our observations of developers coming through Dev Academy or other shorter courses is that some of the content that is left out in comparison to a university course becomes needed later on in their career. A new web developer doesn’t really need to know advanced algorithms and data structures when they join the industry but they would really benefit from that knowledge once they’re trying to become a senior developer and run their own projects. The most motivated people can pick it up over time from books and other training sources but a more complete pathway would be immensely helpful.</span></p></li></ul><br /><br /><h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Where next?</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tricky thing is to decide what to do next. This post is already long and in no way an exhaustive list. So you might ask, “What should we do first?” Unfortunately, the answer is </span><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">everything</span><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> all at once and as fast as possible.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of these areas I’ve talked about depend on each other. Employers need customers like the government to grow, people need employers to employ them, employers need those people to have the skills to do the work in front of them, and everyone needs the country they’re a part of to be secure and stable.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be easy to place this in the “too hard basket” but the reality is the global and domestic impacts of COVID require the private sector and government to work together. We need to break this down into a series of intertwined and interdependent parts, establish a working group to focus on changing the NZ economy so we can adapt rapidly, leveraging our strengths in this new world.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Ubuntu, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-29358429811515235122020-03-28T18:14:00.000-07:002020-06-23T18:14:46.101-07:00Rules as Code<div class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy ei" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="647a" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-top: 2em; word-break: break-word;">
Rules-as-code is steadily gaining interest in government as an approach to policy development and implementation (<a class="cm di gz ha hb hc" href="https://ackama.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; http: //www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><line x1=\"0\" y1=\"0\" x2=\"1\" y2=\"1\" stroke=\"rgba(41, 41, 41, 1)\" /></svg>"); text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Ackama</a> has over the last year assisted with several rules-as-code projects at the New Zealand DIA Service Innovation lab). I believe the key value of rules-as-code is a change in the underlying approach to involve software in the development of new rules or regulations. While it bears many similarities to earlier work on rules, engines and other kinds of compliance projects, rules as code uses technology to enable collaboration in creating regulation or legislation.</div>
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The Current Model of Policy Development</h1>
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At present, changing systems to reflect new rules happens well after the people writing the rules or policy have “finished”. This means that if the poor people stuck with implementing a new set of rules find conflicts with an existing rule set or ambiguity in the implementation details, it’s too late to engage with policy teams to clarify the regulations. Also, different organisations to which the same rules apply may have created different implementations or interpretations which adds costs to or completely stymies future efforts to review compliance across an industry.</div>
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The New Model</h1>
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If an initial reference implementation is part of developing a policy or regulation, there are several immediate benefits compared to current practice:</div>
<ul class="" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; list-style: none none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="11d9" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 2em; padding-left: 0px;">A standardised reference implementation reduces costs to interpret and understand the rules themselves.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="63d2" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Lower cost of compliance, as there is less need for every affected organisation to create their own implementation.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="3241" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Having a definitive rules implementation allows for scenario modeling as different assumptions and test data sets can be run through a rule-set to produce reports about what the actual outcomes of a rule-set would be.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="e4d0" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Early detection of poorly written or unclear rule systems — the act of implementing a rule system into code often highlights areas where the regulations are not objective or where terms might be used inconsistently. For example, when implementing the rules of the benefit system in New Zealand, the team found around 20 different interpretations of a “relationship” across the relevant legislation and policy.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="3adb" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Auditability of rules — with a consistent implementation it is easier for others to both review the rules and also gain comfort that the implementation of the rules is working how they expect.</li>
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The benefits of this new model may at first appear difficult to grasp. However, consider that in New Zealand, widespread misinterpretation of the Holidays Act led our own business ministry to incorrectly apply holidays entitlements to their staff and you can see the myriad impacts of inconsistently applied law.</div>
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What does it mean to do rules-as-code?</h1>
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There isn’t necessarily a strong definition yet of what rules-as-code is, with some groups focusing more on the technical implementation details and some working more on the policy outcomes. Ackama thinks of it as a methodology with the following characteristics:</div>
<ul class="" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; list-style: none none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1240" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 2em; padding-left: 0px;">Rules are captured in code to be reused easily wherever they may be applied (either by taking a copy of the code itself or accessing an API). For example, a rules-as-code implementation of a building standard should be something that is used both by a government system running an audit process and a private enterprise reviewing their own plans.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="29c5" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Experts with software development skills and policy experts work together to create both the policy and implementation in parallel.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="f44f" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Modern code management practices such as automated testing and version control are used to validate outcomes and track changes over time in the implementation.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="51b7" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">The implementation is flexible enough that it can be used as part of an implementation against the current standard or be changed so it can explore potential other configurations. For example, if a policy maker is considering changing a threshold, they should be able to make that change in a test environment and run a set of test data through it to see what the change in outcomes would be in a given scenario.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="a82b" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">The system should be extensible enough that other policies can be added to the same system and take into account how they might interact.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="4566" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">All the code in the system can be audited and the assertions and results can be independently verified or challenged (not that it’s necessarily open source, but that at the very least a relevant authority could perform an independent review). This is a general theme with technology, comparable with the trend for algorithms and AI to provide auditability for assurance.</li>
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What kinds of projects are ripe for a rules-as-code approach?</h1>
<ul class="" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; list-style: none none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj iw gl gm ix go gp iy gr gs iz gu gv ja gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="10f1" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 0.86em; padding-left: 0px;">Any kind of compliance program with objective measures that will work better with a standardised approach</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="6aaf" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Policy or projects where multiple organisations could share a rule-set.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="3fdb" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Rules or regulations where some of those that are about to be affected might not be able to afford to create their own implementations but would benefit from systems that allowed them to more easily meet their obligations(i.e. Current moves in the Anti money laundering space include extending standards to much smaller organisations that have difficulty affording their own compliance programs).</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7190" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Policy reviews where analysts want to test population data against a rule-set to model impacts if they changed a particular rule.</li>
<li class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj ir gl gm is go gp it gr gs iu gu gv iv gx gy io ip iq" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="1ba0" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; list-style-type: disc; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-left: 30px; margin-top: 1.05em; padding-left: 0px;">Rule sets that require regular checking but where the majority of information that will be submitted is coming from automated systems are good candidates as well since the benefits of automating an end to end process are often higher than only automating a single part.</li>
</ul>
<h1 class="hd he ap bx bw hf er hg eu hh hi hj hk hl hm hn ho" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="6d69" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Geneva, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 34px; letter-spacing: -0.022em; line-height: 1.12; margin: 1.95em 0px -0.28em;">
Rules-as-Code Selected Reading</h1>
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If these ideas have caught your interest, then the following links contain more detail on various projects and background information on what’s happening in the rules-as-code space.</div>
<div class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy ei" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="9221" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-top: 2em; word-break: break-word;">
<a class="cm di gz ha hb hc" href="https://serviceinnovationlab.github.io/assets/Exploring_Machine_Consumable_Code_With_ACC.pdf" rel="noopener nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; http: //www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><line x1=\"0\" y1=\"0\" x2=\"1\" y2=\"1\" stroke=\"rgba(41, 41, 41, 1)\" /></svg>"); text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Exploring machine consumable code with ACC(Accident Compensation Corporation)</a> — PDF Report</div>
<div class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy ei" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="788b" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-top: 2em; word-break: break-word;">
<a class="cm di gz ha hb hc" href="https://serviceinnovationlab.github.io/projects/rates-rebate/" rel="noopener nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; http: //www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><line x1=\"0\" y1=\"0\" x2=\"1\" y2=\"1\" stroke=\"rgba(41, 41, 41, 1)\" /></svg>"); text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rates Rebate</a><span class="gi jb" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"> — </span>Project summary and reports</div>
<div class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy ei" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="0fb0" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-top: 2em; word-break: break-word;">
<a class="cm di gz ha hb hc" href="https://github.com/Rules-as-Code-League/RaC-Handbook/wiki/1-Introduction" rel="noopener nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; http: //www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><line x1=\"0\" y1=\"0\" x2=\"1\" y2=\"1\" stroke=\"rgba(41, 41, 41, 1)\" /></svg>"); text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rules as Code league</a> — Wiki created and maintained with information about rules-as-code from multiple sources</div>
<div class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy ei" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="f383" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-top: 2em; word-break: break-word;">
<a class="cm di gz ha hb hc" href="https://www.oecd.org/countries/unitedarabemirates/embracing-innovation-in-government-global-trends-2019.htm" rel="noopener nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; http: //www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><line x1=\"0\" y1=\"0\" x2=\"1\" y2=\"1\" stroke=\"rgba(41, 41, 41, 1)\" /></svg>"); text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">OECD paper </a>— referenced NZ Service Innovation Lab’s machine readable code as a trend in government</div>
<div class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy ei" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7ded" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-top: 2em; word-break: break-word;">
<a class="cm di gz ha hb hc" href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/morrison-floats-legislation-written-in-code/" rel="noopener nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; http: //www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><line x1=\"0\" y1=\"0\" x2=\"1\" y2=\"1\" stroke=\"rgba(41, 41, 41, 1)\" /></svg>"); text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Australian Prime Minister’s statements</a> — Morrison said there was “no reason” why a cad file couldn’t be uploaded for a real-time building approval. “That’s totally possible but we’re not doing it. But I think that’s a good goal to set”</div>
<div class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy ei" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="db2b" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-top: 2em; word-break: break-word;">
<a class="cm di gz ha hb hc" href="https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/digital-transformation/policy-lab/rules-code" rel="noopener nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; http: //www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><line x1=\"0\" y1=\"0\" x2=\"1\" y2=\"1\" stroke=\"rgba(41, 41, 41, 1)\" /></svg>"); text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">NSW basic guidance</a> — Current thinking with Australian government on rules-as-code approaches.</div>
<div class="gg gh ap bx gi b gj gk gl gm gn go gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy ei" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="2a9e" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: medium-content-serif-font, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 21px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin-bottom: -0.46em; margin-top: 2em; word-break: break-word;">
<em class="jc" style="box-sizing: inherit;">If you want to know more or get in touch with us you can do so via the </em><a class="cm di gz ha hb hc" href="https://ackama.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1px 1px; box-sizing: inherit; http: //www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><line x1=\"0\" y1=\"0\" x2=\"1\" y2=\"1\" stroke=\"rgba(41, 41, 41, 1)\" /></svg>"); text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><em class="jc" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Ackama website.</em></a></div>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-25021862360102266432019-12-19T16:58:00.000-08:002020-04-14T17:15:18.624-07:00Sensors in Homes<i>(Note: Ackama staff worked and volunteered on the original prototypes and systems for what is now Whare Hauora who are currently engaged in challenging Kainga Ora’s sensor procurement with a particular focus on privacy issues.)</i><br />In the last couple of days, there has been <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/405670/surveillance-fears-over-plans-to-put-sensors-in-state-houses">public </a>argument on the Kāinga Ora project to put monitoring sensors in NZ state homes. Particular areas of concern being raised are about the nature of data being shared with government, issues of consent and vulnerability, and that this is individual level collection. By individual, I mean that it’s deep enough information to establish not just when people are home but also information on their behaviours. Additionally, people might not be given easy access to their own data without making a direct privacy request. <br /><br />Sensors in homes could be a powerful tool to impact the unhealthy state of our homes and understand the effects of our poor housing on New Zealand but they need to be done right and in a way that builds trust with everyone involved. This includes getting privacy and data sharing right. <br /><br />Sensors are surprisingly sensitive. If the people who find themselves cohabitating with them aren’t onboard with their presence they’re unlikely to give them the level of care necessary to get good data. Something as basic as putting a heater too near a sensor will completely throw off all its readings and that’s before taking into account anyone actually aiming to mislead the data (which we can be sure will occur to a few teenagers). <br /><br />Given this, it is deeply important that regardless of whether it’s Kainga Ora’s current project or a variation that goes ahead there needs to be a much clearer understanding of the broader benefits of sensors in homes and the processes that will lead to people accepting and gaining value from their deployment.<br /><br /><h3>
The benefits of sensors in homes ‘done right’</h3>
<b>Health </b>- both Whare Hauora and Kainga Ora are aligned in believing that improving health outcomes for New Zealanders is a key benefit of sensors in homes. Having good data like humidity and temperature in bedrooms drastically improves the ability of people to make changes that might improve their health (this is also a key area where making it easier for end-users to see their own data is likely to lead to them improving their own outcomes where possible, rather than waiting for government to respond). <br /><br /><b>Energy Cost</b> - having sensors and power management in homes makes it easier to run and manage appliances at the right times. In addition, if users have access to their usage it becomes easier for efficiency ideas to actually help people reacting to the cost they bear. Current approaches of pre-payment lead to poorer households paying a much higher rate for their power and getting in a vicious cycle - some energy companies are innovating in real-time pricing, and there’s scope for power to be further subsidised along the lines of the winter power supplement. <br /><br /><b>The Environment</b> - as a follow on to better energy management, a lot of people don’t realise that a huge proportion of the high carbon power we still generate is targeted at supplying domestic power during the 6-7 pm time slot in winter (everyone gets home, turns on all their heaters, and starts cooking). Relatively minor reductions in power usage during this peak would significantly lessen our reliance on non-renewable power. Good sensors are a key part of allowing things like smart heaters to turn on at better or more efficient times so that people live comfortably while avoiding the worst of the peak. <br /><br /><b>Adoption of smart devices</b> - this might seem like a surprising category in a discussion around sensors for some of the poorest in New Zealand, but prices for sensors and smart devices will continue to drop in future. The underlying cost of components for a manufacturer to add a wifi connection to most appliances is already less than a dollar, by the time any sensor networks being built now reach the end of their lives there will have been multiple years where wifi enablement has been the norm rather than a fancy add on. <br /><br /><b>Lowered mental strain</b> - It’s well documented that one of the big challenges of poverty is the amount of time, energy, and worry that goes into thinking about and managing all the little challenges of daily life that become big challenges when every dollar matters. Automation and sensors can help make sure that you’re not spending money on heating when you don’t need to as well as lowering the mental burden on making that decision about when to turn the heater on and off based on actual health data. <br /><br /><b>Data </b>- there are many uses for better data about what’s happening in New Zealand homes. Everything from holding landlords to account to meta-analysis of construction trends and weather effects will be interesting to someone. Although, it should be noted that there are very few potential reasons why this kind of interpretation should not be done on fully anonymised and aggregated data. <br /><br /><h3>
How the Kainga Ora process could be improved</h3>
Explicitly focus on giving users a portal to see their own data - without access to their data most of the benefits of sensors are just not going to arise. It’s so much more efficient for someone to learn themselves that a room in their house might cause a health issue, and do something about it, than it is for there to be an entire cycle of engagement between government and individual. The eternal landlord refrain of “you just need to open some windows” is so much more compelling if you can immediately see data when you open the window, as well as being quickly disproven if the window does nothing. <br /><br /><div>
Establish an arms-length governance committee - this committee should not be majority controlled by the government. The committee should be tasked with managing the process of aggregating and supplying data to appropriate organisations (including Kainga Ora). It should also be responsible for reviewing privacy concerns and policies. A diverse and representational governance committee will provide the needed insight and experience when reviewing these policies. <br /><br />Data should be shared appropriately with all relevant organisations - having gathered a data set it should be shared with community organisations and other appropriate parties as readily as it is shared with Kainga Ora. This allows other organisations to do work based on the data and findings without having to rely on a secondary process to generate public reports. Proactive sharing also makes it easier to use the data as a method of holding Kainga Ora and related parties to account. <br /><br />Purchase portal and sensors separately - at present Kainga Ora is heading towards a bundled hardware and portal solution, this makes little sense as the sensor market is moving quickly and rapidly commoditising. The focus should be on building a great portal for both users and data aggregation that will support multiple devices and be open enough to integrate new devices that may crop up in the future. Sensors have already commoditised to the point that the number of devices being discussed could be procured directly as needed without breaking government procurement limits (this would also avoid the risk of piles of hardware sitting in a container somewhere while everything else is sorted out). <br /><br />Don’t just get consent from people but show them some value - adoption of sensors shouldn’t just be something people accept, a real effort should be made for the user experience and data to be genuinely useful to whoever ends up with a sensor in their home. That includes treating any deployment as a marketing and education exercise on top of managing the actual physical installations. <br /><br />None of these challenges are insurmountable and in the long run, the benefits of automation and sensor systems are absolutely there, but there needs to be careful thought and a focus on the users in whatever happens next in New Zealand. Technology is an amazing tool for making lives better but only if it’s done in a way that people won’t feel the need to “accidentally” put a small heat source next to it.<br /><br />(This article originally posted on the <a href="https://ackama.com/">Ackama</a> blog)<br /></div>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-87807136180955295672019-11-14T14:07:00.000-08:002019-11-17T20:35:18.609-08:0055 Things We Did In EuropeThe obligatory 55 things to do in Europe having just been to Europe post. I've rated all the activities we did that seemed to stand out as "things" in their own right and left general exploring and eating as a score on the city itself, they're pretty close to being in the order that we did them. The first number on each of these is enjoyment and the second is value for money.<br />
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London 4 2</h2>
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London was an okay city it had some of the best one-off things that we did(Hamilton and Alain Ducasse) but wasn't the nicest place to just wander around and definitely wasn't cheap.</div>
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Madame Tussaud's London<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1</h3>
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We thought there might be more of the history of Madame Tussaud's given it was the flagship but there was only really one small room. The wax models themselves are cool but not particularly exciting.</div>
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Tower of London<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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The tower of London has quite a lot in it. The crown jewels are impressive and the white tower is full of interesting stuff. I liked it for being almost exactly what I expected of a medieval fortress. </div>
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Oxford<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5(With an alumnus)</h3>
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We went out to Oxford for a day. Luckily a friend of ours had just graduated and her alumni card allowed us into most of the colleges without having to pay. She was also an excellent tour guide who could share both facts about the history of the colleges and more recent gossip about which college had a feud with which. Without an alumnus, it would be both less entertaining and reasonably expensive as each college charges admission separately.</div>
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Highgate Cemetary<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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Highgate is a beautiful old cemetery that was allowed to fall into disrepair for many years. You have to go on a walking tour to get access to the most overgrown parts but it's totally worth it if you like wandering around weird old cemeteries. There are also some relatively famous graves like Marx and Douglas Adams if you're into that kind of thing.<br />
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Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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We decided before the trip that we'd do one big splurge on a 3 star Michelin meal. We picked Alain Ducasse over Gordon Ramsey although they looked pretty similar in terms of what we would have likely ordered. At 125 pounds per head for 4 courses, it wasn't cheap but it also wasn't out of this world. The food and service were excellent with particular standouts being the beef and marrow, and the Rum Baba. They also snuck in so many little extras that we were too full to eat any of the little tarts they brought out at the end, which is apparently such a common occurrence they already had the takeaway bags with the tray.</div>
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Westminster Abbey<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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Westminster Abbey is an old church with a fairly large number of interesting sculptures and some nice tombs. If it had been the only church or set of old tombs we saw on the trip I'd probably rate it quite highly so if you're only going to London then do that. As it was it kind of blurred into all the other old churches and was by far the most uncomfortable to get around.</div>
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Shakespeare at the Globe<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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Shakespeare at the Globe was good. I think if the group that did the NZ pop-up globe hadn't done such a good job the last couple of years I would have been more impressed. </div>
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We did get lucky in that the performance we went to had some deaf actors who signed their parts. Which was handled amazingly well so that everyone could understand what was going on regardless of whether they understood the signs.</div>
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Hamilton the Musical<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5</h3>
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Hamilton is a rap musical about Alexander Hamilton(one of the founding fathers of the US). It's excellent. </div>
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British Museum<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> free</span></h3>
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The British Museum has a lot of stuff in it. I'm not exactly sure what the logic is behind how they've organised said stuff. Some of it is probably about due to be sent back where it came from(Greece has already built a whole museum in the hope that they can have some of the Parthenon back someday).</div>
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Paris 2 1</h2>
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I didn't like Paris all that much. It was kind of dirty and frequently expensive. Luckily we had a day trip out to Giverny where we went to Monet's House and a cool chateau. As soon as we got out of the city it was clean, the people were friendly, and things stopped being quite as overpriced. So I came away with a feeling that I don't like Paris but the rest of the country seems nice.</div>
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Crazy Horse<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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Crazy horse is similar to the Moulin Rouge although slightly more naked. The show was well choreographed although dragged at times. Unexpectedly, my favourite act was two guys doing a comedic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3xPC8g9TDA">tap routine</a>. </div>
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Catacombs<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The catacombs are a weird place, I knew a bit about the structures and history so was keen to explore. I hadn't realised before getting there that the famous bit with all the arranged bones was actually genuinely made as a tourist attraction a while after they'd started using the catacombs to store bodies. It's totally worth the visit although I would like a chance to see more of the areas that were used during wartime or some of the other bits that became popular for raves during the '80s.</div>
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The Louvre<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The Louvre is huge and full of interesting things and tourists. We found some good advice that going on the late-night Wednesday would have fewer crowds and this was definitely true. We did most of the museum and then headed up to the Mona Lisa around 8:30 by which point the crowds had thoroughly thinned. My favourite part was Napoleon's stunning apartments.</div>
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Monet's House<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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Monet's House is beautiful and the garden is amazing. If you like Monet's art at all this is totally worth the visit. If you happen to be in a very small set of people who don't like Monet but do like gardens then it's probably still worth a visit.</div>
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Chateau la Roche Guyon<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvoMl3uWZ_LYNIvS0_7sI2lNJtjX8eoJGajqabQFegsqfXHCT73NsoZssHstqjw74GVh6wTwiiAgZft-YcgAP9m2uMEREpxzHz5h0CmZHq4QgUkzVZ8933c5gI5Ct7WagTDMwVDTs49Tsb/s1600/1573737221268041-0.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvoMl3uWZ_LYNIvS0_7sI2lNJtjX8eoJGajqabQFegsqfXHCT73NsoZssHstqjw74GVh6wTwiiAgZft-YcgAP9m2uMEREpxzHz5h0CmZHq4QgUkzVZ8933c5gI5Ct7WagTDMwVDTs49Tsb/s320/1573737221268041-0.png" width="240" /></a>This Chateau has everything: an Orangerie, a medieval fortress on top of it, great views, a bunker from that time the German's took it over, some curiosities, far fewer tourists than the more famous sites, and a very surprising final couple of rooms.</div>
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Versailles<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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I was expecting more of Versaille but after the Louvre I had seen plenty of art and Napoleon's apartments had shown off the splendour. Versaille was also even more packed with tourists than the Louvre had been. The park itself is very nice and traipsing down to the Trianons is worth it as they give a better picture of how people actually lived. </div>
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Eiffel Tower<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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The tower is worth doing once, make sure you buy a timed ticket so you don't have to join a long queue. We elected to take the elevator all the way to the top and then walk back down the stairs which let us look at the construction which was a good decision. </div>
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Eat Cheese and Bread<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> 5</span></h3>
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Going to a supermarket to buy cheap cheeses and bread was good. This isn't a surprise but really it's one of the key things to do in Paris and is definitely worth it.</div>
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Lisbon 5 4</h2>
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I didn't have many preconceptions about Lisbon but it ended up being my favourite city of the trip. It's warm, the people are friendly, the food is good, the food is cheap, and the city itself has plenty of interesting history.</div>
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Eat at the parks with kiosks<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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Every few blocks we would come across a park full of people. There were always tables of old dudes playing cards, kids playing, and a generally friendly atmosphere. There was also always a kiosk that sold a good range of reasonably priced food and drinks so you could just hang out under a tree and escape the heat.</div>
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Lisbon Science Museum and Botanical Gardens<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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I really liked this science museum, although I'm not sure everyone would. It was pretty simple but contained a lot of old stuff ranging from having kept the original labs and teaching areas from when it was an academy through to having kept a gruesome set of wax models of diseases. </div>
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Lisbon Cemetary<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> free</span></h3>
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The Lisbon Cemetary is a pretty fancy cemetery with interesting tombs and good views.</div>
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The Castelo de São Jorge<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi48oBcJmIRGdYOpebDyKM0gIvh03L-9ld_FZrg7kymyf9zlO5Cu6eMCXnxg6RdpMQ82HeiJu1NC8U3u_bCWbZiV9Z8OQU7q8_DIssuon_sgxmbTeR1omaWdZaXS65bwx88FzIWCw3tkQxP/s1600/1573737216724679-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi48oBcJmIRGdYOpebDyKM0gIvh03L-9ld_FZrg7kymyf9zlO5Cu6eMCXnxg6RdpMQ82HeiJu1NC8U3u_bCWbZiV9Z8OQU7q8_DIssuon_sgxmbTeR1omaWdZaXS65bwx88FzIWCw3tkQxP/s320/1573737216724679-1.png" width="240" /></a></div>
Lisbon has its own castle. That's pretty cool to start with but it's also on a site which has had habitation from at least the 8'th century BC. It's a lovely place to sit and watch the sun go down. Bring a bottle of wine and some snacks.</div>
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Banksy Exhibition<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
We happened to be in Lisbon when a rather good Banksy exhibition was on. I doubt it'll be there when anyone else goes but if you come across one I recommend checking it out.<br />
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Tile Museum<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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The tile museum has a lot of examples of the ceramic tile art that Lisbon is famous for. It's interesting but I felt more satisfaction wandering around the city and just seeing all the cool tiles on actual buildings than I did at the museum.</div>
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Grenada 3 4</h2>
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Grenada is a nice city we may have missed some of it because our hotel was a little further from the centre than most of the other cities we stayed in. It was the only place where we bought the standard visitor card thing as it happened to match up well with the activities we wanted to do and covered some public transport.</div>
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The Alhambra<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The Alhambra is an excellent palace with amazing carving throughout. Much of the work was done under the Nasrid Dynasty and the difference of approach made it really stand out against the various other old things we went and saw during the trip. MC Escher found the carving and tessellations in the design inspiring and it's pretty easy to see why.</div>
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Flamenco Show<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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We went to a flamenco show while we were there the ones that run regularly are pretty clearly set up to cater to tourists. The music was actually very good but the dancing was clearly more in the demonstration category than full performance. Probably worth doing if you don't think you'll be spending time somewhere where proper performances are likely to happen but not stunning.</div>
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Cathedral<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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The cathedral is very large and worth walking around. The audio tour is exceptionally tedious.</div>
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Royal Tomb<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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The royal tomb small and definitely worth looking at if you got the visitor card as it's included. The audio tour is truly astonishingly bad - for a tomb dedicated to some really interesting historical figures it spends most of the time telling you what every single painting is and overuses words "dynamism" in explaining them. </div>
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Rome 4 4</h2>
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Rome is actually quite a nice city to hang out in so long as you avoid the main tourist areas which are luckily quite small. The public transport was probably the most unreliable of anywhere we went though.</div>
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Trevi Fountain<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Free</h3>
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The Trevi fountain is overrun by tourists but is a very pretty fountain.</div>
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Spanish Steps<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Free</h3>
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The Spanish Steps were famous for being full of tourists. Unfortunately, it was recently made an offence to sit on the steps and multiple officers are making sure people keep moving. Although this has made them more functional as steps it's made them significantly less unique and interesting.</div>
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Pantheon<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Free</h3>
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The Pantheon is another of the very old places you can wander into for free(The version in Paris costs 9 euro). We were lucky in that it rained while were there and the big open hole in the centre of the roof letting rain in while every watched it come in was one of the more memorable moments of the trip.</div>
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Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Free</h3>
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Rome has so many ruins that it spared one for a cat sanctuary in the middle of the city. If you like cats you should visit the cat sanctuary - hopefully, this is obvious.</div>
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Colosseum and Roman Forum<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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The Colosseum is old and huge and exactly what you expect. The Roman forum is a connected set of ruins in various states of repair. You should at least visit the forum to buy your ticket as it'll be much faster than buying at the Colosseum. However, Pompeii is far impressive that the forum when it comes to seeing a connected set of ruins so if you're making it out there it's probably fine to skip or just do a quick walkthrough of the forum.</div>
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Pompeii<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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Pompeii is amazing, I totally underestimated just how much of the city had survived. You can wander up and down streets and there's enough of the buildings left to be able to work out just from context which are shops and which are homes. It also has the oldest "beware of dog" sign.</div>
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Capuchin Museum 4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The Capuchin Museum starts with a good selection of interesting trinkets and bits of history of the order but the main reason everyone comes is the crypt. The crypt makes the ordering of bones in the french catacombs look amateurish. Apparently, a friar one day decided that the best way to make people contemplative was to take the bones of dead monks and arrange them to create art. It turns out that he was right.</div>
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Altare Della Patria 3 free</h3>
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You'll go past the national monument a bunch of times in Rome and it's quite impressive. We went in expecting a particular museum that apparently closed a while ago and has been replaced with a rather strange exhibition to Italian patriotism. </div>
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Non-Catholic Cemetary<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The non-catholic cemetery has some interesting graves(Keats among others) and also quite a lot of cats.</div>
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Castel Sant Angelo<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The Castel Sant Angelo was originally Hadrian's mausoleum before being used as an apartment by various popes. While most of the displays are pope focussed the various bits of history are still addressed and I found the combination fascinating.</div>
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Venice 4 3</h2>
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Venice is a bit of a tourist trap. Definitely worth a visit but not a long one.</div>
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Wander around Venice<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> free</span></h3>
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Visiting Venice could be almost entirely justified just to wander around for a day. The little alleyways, canals, and old buildings are all great to explore. Particularly if you've got the time to just head in a direction and see where you end up. There are obvious thoroughfares that are full of tourists and generic shops but it's pretty easy to nip down an alleyway and go in the same direction without having to deal without so many of the crowds.</div>
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Doge's Palace<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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Wow, so palace. I love the history it has and how the history of each room ties so close to the history of the Republic of Venice as one of the longest-running governments in history. It also connects directly through to the old prison over the bridge of sighs. The prison absolutely looks like the kind of thing you expect from a prison in a period drama including the graffiti scratched into the walls. </div>
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Other Museums<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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You get a pass to another "three" museums with the Doge's Palace ticket. They're worthing visiting but they're all connected and the day we were there only one entrance was actually open so I'm of the opinion that it is actually "one" museum that you get free with the Doge's Palace.</div>
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Athens 4 4</h2>
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Athens is in an interesting place, the effects of the financial crisis are clearly still being felt in terms of general maintenance and higher quantities of homeless people than we saw elsewhere in Europe. We weren't there for long enough to really get a feel for if things are getting better or not.</div>
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National Archeological Museum<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The national Archeological museum is a good size and has some really old stuff. With plenty of Cycladic art and figures, it covers finds dating back to at least the 3rd millennium BC. </div>
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Keramikos<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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Keramikos is one of several old things that you can get on a single ticket and then wander around Athens looking at. It has a good mixture of ruins and a surprising number of tortoises. A highlight was watching a father try and avoid explaining what was actually happening when his two young children ran up to him and told him two of the tortoises were "fighting".</div>
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Ancient Agora<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The Agora is probably the best set of ruins in Athens that you don't have to climb a hill to get to. It's also on the way to the Acropolis so you may as well stop by.</div>
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Hadrian's Library<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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Hadrian's library is also on the ticket that gets into the other places, it's a bit smaller and you could probably just glance over the fence as you walk past.</div>
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Acropolis<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_icVAuUphtxOPy3wi0ehCjEDVeu9WZMdnXmQ65ozxJjatlngFwiQNhvbIJn9_3HjpfoYEcp_Opa6nHugmKR0rsApx1JIwxWT-mUCbyyNBrqJoHuqVqsDYqygFnI42orLa0KAhYJez4m7w/s1600/1573737211069717-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_icVAuUphtxOPy3wi0ehCjEDVeu9WZMdnXmQ65ozxJjatlngFwiQNhvbIJn9_3HjpfoYEcp_Opa6nHugmKR0rsApx1JIwxWT-mUCbyyNBrqJoHuqVqsDYqygFnI42orLa0KAhYJez4m7w/s320/1573737211069717-2.png" width="320" /></a>The Acropolis is huge and includes multiple old things that would justify a visit all by themselves. The Parthenon at the top, as well as the odeon and the theatre of Dionysus around the base, are all worth the trip to see.</div>
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Acropolis Museum<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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The Acropolis Museum has a few good items and an excellent sublevel display of excavated buildings. Unfortunately, its main display is missing. The entire top floor is dedicated to the sculptures from the Parthenon, which are still in the British Museum.</div>
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Berlin 3 3</h2>
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We had limited time in Berlin and it was a shock to be back in a city with cold weather. This was the only place I really bought anything on the trip as I went to Uniqlo and bought a very warm sweater. I am however a convert to currywurst and the general act of shaking curry powder over various foods.</div>
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Berlin Walking Tour<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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We did a Sandeman's walking tour of Berlin. It was a solid way to walk around and see a good range of buildings with some context as to their history. If we'd had more time in Berlin it would probably have seeded the things we would have chosen to do on the following days.</div>
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Sachsenhausen<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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Our other day in Berlin we went out to Sachsenhausen which was a concentration camp under the Nazi and then the Soviets. While it isn't the most famous of the camps it was large and being close to Berlin gives it a key place in history as a training camp and original home of many political prisoners. </div>
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Amsterdam 3 3 </h2>
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Amsterdam should probably be a four but I'm docking it a point for raining on us and being generally cold. The city is walkable and pleasant. It doesn't take too long to stop noticing the weed smell.<br />
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Amsterdam Walking Tour<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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We did a Sandeman's walking tour in Amsterdam as well, it was well worth it as everything is tightly packed but confusingly laid so getting a bit of guidance at the start made getting around easier. </div>
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Anne Frank House<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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The Anne Frank house is absolutely worth walking around and has a great audio tour. Do be aware that even with timed tickets they absolutely max out capacity so you're looking at a slow shuffle around the building.</div>
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Micropia<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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Micropia is a museum of microbes, it has a few interesting exhibits but is quite small. There are definitely bigger science museums where it would count as a single exhibition in a bigger context.</div>
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Weed Shop<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4</h3>
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Go to Amsterdam, buy some weed. I was particularly interested in this given the prospect of a cannabis referendum in New Zealand next year, overall the environment was friendly and prices were low. The main thing I saw the security type guy doing was reminding people that they couldn't use tobacco in the shop.</div>
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Red Light District<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3</h3>
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The red light district is something that I find interesting to walk through but also weirdly anachronistic. Once upon a time, Amsterdam was viewed as a moral cesspit due to its existence whereas now it's just a bit odd really. </div>
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Body Worlds Exhibit<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2</h3>
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Body Worlds do a rather extensive set of bits of the human body to examine, it's interesting but I wasn't amazed. Probably good for kids.</div>
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Van Gogh Museum<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2</h3>
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The Van Gogh museum was okay. If we'd gone at the start of the trip I might have liked it more but we'd seen a lot of art at this point. I also preferred both Monet and Banksy when it came to single artist related activities.</div>
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Best Old Thing - Pompeii</h3>
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Best Activity - Hamilton</h3>
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Best Meal - Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester</h3>
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Best City - Lisbon</h3>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-67897706505374380432019-10-27T20:03:00.001-07:002019-11-17T20:28:41.436-08:00Improving Elections Digitally<span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 20px;">New Zealand just had another round of local elections with turnouts so low that it makes the link between elections and the democratic mandate of those elected tenuous at best. Predictably this has led to another round of looking at online voting as the solution to the lack of engagement with local politics. Which is a bit like using a sledgehammer for home repair - it might be possible but there’s a better chance you’ll just accelerate the demolition of your house.</span><br />
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Most technologists who have some understanding of the issues agree that online voting is bordering on impossible to make as secure as should be expected for a key part of modern democratic society. Unfortunately the popular discourse around electronic voting is being quickly reduced down to the debate between citizens who want voting to be as easy as online shopping versus the stereotypical IT professional who keeps freaking about security. Everyone is frustrated because to one side online voting seems obvious while the other is telling them they can’t have it with neither side really looking at other options.</div>
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Some of the onus is on technologists to describe how we can help improve the structures in which we live. So here are some of my thoughts on both the current challenges and changes that could be made to help improve electoral engagement without resorting to online voting. Many of these ideas have had parts implemented at times by smaller groups, but I believe they need the support of government to realise their potential benefit.</div>
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The Challenges</h2>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;">STV</a> is a great electoral system that unfortunately also requires a fairly deep understanding of an election for the public to engage with. While the vote for Mayor may not be too hard to understand the tradeoffs involved in something like a DHB (District Health Board) election where over 20 people may be vying for 7 seats makes it difficult for the voter to know what their vote may lead to. Solutions need to make it easier to engage with this complexity and easier for voters feel confident that their vote will not lead to an unwanted result.</div>
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Local news has steadily become less well funded and less well read. While in the past there could be an assumption about how engaged people were with their local news and community this has steadily decreased as digital systems lead to people having connections and relationships that are less tightly tied to the physical location. Any approach to voter engagement must acknowledge these changes as reality rather than trying to turn back the clock to the days when everyone bought the local paper.</div>
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These challenges also play deeply into inequalities already present in society. <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/increasing_voter_turnout_what_if_anything_can_be_done" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;">Research in the US</a> has demonstrated that in most cases the goals for improving equitable access to democracy have to include lowering the cognitive load of engaging with the electoral system and working out who has policies that will benefit you. There are also some findings that just improving access, such as through online voting, doesn’t help with improving the diversity of those engaging with democratic processes.</div>
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Some Potential Changes</h2>
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Move candidate information online as a primary source</h3>
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One of the limitations of the current system is that everyone gets their candidate statement printed out in a tiny little booklet that’s hard to browse. By the time someone has finished stating their hobbies, marital status, how much they care about the local community and that one scholarship they got that one time, there’s about a sentence left for policy. Moving online first opens up the space for candidates to share as much or as little as they want, which is necessary for people to be able to make informed decisions about their policies.</div>
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There’s also the benefit of making it so that those who can afford marketing and content writing have less of an inherent advantage. The new mayor of wellington Andy Foster managed to put an <a href="https://www.andyfoster.org.nz/" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;">entire website</a> online while most candidates were doing well if they managed to direct people to their facebook page.</div>
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<a href="https://policylocal.thespinoff.co.nz/" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;">Policy Local by the Spinoff</a> did some good work in this direction but the simple limitations of their readership demographics and audience both means information on the platform won’t get to the broader public and that answers will be targeted to the Spinoff’s demographic.</div>
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Capture answers from candidates in a consistent way on issues that are key to voters</h3>
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A few years ago I remember talking to Meg Howie about the <a href="https://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=C7AB79BA-D960-5B8F-388B-B0B82C83CFDD" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;">Askaway Project</a> for the 2014 election which set out to capture common questions from voters and then send them to political parties for answers, engagement was very high for a project that mostly spun out of a university paper. If a system like this for capturing common questions and keeping the answers in a public place can exist in parallel to the voting statement it becomes easier for people to find out</div>
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Keep Voting Records Alongside Candidate Profiles</h3>
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For incumbent candidates it should be easy for voters to see how they’ve voted historically in the context of what they’re saying in their candidate statement. This just needs to be a link but it’s so deeply important that engaging with politics be easy. Not everyone will follow the information through but the option being there will improve both accountability and the feeling of powerlessness that comes from trying to make voting decisions off vague candidate statements.</div>
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Allow voters to select the candidates they’d prefer within the system as they’re searching</h3>
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The same as in your favourite online shopping cart let people start favoriting and ordering their potential candidates as they work through the system and read profiles. For a ranked voting system it makes a lot of sense to be able to drag and drop your candidates up and down a list while you’re reading their profiles and comparing policies. You might transfer your votes to paper at the end, but flexibility makes it easier to really think about how you’re configuring your candidate list.</div>
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Create links for voters and organisations to share their preferred votes</h3>
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People will still have difficulty getting through all the information on their own, so being able to share their thoughts is important. Often voters have a few top preferences and then don’t care too much about the middle of the pack while wanting to avoid a few candidates that they disagree with. If voters can share or copy from other people that they know have similar views then they’ll have more confidence that they’re not accidentally voting in someone they’d hate but just haven’t dug deep enough to find that out.</div>
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The concern with this kind of approach is that you’ll end up with a situation like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Motoring_Enthusiast_Party" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;">that time the Australians accidentally elected the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party</a>. But I think that can always be taken as a reflection of an election where voters were genuinely unhappy with the major parties. It certainly created the appropriate wake up call when a small party got elected simply by not enough people knowing enough about them to move them down their list.</div>
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Add a no election option for votes on positions where Crown appointment is possible</h3>
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This isn’t really a digitally enabled option but it is one I’ve seen used to good effect by the Hugo awards for science fiction <a href="https://conzealand.nz/" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;">(which will be hosted in Wellington next year)</a>. I’m particularly thinking for DHB elections where there is a large collection of candidates for a lot of positions and the Crown often appoints members as well. There will be reasonable situations where voters would prefer to increase Crown appointments rather than fill all available slots with the available candidates.</div>
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Handling the move away from postal services</h3>
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There is still the problem to handle of the postal service becoming steadily more inconvenient as an electoral mechanism. A better mechanism than being fully online will likely be the adoption of some kind of voting station (particularly around metropolitan areas), an obvious way to make this more convenient would be for users to be able to transfer their preselected votes to the machine via mobile (such as with a QR code) and verify them on site.</div>
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Some people will insist that that verification happens on a paper receipt while others may be comfortable with digital voting so long as it’s a closed system. Either way it’s still a long way from opening voting up to the wider internet and the multitudes of bots, viruses, and creepy uncles that might have access to your home computer.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(This article originally posted on the <a href="https://ackama.com/">Ackama</a> blog)</span></div>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-83191557050443248972019-06-16T20:05:00.000-07:002019-11-17T20:31:57.685-08:00Pacific Mission 2019<span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 20px;">The week before last I was part of the New Zealand mission to Melanesia visiting Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Both countries are major targets of the New Zealand Aid Programme, with New Zealand involvement and support in areas ranging from police training to tourism. The reception in both countries was very friendly and showed there will be opportunities for New Zealand businesses to engage over the coming years either as part of the aid programmes or directly as the economies develop.</span><br />
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<img alt="Pacific trip" data-rel="225x255" height="3456" src="https://assets.www.ackama.com/system/refinery/images/W1siZiIsIjIwMTkvMDYvMTYvMjMvMzIvMjQvZDAxZGUyMjMtMTZhZC00ZjJhLTkwNTEtMjI3YTU0YTE2NjJiL0lNR18yMDE5MDYwNl8xMDE4NTBfQm9rZWguanBnIl1d/IMG_20190606_101850_Bokeh.jpg?sha=2d29a32dcab65bf4" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: inherit; display: block; height: auto; margin: 1em auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: initial;" title="Pacific trip" width="4608" /><span style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit;"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit;">One of the most interesting parts of the trip was the delegation itself which was lead by Rt Hon Winston Peters and consisted of 10 MPs (including members of Labour, Greens, NZ First, and National) a Pasifika and community group, a business delegation, and media crew on top of the MFAT officials and RNZAF staff. With around seventy people we filled one of the Air Force’s 757s (which we were very happy to be in, as there had been some suggestions we might be in the Hercules and everyone agrees the novelty of wears off in the first 20 minutes of the flight). Bringing such a diverse group together with various experiences in the region was hugely valuable in its own right with connections quickly forming that will allow more NZ organisations to cooperate on what they’re doing in the region.</span></div>
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It was also a fascinating look into how well respected New Zealand is at a political level across the region. I think some credit must be given to all the politicians on the trip for contributing to New Zealand’s reputation in the region. Although it was a cross-party delegation everyone was explicit that New Zealand’s role and aid in the pacific is not a partisan issue and avoided bringing any of the domestic political disagreements they might have on the trip with them. Although some top level policy and direction might change this firm commitment to the region across all parties has contributed dramatically to how well we are thought of.</div>
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The trip was valuable in terms of all the connections built both in country and between the group itself. New Zealand presents itself well and is well-liked. The parliamentary delegation in particular worked hard to present as a single group from New Zealand rather than letting any of the disagreements they may have domestically show. As a business delegate I found it useful. The main thing for any others approached for a similar trip to be aware of is that the schedule is hard to keep to, and although there are a couple of gaps set up which you can theoretically book your own meetings into, it’s pretty hard in practice to actually pull that off. I have suggested something like a business speed dating event next time around so that the meetings can be centrally managed rather than delegates trying to sort out emergency internet connectivity to rebook a meeting when they realise the schedule has slipped.</div>
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Solomon Islands</h1>
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Solomon Islands are a bit behind on their development journey in comparison to many of their neighbours (GDP per capita was estimated down around $2,380 USD per annum in 2017), but they surprised me the most in terms of the things that are going well and the potential represented. They’ve just gone through a successful election that, while tense, has had plenty of international oversight and appears to have been the most successful yet in terms of voter turnout and engagement (a particular shout out here went to the NZ Police trainers who have been working on helping bring community engagement strategies to the Solomon Islands Police Force).</div>
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Invariably the first thing people said to me after they learned I was in technology was that the country is finally getting a cable connection in about six months. That’s going to allow for a much more connected experience with the rest of the world. Even if access doesn’t make it to everyone immediately, the benefits of being more connected to their neighbours and being able to use the tools that other countries are using for planning and growth will be immense once they’re no longer dependent on satellite. To put this in perspective the roaming deal I was offered on mobile data was $5 NZD per megabyte and even locals were paying upwards of $250 NZD per month for less than a gigabyte of data.</div>
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Other pieces of infrastructure are also heading in a good direction. I was particularly impressed by our visit to the Honiara Port where the international side was in extremely good order and had deployed a fair amount of forward looking technology in terms of tracking systems and comprehensive dashboards in the main offices. New Zealand has also funded a second international airport in Munda to build a tourist zone around - this seems particularly positive in terms of allowing Honiara to focus on building itself out as the capital and industrial centre of the country.</div>
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On the industry side I found visiting Kokonut Pacific, an organisation teaching Solomon Islanders how to process coconut oil, interesting in terms of it illustrating a relatively complete supply chain all the way from small coconut growers through to export. People working in the coconut industry are producing a range of products including: oil, soap, copra, charcoal, bowls, carved items, and coconut water. This can then feed into the port that has plenty of backfill capacity allowing for cheap exports.</div>
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Coconut oil soap at Kokonut Pacific</div>
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Most of the rest of our time was taken up by tours or events relating to the activity of New Zealand in Solomon Islands ranging from our support for the youth centre in Honiara through to official dinners more focussed on the political necessity of exchanging gifts between New Zealand and our hosts.</div>
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Solomon Islands has one particularly huge challenge in front of it - a huge youth population that is also mostly unemployed. To fix it they absolutely need to develop more industry but they’re taking many of the right steps to head in that direction. If they manage it then it’s likely they will end up in a good position as they have more scale and resources to work with, being comparatively larger (~600,000 people), than many of their neighbours.</div>
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The visit featured an amazing example of well-intentioned people making a small decision that has deeply negatively affected how they’re perceived. At some point someone on the policy side in Australia decided that the Australians should import Dole pineapples from outside Solomon Islands instead of buying the local produce as they were concerned buying locally would warp the domestic market. I’m sure the Australians did this with other things but everyone remembers the pineapples because it appears to be a point of local pride that their pineapples are extremely good (something I can attest to having sampled the produce). So a number of people bring this up in a variety of contexts including: talking about fruit, using it as an example of how the Australians didn’t engage with the community, and weird policy interventions when the price of pineapples seems so minor in comparison to how much aid money has warped the property market in Honiara. These three contexts match the three times I was told this story over the course of two and a half days on the ground. I found this fascinating as I’m sure no one agonised over this particular decision but it’s become so deeply entrenched as a bit of perception that people roll it out in conversation regularly.</div>
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Solomon Islands surprised me in terms of how far along their development journey they are versus what my preconceptions had been from outside the country. They’ve taken a number of positive steps towards building industry and infrastructure and what appears to be solid government vision for continuing to do so. Coming away from the visit I’m much more optimistic about what the next decade will bring for the country.</div>
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Vanuatu</h1>
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Vanuatu is a very different experience from Solomon Islands as it is much more developed in the main centre. In Port Vila the internet speed is good and they already have a thriving tourism industry. Despite this the rural areas and islands are still mostly subsistence living with little in the way of access to services.</div>
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While Solomon Islands face issues from youth moving to the city and being jobless, Vanuatu was more concerned with the issue of less of the population moving to the areas that are easy to service. On the one hand it’s easier for everyone to stay at a subsistence level when spread across the region, on the other it’s harder to move towards industry and development.</div>
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Another challenge for businesses trying to work out what the future of Vanuatu will be is the complexity of the political situation - the current government is an eight-way coalition which is down from a coalition of 12 parties. This situation makes predicting what’s likely to happen on a political front difficult, with frequent motions of no confidence in parliament and a number of groups pushing very different futures.</div>
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Vanuatu’s economy is much more tightly tied to tourism than Solomon Islands with regular arrivals of large cruise ships supporting much of their economy. This is leaving the country with a different set of challenges around infrastructure and planning (more areas have to be able to handle the sudden arrival of a shipload of people). In the vast majority of cases the expats and businesses I met there were involved in the tourism industry in some way.</div>
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Because of its dependence on cruise ships Vanuatu is even more vulnerable to climate change having a long term effect on its economy than some other islands. Hurricane seasons are getting longer and the direct danger increases alongside the window in which cruise ships are travelling the region decreasing. Without the cruise ships there would simply not be enough trade to support the country and there isn’t a clear path to an alternative industry. This is a reminder that if the world as a whole doesn’t proactively address climate change the costs will also accrue directly in increasing aid and support needed by the countries affected.</div>
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One of the pieces of better news in the trip was our visit to the Fred Hollows eye clinic in Port Vila. Fred Hollows has some of the best investment to outcomes metrics of any charity I’ve come across, because restoring vision changes someone from permanently needing some level of support to being able to work or produce for themselves. The Vanuatu clinic is particularly notable for being the first time the foundation has successfully trained a local through to being a full opthamologist alongside building a new clinic that should allow for 800 surgeries a year.</div>
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One key part of any Vanuatu visit is sampling the Kava which tastes medicinal and is purported to have a relaxing effect. The impression I’d been given of it ahead of time overstated the effects as I can’t say I particularly noticed any mental changes but it was always served in a setting that was comfortable and open to good conversation so I recommend the experience.</div>
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We also had the notable experience of clogging up the airport on the final day with the RNZAF 757 had an issue and the other one had to be flown over to bring us back to New Zealand. Apparently the 757s are a bit error prone, but at least it gives the media some extra opportunities for stories.</div>
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Although it’s currently ahead on tourism I felt that Vanuatu was more vulnerable than Solomon Islands in terms of the various challenges facing it as a country. Everything from climate change to oil price can affect the tourism industry in ways that Vanuatu doesn’t have much power to change and there isn’t a good backup option at the moment.</div>
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Both countries I went to are amazing places to visit, and I look forward to watching their development over the coming years. The mission reinforced how key it is that we do our part in the region especially as other parts of the world prove to be less stable than we may have thought. A stable connected pacific region is good for us and good for the world.</div>
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Overall it was a hugely worthwhile trip in terms of connections built and for giving me some time on ground and experiences of things that would otherwise be hard to access.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(This article originally posted on the </span><a href="https://ackama.com/" style="font-size: x-small;">Ackama</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> blog)</span></div>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-23476371832301470812018-04-30T18:11:00.001-07:002020-12-27T08:50:20.605-08:00Sustainable Procurement<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d36d32f0-7fff-749a-7157-a654bc9762c3"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The New Zealand Government faces a number of challenges at any given time. More and more it turns to technology as the solution to these challenges. Unfortunately, when an organisation has an immediate problem not too much thought is often given to macro level concerns of how the procurement of a solution affects the market and the vendors in it. Given that NZ Government expenditure with third party suppliers equals 19% of GDP, its procurement policies have a massive effect on what types of businesses will succeed and how fast they can grow. Significantly more effort needs to be given to procuring in a way that works for New Zealand in the long term. A successful procurement policy should have the following outcomes:</span></p><br /><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;"><li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Encourage participation in the market by a broad range of vendors.</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Support the growth of new vendors by making it economically feasible to bid for work as an SME.</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Have some consideration of social and environmental implications of procurement.</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Identify and take advantage of opportunities to produce additional value either to the organisation or New Zealand.</span></p></li><li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Establish best value for money where value is not just direct benefits but also indirect benefits.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /><br /></span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Australia is ahead of us in a number of these areas. The Commonwealth procurement rules already require that any contract over $4M must consider the total economic benefit to Australia and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is starting to roll this out on smaller procurements as well. DFAT has also set requirements within procurement to include a set proportion of Indigenous Australian suppliers and subcontractors on their procurement. In both cases they’re leveraging the procurement framework to deliver on a broader set of policy goals. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Making it easy for small organisations is critical in having a steady supply of new thinking and problem solving that suits New Zealand. If New Zealand doesn’t produce its own ecosystem of smaller suppliers, our only options will be large foreign players - the economics of remoteness rarely make sense for smaller foreign businesses. The problem with that is that many of our problems are simply uneconomically small when it comes to the costs of large suppliers. For example, New Zealand has a problem with rheumatic fever but there are fewer than 200 cases per year. At this small scale there is no international provider for whom it makes economic sense to travel here, learn about the environment and people, and then deliver a useful solution. However, local providers can deliver useful solutions affordably because they already have proximity and context. For those local providers to exist they must be consistently winning enough work to meet payroll every week and develop their staff over time. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In many ways, if you procure from local businesses you get the triple bottom line (economic, environmental, and social) for free. New Zealand’s businesses are close to our society and our environment; the vast majority of them care deeply about the future of New Zealand on both a social and environmental level. Most technology businesses in particular are reliant on New Zealand being a great place to live in order to keep our skilled staff; most of the best of them could move to a number of places in the world that would pay them far more without much effort.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the biggest areas of opportunity for government procurement is in better supporting the creation of new IP and the productization of that. New Zealand has had a number of successes over the years where local companies have leveraged systems built for government into complete products that are sold around the world, ranging from Orion Health’s broad healthcare capabilities to Foster Moore’s niche but successful registry tools. These successes have had economic benefits orders of magnitude larger than what was expected from the original projects. While not every project will produce great IP like this, we should make sure the opportunities happen more often rather than less. Imagine for instance if the IRD rebuild was going to lead to some New Zealand companies owning a platform to deliver modern tax capabilities to other small to medium sized countries - we wouldn’t have to sell many billion dollar tax systems to materially affect our economy.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of this might sound scary but it shouldn’t. Australia is already heading down this path in some areas, the GCDO already encourages government departments to let providers keep IP unless they have a good reason otherwise, and we already have many procurement documents asking about social outcomes. What seems to be lacking is a change in mindset across government. There are little pockets of each of these practices, but most of the time when someone procures something they’re under pressure to deliver a particular outcome. For a change in procurement to happen everyone needs to understand the long term benefits to New Zealand. Business cases need to support long term investment across New Zealand with funds available to take advantage of opportunities or spend a little bit more if it will have better outcomes for New Zealand. If an individual under pressure has to choose between their immediate goals or New Zealand’s goals then New Zealand will never win.</span></p><br /></span></div>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-28214928816995529122017-11-16T20:07:00.000-08:002019-11-17T20:33:33.962-08:00Fintech in Singapore<span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 20px;">Last week I attended the </span><a href="http://fintechfestival.sg/" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; font-size: 20px; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em;" title="http://fintechfestival.sg/">Fintech Festival in Singapore</a><span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 20px;">. With over 25,000 attendees, it’s one of the largest financial technology events in the world, bringing together an impressive cross-section of enterprise, startups, and government. With funding from the </span><a href="http://www.mas.gov.sg/" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; font-size: 20px; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em;" title="http://www.mas.gov.sg/">MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore)</a><span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #0a0a0a; font-size: 20px;">, plenty of sponsors, and ticket sales on top, it was certainly better funded than anything that is even possible in New Zealand. It was a fascinating reminder of how far New Zealand still has to go for us to be recognised for our technology rather than our sheep (one older lady at the conference literally made a sheep noise followed by a comment about hobbits when I told her I was from New Zealand).</span><br />
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The first day of the festival was mostly dedicated to their innovation lab crawl, 25 organisations had open hours and presentations across the city demonstrating their innovation efforts. This was in some ways the most eye opening in terms of what Singapore has done differently from other cities in attracting corporates and getting them involved in the local ecosystem in a way that produces long term benefits to Singapore.</div>
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By incentivising innovation labs to be formed in the city, there is starting to be a critical mass of entrepreneurial types working with and within the larger corporates, something which I believe is critical to the success of many of the most exciting possibilities of Fintech. Many relatively early stage companies are being invited in to partner with banks or professional services firms much earlier in their development and being pointed directly at clients and problems that the money is already there to solve. In comparison, I’ve seen startups in New Zealand having to prove themselves much more before the corporates start partnering or offering up their data, which creates a chicken and egg style problem of how does a young company prove itself capable of handling large clients without having large clients to handle.</div>
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Image 1: Bitcoin mining rigs for sale - selling picks to miners is the best way to get rich after all.</div>
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There is a significant difference between accelerators and the innovation labs. While there are accelerators in Singapore and certainly there are more incentives around funding and tax breaks than are available in New Zealand, our accelerators are generally focussed on coaching and giving companies a push rather than the long term relationships that are often necessary in enterprise startups where the sales cycle may already be significantly longer than the average accelerator. In Fintech particularly this is important as so many of the potential startups face long sales cycles or regulatory delays. So the slightly more patient approach of the innovation labs to try things and share data without going deep on business creates more opportunities for B2B startups in particular.</div>
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While talking to individuals throughout the labs and the conference, there was a difference in the level of understanding of business and startup practices. Whereas in New Zealand the best you’re likely to find from most people in tech is that they might have attended a start-up weekend once, in Singapore nearly everyone involved seemed to have a solid understanding of concepts like product, growth, investment returns on growth companies (something NBR commenters still don’t understand), etc. More people being able to talk in a nuanced way about startups makes the conversation better; I’m not sure what the answer is for New Zealand but I think a big part is changing how we talk about companies. Particularly with growth companies the discussion seems to oscillate between terrible (they’ve taken all the investors money and there’s not even any profits) and acclaiming (look at this kiwi taking something to the world), with little nuance and little analysis of what’s actually happening in our startups. You can even see this in the last couple of weeks with Xero’s complaints of the lack of analysis available in the New Zealand market, even for huge companies by our standards.</div>
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Image 2: Christmas in Singapore.</div>
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The rest of the conference really had two parts, a trade show and the conference talks themselves. The trade show was frankly excellent, especially walking around the huge number of start stalls which often had a founder or senior staff member hanging around and open for discussion. If you want a good view of what’s happening in Fintech just walking up and down the aisles gets you a chance to talk to multiple different startups in all of the major new Fintech spaces from blockchain, to compliance, to better solutions for managing pocket change. From my point of view, spending a day wandering the show floor would be worth the admission by itself. There’s a good mixture of businesses that are potential partners and ideas that just need to be brought to New Zealand.</div>
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The actual conference part of the festival was the weakest part in many ways. With such a huge collection of sponsors and fascinating people, the organisers had been spoilt for choice and tried to solve their scheduling with the application of endless panel discussions. Unfortunately, panels are notoriously unpredictable and have a bad habit of meandering. Some of the discussions were excellent and there were some fascinatingly consistent messages - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;" title="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain">blockchain</a> probably good, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/initial-coin-offering-ico.asp" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;" title="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/initial-coin-offering-ico.asp">ICO’s</a> probably not etc - but in general too many of the panel sessions got stuck in the weeds. Or perhaps I’m just spoiled by the way the focused style of <a href="https://www.webstock.org.nz/" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;" title="https://www.webstock.org.nz/">Webstock</a> has affected the rest of the tech conference scene in NZ.</div>
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There were also dozens of smaller events happened in parallel, from an entire two-day blockchain conference to a fair amount of national bodies putting work into better connecting with their overseas counterparts. On the first night, <a href="https://fintechnz.org.nz/" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;" title="https://fintechnz.org.nz/">FintechNZ</a> signed a general <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;" title="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding">MOU</a> with the equivalent organisations all across <a href="http://asean.org/" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;" title="http://asean.org/">ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations)</a> and then created at least two more reciprocal agreements before the week was out to encourage travel and cross pollination.</div>
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One thing that we are doing particularly well is having a healthy discussion between government and Fintech about where the lines are in terms of maturely handling regulatory constraints. Fintech companies were always very excited when they met <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/poppy-haynes-77295152/" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;" title="https://www.linkedin.com/in/poppy-haynes-77295152/">Poppy Haynes</a> from <a href="http://www.mbie.govt.nz/" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(25, 71, 64); box-sizing: inherit; color: #194740; cursor: pointer; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.5em; text-decoration-line: none;" title="http://www.mbie.govt.nz/">MBIE</a> who has been involved in writing and advising on the policy side of some of the new regulations. Many of these companies are eager for regulators and policy writers that engage constructively with them, as at the moment their businesses are operating in grey areas where they just wait to find out if they’ll be blessed or damned. The more we can sell the regulatory and policy side of New Zealand as strong and approachable, the better case we have for attracting Fintech startups to New Zealand to try interesting things here.</div>
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Having said that, there are a lot of constraints in Singapore that we don’t have here: their senior talent squeeze is much tighter than ours, Singapore doesn’t have as many obvious next markets as New Zealand, various measures say we’ve got a more creative workforce, and we’ve got a bunch of cross-industry possibilites with areas like Agtech (back to the sheep) that just aren’t possible in Singapore.</div>
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We shouldn’t set out to be Singapore but we should definitely aim to have the reputation to attract businesses and investors to view us as a place they should seriously engage with when it comes to technology and innovation.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: xx-small;">(This article originally posted on the </span><a href="https://ackama.com/" style="font-family: Times; font-size: x-small;">Ackama</a><span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: xx-small;"> blog)</span></div>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-78067390963537373262013-11-19T16:18:00.000-08:002013-11-19T16:18:14.564-08:00Adventures in Multistakeholderism<div class="p1">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having recently attended the </span><a href="http://www.intgovforum.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Internet Governance Forum</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in Bali thanks to a fellowship from </span><a href="https://internetnz.net.nz/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">InternetNZ</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I have a few personal observations. According to the website the purpose of the IGF is to:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"support the United Nations Secretary-General in carrying out the mandate from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) with regard to convening a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue".</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-3a38e1c8-72de-3132-d4c1-9fe253810b92" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The IGF was worth attending in terms of getting a much better understanding of the international processes which we're working within. I do think events like this should be getting a lot more attention from the general internet-based business community given how likely it is that the seeds of various policies that will define the future of the infrastructure we rely on are likely to occur there. </span></div>
<h4 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 2pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Learning Curve</span></h4>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was a reasonably steep learning curve to productively participating in the IGF for a number of reasons:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A distinct flavour of UN language such as questions being “interventions”. </span><a href="http://www.diplomacy.edu/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diplo</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> helpfully put together a glossary part way through the event.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A heavily politicised environment that limits the public commentary on more controversial issues.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Difficulties with limited time and approach in question taking occasionally leads to hijacking by parties with very specific interests.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Streams of related workshops have been identified but there isn’t a great deal of coordination between them although there is a suggestion that attending the workshops in a stream may help seed the focus sessions.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The event was significantly more enjoyable once I got better at identifying sessions that would be in the right balance between new information and areas that I knew enough about to contribute to.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<h4 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 2pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Multistakeholderism and Breadth of Engagement</span></h4>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Multistakeholderism is a word that, when googled for, mostly links back to the the IGF. That is lovely since it means they can more or less try and make up what it means; unfortunately it means there ends up being multiple workshops at the IGF dedicated to trying to work out what multistakeholderism means.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Essentially the term has been broken down into private sector, civil society (which may as well be titled miscellaneous), technical community, government, and academia. I went into the event expecting there to be significant issues in the civil society space in terms of representation and a lack of diversity. While this is an issue there are a number of organisations (particularly </span><a href="http://apc.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">APC</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) waving the diversity flag actively at the IGF, so it’s less missed than underrepresented. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The perspective I did find to be mostly absent was the private sector outside of a few multinationals. This worries me significantly as a number of the workshops on topics like developing economies and international payments are of huge relevance to the SME sector and a number of the discussion topics had huge direct implications to it, particularly for web based businesses.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For instance, the Brazilian response to data sovereignty issues in terms of moving data regarding its citizens inside the resident country is expensive for multi-nationals to implement. However, for smaller companies, particularly those not based in already large markets, a requirement like this would make it impossible to reach a suitable level of income to support the kind of infrastructure that multi-market localised deployment would need. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having said that, the breadth of who is already attending the IGF is one of the great things about it and really something it should be commended for. </span></div>
<h4 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 2pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Workshops</span></h4>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Panels are the major kind of session run at the IGF. While the organisers do reiterate that the focus of the workshop sessions should really be on discussion and gaining the value of bringing everyone together in a multistakeholder environment, they often use up the majority of the time getting through initial presentations by the panellists. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of this is due to the political nature of the event leading to excessively large organising groups and hence excessive panels. Most of the sessions seemed to have outsized organising committees due to organisers suggesting merging similar proposals together. Anecdotally it seemed as though this led to a mixture of organisers compromising by putting both their preferred panellists on on a panel or some of the organisers dropping out or not showing up to their panels.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In general it seems likely that taking a more direct approach to selecting workshops might lead to more targeted talks. A more focussed session is generally more likely to get through an introductory talk and into a discussion than a broader one that needs to outline a significant body of background material. There was also some commentary about the time between session submission and the event leading to issues having moved past the brief that had been submitted. Giving submitters more of an opportunity to update their topics closer to the time would hopefully avoid some of this and should need only moderate oversight for abuse.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While the overall event itself may not need to have outputs in the way of recommendations or conclusions, the structure of discussions will be significantly improved if the workshops have a clearer idea of which particular issues or controversies they think a discussion should revolve around.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<h4 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 2pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Whitespace</span></h4>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good portion of the event is happening in the whitespace. There was a very steady stream of people wandering off in small groups to discuss policy and positions out of the way of cameras and streams. Some of this is a matter of it taking time for a new attendee to become recognised by the regulars and engaged with. On the other hand, it’s an interesting commentary on the surveillance issues that so many people were keeping their opinions out of the rooms that were recording.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I found I was only just starting to be well enough recognised by attendees to get into good conversations towards the end of the event. Which is probably another effect of the learning curve that’s present.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<h4 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 2pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ongoing Value</span></h4>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bringing the right people together and the discussion that does happen at the IGF is valuable, but there is room for improvement. Relationships are generally considered to be better if partners communicate actively with each other and confront issues directly. Of course, relationships are also generally considered healthier when they don’t include a jealous partner tapping your phone.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-17418881017198361992013-01-15T03:13:00.002-08:002013-01-15T03:13:40.341-08:00Goals for 2013<br />
<ul>
<li>Continue growing Rabid - I've got some targets in mind for this, I think we should see some pretty strong growth but I'm not absolutely sure what that will look like. It's also going to be the time that some of our hires are in more varied roles than we have so far, some of which I have less knowledge of how to hire for. </li>
<li>Have at least one 20% time project properly see the light of day. Really want to get one of the 20% time projects out into the wild and generating revenue. Doesn't need to be a huge amount, just enough prove that we can develop end to end products in our own right.</li>
<li>Read 80 books - Less than I set myself last year but probably closer to a good number to balance reading and working.</li>
<li>Get IMDB top 250 movies remaining under 25 - I'm making good progress through this list, but starting to get to the point where churn in the list is making it difficult to finish. At some point I'll have to watch everything that remains in one big run to stop more stuff popping up. Probably still a year off that though.</li>
<li>Visit at least 1 new country - This will be here every year from now on.</li>
<li>Take some circus classes - They look ridiculously fun and like an interesting change of pace. Probably be suitable as my random extra-curricular for some of the year.</li>
<li>Be Less Sick - I've lost far too much time in the last year to various relatively minor illnesses. Avoiding that will free up quite a bit of time that I can put to better use.</li>
<li>Generally Improve Fitness - Follows from the previous point. In general my fitness level needs to increase. By the end of the year I shouldn't end up completely exhausted by a pickup game of soccer.</li>
<li>Grow attendance at Railscamp NZ - Sales are going well. We should have a bigger turnout this year. I shall be disappointed if we don't.</li>
<li>Speak at a larger event than I have previously spoken at. This means something with more than 300 people in attendance. I suspect this goal will require travelling.</li>
<li>Hire some female developers - I'm disappointed in our failure to achieve this so far, but I'm sure we will eventually.</li>
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</ul>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-55312678963106792732013-01-04T09:35:00.003-08:002013-01-04T09:35:58.566-08:00Achievements and Failures 2012<h2>
Achievements</h2>
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://rabid.co.nz/">Rabid</a> - At the beginning of the year I was intending to do a mix of working on product startups and consulting again to follow on from what seemed like a good base of that kind of work in the previous year. Instead March found a number of opportunities sliding into place to start growing Rabid as a slightly more traditional consulting company with an eye towards releasing products in the longer term. </li>
<li>Employing people and Building a culture - Employing people turns out to be far more terrifying than a realised, particularly for the first few people where each person is a huge increase in fixed outgoings each month. We have the beginnings an excellent team at Rabid which will be the seed that allows an amazing culture to blossom.</li>
<li>75 books read - I good mixture of classic fiction, reputable business books, interesting non-fiction and trashy fun reads. Some of the highlights included: finally getting around to reading a bunch of very good sci-fi like Vonnegut and Haldeman, thinking fast and slow, and the essential Drucker.</li>
<li>Study - I enrolled in a couple of post grad papers in February before I ended up with Rabid requiring large quantities of time and energy. I managed to make it through them with decent marks but it added a lot of stress that I probably didn't need.</li>
<li>Mostly maintained a steady but manageable stream of work - We only had one piece of work that ended up running to overtime for a few days this year. While I'd prefer to manage projects well enough for there to be no overtime I do think it's a pretty good result in comparison to what the norm seems to be elsewhere.</li>
<li>3 new countries visited - Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I like both the weather and the affordability of South-East Asia and could easily spend extended periods of time here. </li>
<li>Improv - I did a decent amount of improv training and some public performance. I think it was hugely helpful both in improving my presentation ability but also with helping create safe spaces for risk free innovation. One of the first things you do in any Improv group is learn to fail happily in front of each other. I suspect that will also be key for developing an appropriate culture of innovation at Rabid.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<h2>
<br />Failures</h2>
<br />
<ul>
<li>Illness - I was sick far too much this year. Mostly relatively minor but recurring issues, with one hospital stay towards the end of the year. It made the year significantly more stressful than it needed to me. A lot of my goals for the coming year relate to avoiding a repeat performance.</li>
<li>Speaking - I only did a little speaking this year. Mostly on the topic of negotiation tactics. I intended to do more but it was never quite high enough up the priority list.</li>
<li>Writing - I failed at blogging regularly and didn't complete nanowrimo for the first time since 2007. Admittedly I did have a reasonable amount of morphine in my system at the time when I should have been finishing it.</li>
<li>59 movies remaining on the IMDB list - I said I'd get this down to under 50 but I underestimated the amount of movement towards the end of the list. I suspect I'll probably have to watch another 90 movies to actually have the list properly conquered.</li>
</ul>
Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-45660000902950423242012-05-29T21:12:00.000-07:002012-05-29T22:02:01.326-07:00Dealing with Wrist PainTowards the end of 2010 my hands and arms started aching whenever I worked on the computer for more than a few minutes at a time. After a particularly full on November featuring some work deadlines and Nanowrimo it was bad enough that I was dreading typing. My work reflected this and my output of code and writing decreased dramatically.<br />
<br />
Even when I felt like the pain wasn't that bad it was easy to see that I wasn't working as consistently or for as long periods of time as I had been previously. This is a particularly bad position to be in for programming considering how much time I actually need to work uninterrupted to have a chance of getting into a state of flow.<br />
<br />
So I set out to try and fix the problem in the usual fashion of trying things until something worked and being entirely too stubborn to visit a professional.<br />
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<h4>
First Change: Advantage Kinesis Keyboard</h4>
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My first big change was moving to the <a href="http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/advantage.htm">kinesis</a> keyboard. I'd heard good things about it and figured the change would help. Of course it was an effort to learn how to use a different keyboard layout. </div>
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In the end it took a couple of months to get back to my usual typing speed with it, the first week was particularly hellish. Learning a new keyboard had some side affects though, in particular I seemed to have slightly higher accuracy when I type on it than other keyboards, I suspect this is because of the key layout enforcing some more disciplined typing on me.</div>
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<div>
I find the kinesis particularly enjoyable to type on, due to the comfortable form and high quality keys. The presence of macros turned out be unexpectedly useful, I didn't expect to like them as much as I do but having key combinations for common bits of code is excellent.</div>
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<div>
The kinesis did improve my hands a bit, but in the end it turned out to be a long way from a cure. After a few months I moved onto the next project, one that I regret not having started off at the same time as moving to Kinesis.</div>
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<h4>
Second Change: Dvorak</h4>
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The next change I tried was moving to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard">Dvorak</a>. I wish I'd done this at the same time I moved to the kinesis I expect it wouldn't have extended learning time too much. As it was I spent a while thinking the new keyboard and better posture was enough until an intense period of work left me in significant pain again.</div>
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<div>
Learning Dvorak took significantly longer than moving to the kinesis in terms of regaining my typing speed, although I found I was able to touch type again in the sense that I had a working mental map of which key was which quite early on. Being able to hold conversations online again(~40wpm) took a week or so, but actually getting back to being a decently fast typist was closer to 4 months.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
I've also found that the move to Dvorak means I can no longer use qwerty, while I can still type fine on non kinesis keyboards.</div>
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<div>
Like the move to the Kinesis, changing to Dvorak improved matters a bit but wasn't enough. Particularly when it came to wanting to write longer pieces. </div>
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<h4>
Third Change: Voice Recognition</h4>
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Another batch of work left me in pain and with <a href="http://nanowrimo.org/">Nanowrimo</a> coming up again I needed something that would support writing large amounts over short periods of time. </div>
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<div>
I'd tried Dragon: Naturally Speaking a few years ago and it had fallen over on my accent. I decided to give it another shot though and it turned out to have come a long way in the last couple of editions. </div>
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<div>
It required a silent room and a decent microphone to work decently. But once I'd spent a couple of hours teaching it my speech it was able to recognize the vast majority of what I was saying and at speeds far beyond anything I've ever been capable of typing. It also had an interesting side-effect in that the "writing" I produced with it had a much more conversational tone than most of my other writing does. </div>
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<div>
The biggest issues were that it didn't have certain words in its dictionary, finding the requisite quietness and dealing with the higher amount of editing required to catch small errors. Mostly these were manageable but it meant I had limited periods when I could get the ongoing privacy necessary. There were particularly irritating moments when someone started saying something to me and my laptop froze up trying to process all the input that was suddenly coming in.</div>
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Voice recognition has come a long way and I can recommend it for longer form writing; however, I hadn't managed to use it with any great success for coding or technical work, so another solution was needed.</div>
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<h4>
Fourth Change: Rob</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkEijxcSIV7R6e5qiK5Y8h-pjppOoPLeliLGQ5oEM4xdzKuCnJOuxSYrD5xwo5jN2Yy_ZjveLm91Czq2fzkBcXUnm9WebGu_Px9mKRbW6L9fsgBysaXzva6hD_yeSTaUOXoaelyeoNw_LP/s1600/s-0517.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkEijxcSIV7R6e5qiK5Y8h-pjppOoPLeliLGQ5oEM4xdzKuCnJOuxSYrD5xwo5jN2Yy_ZjveLm91Czq2fzkBcXUnm9WebGu_Px9mKRbW6L9fsgBysaXzva6hD_yeSTaUOXoaelyeoNw_LP/s320/s-0517.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Rob ended up being the best answer to actually giving me the ability to not type at all for three months or so, actually letting some of the damage I've done to my hands heal. He was an experienced developer who wanted to learn Rails. This meant I could pay him a modest amount in exchange for me teaching him about Rails while he did all my typing. </div>
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In essence, it was a training style pair programming arrangement with me always navigating. It turned out to be an excellent fit for both of us. Rob learned a lot about Rails in a short period of time and we had most of the focus and problem solving benefits that come from pair programming as well. </div>
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After three months of us traipsing around cafes and coding together Rob had learned enough that I hired him as a full time developer and my hands had healed enough to be able to type reasonably comfortably again. Possibly the best win-win working arrangement I've managed to create. </div>
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If my hands ever start to bother me too badly again then I'll go straight to finding a new Rob.</div>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com84tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-22792064907879570362012-05-16T07:23:00.001-07:002012-05-16T07:23:28.334-07:00The Benefits of a Unique Company CultureThere is a steady supply of people writing blog posts about how their unique working environment means they're hiring "A players" because of some combination of the following:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>They only have a four day work week</li>
<li>They have a high intensity startup environment with exciting work</li>
<li>Everyone has stock</li>
<li>Everyone has a profit share</li>
<li>20% Time</li>
<li>An onsite chef</li>
<li>Everyone works from home</li>
<li>The company loves open source and employees spend their spare time writing more of it</li>
<li>Fussball Table</li>
<li>Table Tennis Table</li>
<li>The office is made anime figurines glued together to form a protective structure</li>
<li>A masseuse</li>
<li>Some kind of famous person</li>
<li>Anything else someone has thought might be cool</li>
</ul>
<div>
It's great that these kind of benefits are being offered to employees. There's no doubt that these kind of benefits help employees feel that they're being valued. In many cases benefits like this will have a better payoff in motivation and happiness than a similar cash increase would. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
The problem with how these benefits are presented is that some companies have convinced themselves that their particular combination of benefits is going to lead to significantly happier and better employees than other companies have. They proceed to spread their new formula as hiring gospel, but this isn't an optimal approach to finding the best people for your company.<br />
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<div>
In the job market each potential benefit will be valued differently by different potential employees - some people love having a masseuse and others don't like to be touched. That's a good, employers are dealing with the a market for employees and actually benefit from differentiating themselves. A niche offering appeals to those in a niche, you can get employees more affordably if their wants match a particular set of unique offerings than if you simply compete on price. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Some of the benefits that could be offered are in opposition to each other and most organisations will only have the resources to select a few anyway. Instead of adopting whatever the latest fad in benefits is, a benefit package needs to be carefully crafted to target the particular people that the company wants to attract.<br />
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<br />
If a companies' benefits target the particular type of individuals the company wants to attract, for instance 20% time is a better benefit for attracting open source developers, then they'll act as a filter if you make it clear that the company values people who value these kinds of benefits. Over time the employee base will end up being those people who value the particular configuration offered by the company[1].<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
Many people like to talk about hiring A players, but A players aren't a static category. Potential A players generally have particular areas to which they're most suited. An A player in a bank is someone who can deal with massive system complexity and produce very high reliability software; An A player in a startup is someone that can deliver quickly on a wide array of potential changes in a short time frame. The best bank employee might be an experienced developer who would like evenings to spend with their kids and a decent set of health care benefits while the best startup employee might be more on the lookout for how many ways you can get stimulants into their bloodstream.<br />
<br />
Instead of setting out to evangelize their set of benefits to other companies more companies should encourage a wide array of benefits and differentiation amongst companies. The worst outcome for a company would be to convince many employers in an area to adopt the same style as themselves.<br />
<br />
This illusion of A Players all being recruited by a company's own special set of benefits is the cause of all the blog posts by different companies in the same area espousing completely different views on attracting A players. One company busily states that they only hire people with a certain level of passion to pour into the product while the other insists they get the best results by working four days a week and relaxing. If you're seeing both their blog posts then both companies are probably successful and both believe they've found the secret sauce to getting the best people. In reality, both are right. They just don't realize that they aren't competing on the same factors for new employees.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">1. Behavioural psychology shows people will come to be unwilling to take offers that cause them to lose benefits they already have.</span><br />
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</div>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-37180254345987502242012-01-04T03:17:00.000-08:002012-01-04T03:17:27.581-08:00Goals for 2012A short collection of my goals for 2012 - publicity helps with these things.<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Visit at least one new country(I meant to make it somewhere else last year, instead I ended up in Australia again.)</li>
<li>Renew Certified Scrum Practitioner certificate. Not really sure how much I value it, but it's cheap to renew and I'd like to try their shiny new test so I can have an opinion on it.</li>
<li>Deal with my wrist related issues better. Got a few solutions for this, my current favorite is getting junior devs to write code while I sit with them and teach/dictate, this is great for my hands and also seems to work well for getting people up to speed quickly.</li>
<li>More speaking and on more varied topics. I enjoy speaking so I shall do more of it and I need te break out of always doing tech focussed topics as what I do has become so much broader than that in the last couple of years.</li>
<li>Read more books. I have a few target areas here: Finishing off the main business books that I still have to read, progressing my broader knowledge( particularly more science related reading this year I think), a decent amount of tech reading, more good fiction and less trashy fiction.</li>
<li>Write More and regularly. My girlfriend has set out to do 500 words a day, I hope to match her totals but probably won't achieve the same regularity she will. Hopefully get up to at least five days a week though. Writing is something I'd like to develop into being more of a small regular habit than something I work at in bursts.</li>
<li>Get down to less than 50 Films to go on the IMDB top 250. I've got 93 to go now and watched just under 50 last year so I basically have two years left before I've finished watching the majority of the films that are really good in the generally watched realm. It does miss a bunch of really good films that have only achieved smaller audiences, but in general it feels like an enriching experience and makes me appreciate all film a lot more. In the same way as you have te read quite a bit of classic literature before it all starts coming together and being enjoyable.</li>
<li>Learn Clojure, I've always liked lisp and clojure is threatening to actually be moderately successful in the wider world.</li>
<li>Automate more things. Both small tasks in my day to day life and business related stuff, there are things I do too often and haven't got around to automating. I want to find at least 6 tasks that I do regularly that I can make more automated. This could mean anything from automating basic new site setup to getting a better system for handling my expenses. </li>
<li>Get some traction for at least one of the startups I'm involved in. Got few things in the pipeline and a couple of projects that are succeeding on the marketing front so long as the product arrives when it's looking like it should.</li>
</ul>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-4672136394502166782012-01-03T05:04:00.000-08:002012-01-03T05:04:34.679-08:00Some of My Achievements and Failures in 2011<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Achievements</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Railscamp. Organising Railscamp took up quite a bit of time at the beginning of this year but it was worth it. Even better is that there are now lots of people in NZ wanting to help organise future ones. Including the one in Canterbury next month.</li>
<li>Speaking. I spoke at various events covering everything from clouds and python to rails and node.js. It's been interesting making it to such different and I'm looking forward to further broadening what I attend and speak at in the coming year.</li>
<li>Broadened my end to end business skills. By happenstance I took a couple of decently-sized projects right through from business development to final delivery. It's a lot of work but a really interesting experience to be able to manage client expectations through the entire process rather than building up a more piecemeal client relationship. Not a particularly scalable approach, but I enjoyed doing it and think I learned a lot about some of the areas of project leadership that I hadn't touched so much previously.</li>
<li>Read some books that have been on my list for a while. 71 books in total with some great reads like Poor Economics and Bargaining for Advantage as well as some of the more serious books that took a long time to get through like Godel, Escher, Bach, and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. My rato of non-fiction to fiction was a lot higher this year, mostly as I did a few big dives into topics that have plenty of easy to read books in them like negotiation practices or the broader coding styles books. </li>
<li>Helped out and collected equity in various different startups. Involved myself in a number of various startups that are now in various states. In the end I came away with interests in four of them of which two are showing some level of growth. There was much learning to be had from this involvement and if any of them actually succeed it'll pay off well as well. Regardless, I'm happy for the experience and look forward to applying it to some other upcoming projects.</li>
<li>Completed the stanford AI Class online course in the advanced track. Didn't put as much time into this as it deserved but I completed it and it reminded me how cool a lot of the more hardcore CS stuff is.</li>
<li>Decent load of writing for Nanowrimo. Nanowrimo went pretty well this year as I started using dragon dictate to avoid the dangers of typing 50000 words in a month again. Not sure what I'll do with what I've written but will definitely spend the time to tidy it up.</li>
<li>Improvisation - Ended up doing an improvisation course towards the end of the year and it turned out to be one of the highlights. I'll blog on it specifically sometime soon.</li>
<li>Watched lots of really good films. I watched over 40 films from the IMDB top 250 films list as well as spending a lot of time at film festivals. I'm really enjoying watching good films, especially when the list forces me to watch things I otherwise might not. Many of the old films on the list are marvelous and there are some genres I hadn't watched that turned out to be excellent when viewing the best of them. Of particular surprise to me was how much I enjoyed most of the westerns on the list.</li>
<li>Switched to dvorak. Switching to dvorak took slightly longer than I thought it would but it's going to pay off over time.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">Failures</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Blogging. I didn't blog as much as I said I would. I hope to do better this year.</li>
<li>RSI. I haven't dealt with the pain in my wrist as well as I should have, doing a slightly better job of things now though.</li>
<li>Startups that didn't fly. Some of the startups I was involved in didn't go as well as they should have. To some degree this is expected with startups, but I'd still like them to be more sucessful. I'm starting to lean towards being more process oriented with them from the get go. The biggest issue I've seen cropping up in the ones that fail is expectation management and people thinking the path to product should be much shorter than it actually turns out to be. I either need to get better at holding these ones together or at identifying that issues are present and stopping investing time sooner. </li>
<li>Failed to Travel anywhere new. I made it to Aussie a couple of times at least, but that's not very exciting.</li>
</ul>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-84097553116919215682011-11-07T01:00:00.000-08:002011-11-12T00:20:15.782-08:00Going From Zero to Revenue During Startup WeekendThis last weekend was filled with the first Startup Weekend Wellington. Well, it was for some competitors, for me it was a few hours getting a minimum viable product up and running, and then wandering around chatting to interesting people. I decided I liked sleeping. <br />
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<div>
I started the weekend at a bit of a low ebb on energy after a busy week so I decided to join whatever team popped up with the easiest idea to implement. This ended up being "<a href="http://idreamofspace.com/">Space Lotto</a>" an idea whose time had clearly come as it collected the most sticker votes in the initial round of sticker voting to pick ideas.</div>
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<div>
Our initial concern was legal issues. The first lawyer we spoke to said we would probably just need one of those simple sweepstakes questions so we added a requirement that entrants tell us why they wanted to go to space. This lead to one of the highlights of the weekend for me - receiving the following dream:</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">Human expansion into space is both an aspirational goal that will inspire and enable innovation, and a necessary step in our evolution as a species. My dream is that we conquer the currently insurmountable distances in the same way we conquered those of the oceans. That this quest unifies the human race in common endeavour, beyond nation state, race and religious distinctions."</span></blockquote>
For the site to run the competition I went with the lightweight "embed a paypal(not mine) taking <a href="http://wufoo.com/">Wufoo</a> form into a basic Blogger template" approach. This took less than an hour with the majority of the time being doing a little fiddling with the layout. The same approach would have worked well for a number of other teams to get to revenue in the weekend, I somewhat regret not just wandering around and setting it up for some of them.<br />
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With the site "done" early in the weekend I went back to talking to people and watching the money flow in. We managed to get a little over $200 in the bank by the end of the 52 hours and were, as far as I know, the only team to have any revenue inside of the weekend.<br />
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Unfortunately, by the time judging rolled around another lawerly type had opined that the space dream question wasn't enough for NZ law. So when a Judge asked, "Where is this legal?" our answer had become something like "We may need to move to Antigua".<br />
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Getting something from nothing to revenue in a couple of days was an entertaining experience and really drove home how little you need to do to get people to give you their credit card details. It was also a slightly addictive feeling as I got a little burst of pleasure whenever I got an email from someone with a new sale and their dreams about space. This is probably why dashboards are so good at motivating sales types.<br />
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The event itself was well run and gathered lots of great energy. The only issue being that there were other great events happening around the city at the same time. There were some particularly impressive showings coming out of the more serious teams such as winner's <a href="http://usnap.us/">usnap.us</a>, who put together a comparatively polished photo sharing app, and <a href="http://autitoy.com/">Auti</a> who created a toy for autistic children that I really hope succeeds.</div>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-75086804513468713162011-08-28T19:09:00.000-07:002011-08-28T19:09:29.331-07:00A Rubyist visits Kiwi PyconIt's an interesting experience going to a python conference for me, particularly when I was speaking at it as well. I have done some Python, but I'm mainly a Ruby person, which made there being something of a competition going on between the two, at least in the minds of some of the practitioners, all the more entertaining.<br />
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It feels very reminiscent of the Emacs VS Vim debate, the languages are so similar that it's really a bit ridiculous the comments that get flung back and forth on occasion. It seems to be the Pythonistas declaiming Ruby though, as I don't notice Rubyists really commenting on python. Apparently the Python people still think ruby is all monkey-patching and crazed metaprogramming, something that I think Ruby has managed to outgrow over the last few years as more people realise it's a bad idea.<br />
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Coming out of Kiwi Pycon I think the best thing to do would be for the languages to steal more ideas from each other, they're so similar in capabilities that things seem to transition back and forth very nicely. The web programming talks at Pycon seemed to be lagging about a year and a half behind Ruby in terms of what the new cool thing is, while the more sciencey areas are still where Python is dominant.<br />
<br />
Audrey Roy's talk really reminded me of how strong Ruby has become in terms of deployment tools, from <a href="https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano">capistrano</a> to Chef and <a href="http://puppetlabs.com/">Puppet</a> we have some really powerful and well built tools. Unfortunately they're not making their way into Python land as well as they should due to a certain amount of resistance to the language. I hope more python people will try them out though, as they really are very good and it's not the kind of tool where it really matters what language it's in.<br />
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I got to hang out with Mark Ramm, who is currently tasked with restoring <a href="http://sourceforge.net/">Sourceforge</a> to its former glory, for a few hours on Friday night and he was a fascinating guy. It sounds like there has been some really good development happening over there in the last few years in terms of building up to being a toolset that really empowers open source. Mark also gave some of the best talks of the conference including an excellent session where he powered on despite the departure of his laptop from the realms of the living.<br />
<br />
My talk on the clouds went pretty well. It was a lot higher level than the other talks that had happened so far with only a couple of slides of code. The other morning talks had seemed to follow an "All Code. All The Time" policy and I was a little worried that I'd missed the level of the event, but then there were a bunch more higher level talks later on. I got a decent amount of positive feedback and one guy who came up, looked slightly disappointed, and said, "I thought there would be more python". On balance, I'm pretty happy with that.<br />
<br />
I ended up busting out my recently purchased remote for my presentation and also lent it out a couple of times as there wasn't one supplied, which was probably a slight oversight as I think that the speakers using it were able to give much better talks. After borrowing it, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/RhyvenNZ">Eric Light</a> said it was his first time speaking like this and then proceeded to give a very slick talk on all the ways he managed to screw up contracting out a web development job.<br />
<br />
Overall, it was a well run conference and attracted an impressive number of people for a language specific event in NZ and the organisers have my congratulations. I really enjoyed the chance to hear a lot about all the cool but slightly different things that are happening over in python land and I didn't feel like I was hearing mostly things I already knew like I have with some of the more broad conferences I've attended recently. I would have liked slightly more coffee vouchers.Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-8321232984479278952011-08-07T08:51:00.000-07:002011-08-08T21:36:51.408-07:00Website Launch ChecklistLaunch day is one of the scariest and most stressful times in web development. Getting everyone on the same page in terms of what's going to happen and when it's going to happen goes a long way in making the entire process smoother.<br />
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Things are less likely to go wrong and people are less likely to start throwing recriminations around if the processes for deployment and dealing with issues are well documented. <br />
<br />
The following is a list I've been building up in my notes of some of the things that should be done in preparation for launching a new site or major revamp.<br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Client/Product Owner </b><br />
<ul><li>Site and content has been signed off by appropriate people.</li>
<li>Any potential downtime and exact release times have been confirmed and communicated to everyone involved. Involved means everything from developers to people in marketing who organised that snazzy TV promo.</li>
<li>Everyone knows who's in charge of what and where notifications need to go for any immediate problems. This process is organised with designated communication points so that the deployment team don't get flooded with notifications if things go wrong.</li>
</ul><b></b><br />
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><b><br />
</b></b></div><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><b><b>Look and Feel</b></b></div><ul><li>Images have appropriate Alt Text for both accessibility and SEO.</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Pages have sensible Titles.</div><ul></ul></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Pages have Appropriate Meta Tags.</div><ul></ul></li>
<li>Favicon is in place.</li>
<li>Friendly error pages, particular 404 and 500 error pages.</li>
<li>Contact Us page has appropriate details.</li>
<li>Copyright info is in place.</li>
<li>Someone has gone through checking for spelling and grammar errors etc.</li>
<li>At least some manual testing has occurred to catch any outstanding issues, e.g., weird edge cases or black text on a black background.</li>
</ul><b><br />
</b><br />
<b>Server Setup</b><br />
<ul><li>Backups are running at appropriate intervals and the steps that are needed to recover using them are documented.</li>
<li>Transfer DNS at an appropriate time. Make sure something is in place to handle delays in propagation. </li>
<li>The "www." subdomain is redirecting appropriately, or the reverse if you prefer www. domains</li>
<li>Monitoring service is checking site uptime (<a href="http://pingdom.com/">Pingdom</a> or similar).</li>
<li>Something is capturing application errors and reporting them (A service like <a href="http://hoptoadapp.com/pages/home">Airbrake</a> or something better than the default system logging).</li>
<li>Deployment process is automated, fast and takes one click or command. You need to be rolling out quickly and any fixes need to be able to go out fast and reliably as well.</li>
<li>Set up resource monitoring (<a href="http://munin-monitoring.org/">Munin</a> or similar).</li>
<li>Make sure the site comes back up after power cuts/crashes.</li>
<li>Penetration testing if necessary. Level of security testing should be agreed well before launch as it will affect release schedules.</li>
</ul><div><br />
</div><div><b>Dev Tasks</b></div><div><ul><li>Analytics are in place.</li>
<li>Larger sites have a sitemap.xml for bots to read.</li>
<li>Automated tests are in place. The level of automated testing being used should have been decided early in the project.</li>
<li>Testing has occurred across browsers that are being supported. Browser support decisions should have been made at the beginning of the project.</li>
<li>Devs know what the expected release load will be and they have resources in place to handle it.</li>
<li>The site should be load tested for the expected load. At the very least, it should be checked with reasonable load for any performance anomalies.</li>
<li>Set up a robots.txt </li>
<li>Run a website performance tool such as <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/help/#guidelines">Yslow</a> over the site. </li>
</ul><div><br />
</div><div><b>Other Tasks</b></div><div><ul><li>Put a catch-all email address on the domain.</li>
<li>Wrap-Up and review meeting with the team.</li>
<li>Write a case study and/or take some pictures to add the site to your profile.</li>
<li>Party</li>
</ul><div><br />
</div><div>Did I miss anything? Leave a comment and tell me about it.</div></div></div>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com214tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-60993047451999021522011-05-23T08:08:00.000-07:002011-07-23T00:11:50.757-07:00Reading The Four Steps to the Epiphany<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/0976470705?ie=UTF8&tag=breccan-20&link_code=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="The Four Steps to the Epiphany" src="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=0976470705&tag=breccan-20" /></a></div>Steve Blank's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/0976470705?ie=UTF8&tag=breccan-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">the four steps to the epiphany</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=breccan-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0976470705" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /> has established itself pretty solidly on the must-read list for entrepreneurs. It's also one of the hardest books in the space to read. Where other authors have spent their time creating pithy lists and easy to apply snippets of information, Steve has written a book that is dense and not particularly suited to skimming.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/0976470705?ie=UTF8&tag=breccan-20&link_code=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969" imageanchor="1" target="_blank"></a>As a book there are all sorts of problems with it: it's self-published in a somewhat inconvenient format, the proof reading is poor, the writing hasn't had a fine tooth applied to it and organisation is such that while sections may be possible to read on their own you'll often miss something that Steve had defined separately in another section. However, the book is full of really good information backed up by a huge amount of experience and good reasoning. That's why so many start-up people who have read the book recommend it so highly, it talks about the things they do or have done in a practical fashion that's easy to compare to your own endeavors if you can grasp the ideas.<br />
<br />
It's a book that gets easier to read the more time you've spent around start-ups as you start to recognize the occurrences presented in it more easily. But that isn't when it's best to be reading it, you'll get the most benefit by reading it as soon as you possibly can so that you can better recognize the situations it applies to in your company when you hit those problems the first time. Entirely too many people premise their opinion of the book with "I wish I'd read this before my first startup" and entirely too many people say something along the lines of "The first time I picked this book up I put it back down again".<br />
<br />
One of the central and most valuable themes of the book is the idea of market type. Are you in a new, re-segmented or existing market? Many of the sections of the book are broken down into shorter pieces dealing with each market type for that topic. For example, Steve suggests you should enter an existing market with with a direct assault of marketing while a new market requires a much slower grass roots process of convincing people they need the solution at all.<br />
<br />
The breakdown of market types is great and covers a wide variety of differences in how you should work in different markets. Unfortunately, it also encourages a mistake when reading the book, which is to skip the sections of the book that don't relate to the particular products you're involved in. The book hasn't been written to allow for that though, these small sections remain closely intertwined. When the book examines business development for the first time it defines it in a section regarding existing markets, but it then assumes it for the other markets when it talks abou them.<br />
<br />
There are two sets of ideas to focus on in the book: the iterative customer focussed portion of the customer development model and the collection of smaller topics that appear throughout the book when there's some particular thing that Steve points out.<br />
<br />
The basic customer development model relies on: iteration, metrics and feedback. Throughout the book the models of finding customers and then improving your relationships with them come back to this pattern. Talking to people, recording their responses in a way that aligns with what you business needs to achieve and then updating how you're talking to them and what you're talking to them about until you feel comfortable at that stage. In the early stages of the startup talking means finding out if they like your ideas and respond positively, in later stages it means generating sales at appropriate cost.<br />
<br />
If all you get out of the book is taking an iterative approach to each stage and measuring it then you've easily got your money's worth. But there's a lot more in there, everything from pre-tested strategies for dealing with various types of enterprise sales to working out if you're CEO is still the right fit when you go from startup to business. Indeed, the last chapter covers the rocky time that comes when you find yourself growing past the size that the entrepreneur can control everything and how that can be managed.<br />
<br />
If the thought of reading the whole thing is still too daunting then perhaps the best choice is to only read chapters as you start approaching the stage that they talk about in the company. You'd be better off reading it all at once, but you'll get a lot of value out of reading the relevant bits as well. In addition, Steve suggests that a good mental task is to think about what your competitors are or could be doing, so if they're at a different stage read up on what they're likely to be facing as well.<br />
<br />
This book isn't an easy read, but it is a valuable one. No matter how hard a book is to read, if it can make the difference between learning some of this stuff by reading versus learning it by having a startup fail then reading is the much more pleasant option. This book is definitely in that category.Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-87088533299763705832011-05-06T00:15:00.000-07:002011-05-06T00:15:35.481-07:00Code School's Rails Best Practices ReviewThe guys at Envy Labs have created a really great new set of learning materials over at <a href="http://www.codeschool.com/">Code School. </a><br />
I've been teaching some people Rails recently and sitting them down in front of Rails for Zombies really worked for them. The idea of mixing short screencasts with convenient practical exercises has been a great way of teaching and the web based format is really quite slick.<br />
<br />
I wanted to try out some of their stuff myself so I went and bought their Rails Best Practices course. Honestly, the course was a little bit too easy for me, but it was something I wished had existed a couple of years ago when I was just picking up little Rails idioms here and there. <br />
<br />
Inside of this, the format of very dense screen-casts with quick practical excercises meant that the familiar stuff didn't really get in the way and bore me like a slower intro would have. Overall the full run through took less than two hours effort, while I know newer devs would probably find themselves skipping back and forth between the exercises and the videos.<br />
<br />
While I knew most of it there were a few small things that for some reason I wasn't familiar with. The .presence method for example is a little thing that is easy to miss but has quickly made its way into my everyday coding after having seen it. The usage of delegate is something that I hadn't really been familiar with beforehand but now really like. A couple of other things were also new to me but don't seem so helpful, Memoizable and Nested Layouts come more under this heading.<br />
<br />
The only drawback of the whole thing is the price really. If you're already confident that you've been reading widely on ruby then it might not be quite as worthwhile. But, I wish something like this had existed a few years ago when I was just starting to get deeper into rails. It would have saved me a lot of time. They're also giving away a free Peepcode screencast when you finish now which it a little nicer. There's no shortage of decent Peepcode videos that are worth purchasing after all.<br />
<br />
The thing I'm most excited about is what they're going to do with this platform in the future. It really is a great system and something that I intend to get anyone I come across wanting to learn something to sit down in front of. I'm particularly looking forward to some frontend devs I know sitting down in front of their upcoming Jquery course.Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-76338544882325500662011-04-03T21:57:00.000-07:002011-04-03T22:14:11.971-07:00Server setup for Rails Camp NZThis is a bit of a dump of the stuff we needed to set up the server and network for Rails Camp NZ. Hopefully it will be of use to others trying to run similar events.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Taking over the DNS for the network with Dnsmasq</span><br />
<br />
The first and most important part of setting up the server for Rails Camp is making it serve custom DNS records that let you create seamless copies of websites that rubyists needs access to. <br />
<br />
<br />
<ul><li>Set your router(we used an airport extreme) to point to the server you're going to be using. The server should have a static IP outside the DHCP range being issued. </li>
<li>Setup DNSmasq on the server, this requires telling it IP's for various things. There's a copy of the setup we used which assumes the server has an IP of 10.0.1.201 at <a href="https://gist.github.com/901075">https://gist.github.com/901075</a>. We created this by taking Ben Hosking's <a href="https://github.com/benhoskings/babushka-deps">Babushka recipes</a> and changing values until it worked.</li>
<li>Setup up a web server(we used apache) with its default site serving whatever page you want everyone to see first.</li>
<li>Serve Rails apps like <a href="https://github.com/benhoskings/twetter">twetter</a> in the normal way with addresses pointing at the appropriate hosts.</li>
</ul><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Creating a Rubygems Mirror</span><br />
<br />
Gem Mirror used to be a built in gem command, but it was extracted out into it's own repo due to how rarely it was used. Unfortunately this means it's less well maintained that it once was and a bit more of a pain to set up.<br />
<br />
The gem server will need a decent amount of RAM, more than 2 GB and at least 33 GB of free space to fit all the gems(this amount is growing all the time as more gems are created). We learned about the RAM requirement the hard way as the initial laptop I tried to use failed to index the gems when it ran out of memory while indexing them.<br />
<br />
<ul><li>Mirror all the gems using <a href="https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems-mirror">rubygems-mirror</a>. I've updated the documentation for this and fixed a bug in the code but I'm waiting for that to be merged in, if it doesn't happen then there are better docs at my <a href="https://github.com/Breccan/rubygems-mirror">fork</a>. </li>
<li>Once the mirror has finished downloading, run gem generate_index in the folder you sent the gems to(This is where everything will blow up if you don't have enough RAM).</li>
<li>Finally, point rubygems.org in your server at the directory you generated the index in.</li>
<li>(optionally) Update your server conf so that it will send not-modified messages when people request the gem index, otherwise it'll be sent every time someone does a bundle install.</li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Git</span></div><br />
<br />
There are various levels of complexity for git setup depending on whether you want to give people write access and how much time you want to spend managing keys.<br />
<br />
The simple stopgap is to put all your git repos you want shared in a directory and run:<br />
git daemon --base-path=dir --export-all<br />
Which will cause all the repos under dir to be served by the git daemon, unfortunately this is read only.<br />
<br />
To get write access users will need to use ssh and have their keys added to authorised_keys for a user on the server. You can do this manually or with something like gitosis. We didn't get as far as gitosis for Rails Camp NZ, but I'll look at doing it next time.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Things to do Next Time</span><br />
<br />
<ul><li>Better git access</li>
<li>Wiki</li>
<li>Host Ruby versions for rvm</li>
<li>Ubuntu package mirror</li>
</ul>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-11358569751195239372011-03-23T03:15:00.000-07:002011-03-23T03:15:53.447-07:00Rails Camp NZ WrapupMonths of planning culminated last weekend in Rails Camp NZ. I first posted to the Rails Camp Google group with the idea in December 2009 so it's been a while to get every one on board and an event actually happening. The event was from my perspective a success with everyone going away happy as far as I can tell. There were a few hiccups in getting things going properly as we don't have as much in the way of experience running Rails Camps in NZ but after a somewhat hectic week leading up to the event and Friday night, most things ran smoothly.<br />
<br />
The weekend saw the development of a number of cool things, particular things I noticed included: a distributed achievement system using bananajour, quite a few Refinery plugins, <a href="http://rubyonrails.co.nz/">rornz</a>, a javascript game engine and a game where you click on ruby programmers in questionable swimsuits. It was great to see people being pulled onto things and building into a proper NZ (and AU) rails community.<br />
<br />
We had a good selection of talks including: coffeescript, javascript, engines in 3.1, balsamiq, people who go to SXSW are cooler than you, vim, web servers and although I think I'd like to look at building a scheduling system for them on the server next time around so that short talks are handled better than the current system of squares on the whiteboard. Coming prepared with all the stupid mac display adapters will probably also help.<br />
<br />
I didn't really have time to do a lot of sponsor hunting this time around but the two we did have were awesome <a href="http://ninefold.com/">Ninefold</a> sponsored what turned out to be awesome coffee and <a href="http://3months.com/">3months</a> helped out with getting wifi gear at the last minute. In the course of the 44 person camp around 400 coffees were made using these coffee machines. I think they can be called a roaring success.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtEsWxaN8n-Pg71K7z8RX9RFe4_gp6-qFaIrkmzufzHJXX_Udp48EjMO4klYIDgQvu0d-D7pXkFGF7Me6RVQC4yXkM8p1DmpFZVPuy4PigX-RK5lCCvRWPbuEn4lVzWBOx2CZGy4-Snkm/s1600/IMAG0100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtEsWxaN8n-Pg71K7z8RX9RFe4_gp6-qFaIrkmzufzHJXX_Udp48EjMO4klYIDgQvu0d-D7pXkFGF7Me6RVQC4yXkM8p1DmpFZVPuy4PigX-RK5lCCvRWPbuEn4lVzWBOx2CZGy4-Snkm/s320/IMAG0100.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coffee thanks to Ninefold</td></tr>
</tbody></table> <br />
The hardest part of running Rails Camp in terms of getting under way with planning was finding a venue as it's quite a time commitment in the weekend to drive out to various places and find somewhere suitable for us. Camp Kaitoke basically won us over by being the friendliest and promptest with emails and when we saw the place it looked really nice(as a number of people commented at rails camp). Really I think friendliness should be the key factor in picking anything like this, it makes the staff much more friendly, even when they see the first three people show up with three kegs(Henry Collingridge did a great last minute job of organising people who wanted to do a group beer thing).<br />
<br />
We do have a lot of room to grow if we use the venue again as we used the lunch hall for coding and another room for presentations, but there was also another large room and a small room available in other spots if we had wanted to spread out more. The large room we didn't use was particularly notable for having a proper roof mounted project setup, unfortunately the projector was stolen. I'd also have liked to see more use of the gymnasium, the two person game of basketball I fit in was a good way to recover from some of the Sunday morning sleep deprivation, but it's not easy to have pick up games in it as people can't see in from outside the building.<br />
<br />
I do advise others avoid setting their Camp dates for shortly after a national disaster. Having a few people people out or just not sign up because of earthquake pressures was a real pity. Losing the networking gear when I had already relaxed about that area of things was a pain and meant that the number of things sitting on my todo list really close to camp dates got uncomfortably large. It all mostly turned out ok but networking wasn't as tidy as I would have liked it to be.<br />
<br />
Ticketing started off with a bang and then slowed down a lot. There were a couple of months where I was quite worried about us not making enough sales to cover minimums at the venue. They picked up a bit, but I did end up spending a lot of time hunting people down and giving them the hard sell to convince them to come. In general we had a lot less locals than I would have liked. But people went away positive with a lot of other Kiwi's interested in running or helping run the next Rails Camp NZ so I think we're going to grow a decent amount and the event will be able to run a lot more smoothly with more people to spread the organisation around. <br />
<br />
Given that there shouldn't be a problem with having to pay for extra bunks next time around and that we've proven that we'll get a decent crowd it should be possible to lower ticket prices a bit next time around and to drum up a bit more sponsorship. We only really started looking like we'd definitely have more than 30 people in the last week of sales and it was hard to claim that we were a serious thing with so few people signed up. I'd like to also make a more explicit effort to pull in people who may not be able to afford full priced tickets for whatever reason. A couple of people who were a bit cash-strapped at the time are paying me back when they get the chance, but that only covers people who I was prodding directly.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Werewolf continues to be a brilliant way to meet people at camp and remember learn people's names. I did a lot of "Who are you?", point, "Yeah, you're the werewolf". Unfortunately Phil Arndt and I played up our roles as lovers a bit too much in one werewolf game and ended up getting paired a lot throughout the weekend to the detriment of our survivability.<br />
<br />
I'm going to do another blog post in the next few days covering all the networking and server stuff as it started off a bit chaotic, though it doesn't seem like many people noticed as Friday night is pretty much beer and meet people time. I'm hoping for the post to also serve as documentation for how to set up this kind of thing in the future without our approach of having a general idea and then changing settings until everything worked.<br />
<br />
Ryan Bigg has already written a <a href="http://ryanbigg.com/2011/03/railscamp-nz">write-up </a>that covers a lot of what happened at the camp from the perspective of an attendee who pitched in a decent amount as well.Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-73598083062121261252011-03-07T14:40:00.000-08:002011-03-07T14:40:54.043-08:00Crafting Rails Applications Review<div><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=breccan-20&l=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1934356735" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" />Jose Valim is well known in the Rails community for writing a lot of code and being on the Rails core team. He's also to blame for Inherited Resources a plugin that I've seen be more horribly misused than any other. He's one of the most qualified people you could get talking about some of the more advanced tricks that are present in Rails these days and Crafting Rails Applications really does cover a lot of ground in intimate detail.</div><br />
<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Crafting-Rails-Applications-Practices-Development/dp/1934356735?ie=UTF8&tag=breccan-20&link_code=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Crafting Rails Applications: Expert Practices for Everyday Rails Development" height="200" src="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1934356735&tag=breccan-20" width="166" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Crafting Rails Applications is a tough book to review, there's a lot of really good information in it that can't be found anywhere else short of reading through the Rails source and trying to work out what's happening. But, anyone who really is going to get a lot out of the book is going to end up reading a lot of the source anyway. A good deal of the information in it will be of more use to people creating plugins and engines than the general run of the mill development people involve themselves in. This may be a reflection of Rails maturing as a framework in that it's starting to really support expert level content being published as books rather than disparate blog posts.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>The book covers a wide array of the new features in Rails 3, but unfortunately it isn't particularly well organised making it difficult to use as a reference book. Much of the book is spent examining the status of various features of the rails rendering stack, this is interesting information and there's use for it when building something like a CMS, but outside of that I can't see it being used for that very much. Indeed, of the topics that are explicitly addressed I have only needed one of them in the past(Building a translation module for kete using mongomapper)</div><div><br />
</div><div>On the other hand, throughout the book there are lots of little tidbits and functions of Rails that I did appreciate learning and will use in the future. The poor organisation makes this a book to read with a notebook or sticky notes at hand to keep track of things that interest you. And the section of creating custom responders in particular was an interest addition that I'd quite like to try for cleaning up code. </div><div><br />
</div><div>The book suggested layering custom responders on top of custom renders as a powerful way of tidying things up. That might have been the aim in tying things together but I think for most development shops that would lead to entirely too much magic and the code becoming quite opaque to less experienced developers. Worthwhile if you're writing a plugin that needs the powerful generic solution, but not something I want to see everyone using.</div><div><br />
</div><div>One particularly useful bit of coverage is Rails engines, they aren't covered in any section in a particularly focused fashion but are used a lot and the demonstration 'Enginex' gem helps with creating them. If you've been wanting to work with engines this is probably the best overview of them that has been published so far, although that is perhaps more of an indictment of current resources than anything else, hopefully some of the upcoming rails books will deal with them more explicitly. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Is it worth reading? Yes, but there are a lot of other books that you should definitely have read first before this gets to the top of the reading pile. If you're doing a lot of work with plugins or gems, or one of the chapter headings jumps out at you as something you need to do soon, then pick it up with haste. But if it's just on your reading list out of interest then in the Ruby world Metaprogramming Ruby is a more important "advanced" book and I'd also suggest reading more broadly in related technologies before hitting this book. </div>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6966320121254925942.post-68637066854804814072011-02-20T14:23:00.000-08:002011-02-21T22:13:49.291-08:00Webstock 2011Webstock is a weird kind of conference. I enjoy it a lot, but it isn't all that practical. I'm impressed by the number of people who convince their jobs to pay for them to go given that it mostly suggests quitting, starting a startup or becoming a musician. There are some more practical talks mixed in there though; they're the ones I enjoy least.<div><br /></div><div>Frank Chimero opened the conference with a talk about the importance of story in content of any type. And the number of really good talks that were more story than collection of useful cool things really reinforced this message. Unfortunately he says his favourite book is Catcher in the Rye, so I can't approve of him as a person.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the major draws for me at the event this year was Jason Cohen as I've been reading his <a href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/">Smart Bear blog</a> for a couple of years now. He didn't disappoint. Giving a humble tale of his experiences with learning how to do the non-geeky portions of a startup. From dealing with shark-like salesmen trying to join his company and take %50 for his troubles, to learning to sell himself and the misplaced feeling of being in a room where they say, "Hey did you see the big game last night", and know which game it was. Jason is one of the best examples of a successful solo founder who still comes across as completely geeky.</div><div><br /></div><div>The best story of Webstock was probably Peter Sunde, the tales of the pirate bay would fit perfectly well in some kind of surrealist novel. Featuring lines such as, "There was a private investigator following Hans for 4 weeks. Saw him once. He doesn't go out much" and "We tried buying a country. It's a thing we do when we're bored". Sunde's story is completely insane and really shows how unique the pirate bay has been in it's place in internet history. Sunde's latest project, <a href="http://flattr.com/">flattr</a> is a very interesting answer to the problems that all the record labels raise regarding artists losing money. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sunde being there to talk about flattr was particularly well timed as when I asked Amanda Palmer the day before about what she wanted on the internet as a musician, she responded by speaking about the need for some way to perform the equivalent of busking online. Even though her attempt at busking in Wellington only made her a dollar, perhaps not the best endorsement of the business model. She did manage to crowd surf in the middle of civic square though.</div><div><br /></div><div>The other speakers were all very good and covered a wide array of information and good stories. With the final talk being Merlin Mann giving a very thoughtful talk about things people are scared of. A surprisingly downbeat talk to end on, but one that really rounded out webstock nicely and made it feel like the talks had been crafted to mesh together better than anyone had probably really intended. It was a good thing that it was to be follow with lots of free alcohol though.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wrapping up Webstock with an Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley gig was very successful. They have a surprisingly large number of very geeky tunes that I don't really notice when I'm just listening to their albums at other times. And Amanda Palmer dedicating a performance of Pirate Jenny to Peter Sunde and the Pirate Bay is all kinds of badass.</div>Breccanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16692526752103619042noreply@blogger.com0