As many readers know there has been a internet blackout on a number of very large websites like wikipedia and WordPress.com and .org on 18th of Jan.

As Clay Shirky sees it – SOPA & PIPA are designed to “raise the cost of copyright compliance” for amateurs by changing the burden of proof so that pretty much all content not owned by “Big Media” is blocked.

The method – use the domain name system to block access – even though technically this is unlikely to work at all. Unfortunately there are other issues better explained elsewhere where the sides-effects and consequences will cause much confusion and collateral damage.

We are used to producing as well as consuming and digital technology allows us to do this when we share content that we originate, that we find and sometime what we change on the way through. (Creative commons licensing is an intelligent attempt to manage content rights.)

My summary – whatever the merits of copyright protection (and clearly that system is very broken) SOPA is not the way to fix it.

Also once a piece of legislation like this is passed it becomes much easier to foist it on smaller countries like NZ especially with the present government (via ACTA).  Remember the debate over the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011. Sadly many of the politicians in NZ had no real clues at the time but these issues need much smarter thinking as they are part of a much wider agenda.

John C. Dvorak on SOPA: Don’t Get Suckered by What Comes Next
John says SOPA is a sideshow for another bill

“This is so that the real bill, Senate S.968. The Patrick Leahy “Protect IP Act of 2011? will pass — while all the nuts argue about and then celebrate victory over SOPA.

The House will quickly agree and rubber-stamp the Senate bill which, according to those fighting these bills, is about 96 percent as terrible.

This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Nobody is focusing attention on this parallel bill. Watch this scam get executed like clockwork.”

As in many countries, New Zealand has had several prime city locations occupied in recent weeks as part of the Occupy Wall St OWS movement.

OWS is an ongoing movement which aims to reset the economic agendas and local debates about equality of citizens and to try and re-balance some of the competing corporate and government agendas towards more balanced outcomes.

As in many protest movements there are other opportunists who seek to tilt the activities in a certain way but on the whole OWS is a consciousness raising exercise that everyone (especially corporates and government) would do well to take note of.

Like many I have been intrigued as to what this is all about in the local context and what (if any) connections there are to the Arab Spring protests and other consciousness raising movements around the world.

In my view there are definite connections between these movements and the rise of the NGO sector globally. Since the anti-globalisation protests in 1999 at the Seattle WTO conference there has been growing disquiet at the very far reaching implications of economic and political change around the world being driven by small elites at the expence of local and humanitarian interests.

The Canadian documentary The Corporation from 2003 captures some of the debate from many perspectives. Apparently there were 33 hours of video made and so the main documentary is a relative snapshot of expert views.

I was most impressed by CEO  Ray Anderson (from the Interface carpet & fabric company) who had his own wake up call towards developing his company along more sustainable lines. Ray mentioned an author called Paul Hawken and an earlier book by Paul called The Ecology of Commerce. Even more interesting to me is a more recent book by Hawken called

“Blessed Unrest, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming published by Viking Press (New York) in May 2007, argues that a vast world-changing “movement with no name” is now forming, which Hawken believes will prevail. He conceives of this “movement” as developing not by ideology but rather through the identification of what is and is not humane, like an immune system. ”

I haven’t been able to get a copy of the book to read yet but the hypothesis sounds very plausible and it does fit in what we see around us in the politics and economic debates of many nations.

Last year I saw the documentary Inside Job which among many arguments makes the depressing point that President Obama has not fixed any of the broken financial systems and structures in the U.S. In fact he has re-appointed the very people responsible for causing many of the financial meltdowns back into new roles where they can continue abusing the trust of voters despite having blood on their hands.

And so we know for sure now that US politics is completely corrupt and broken to the point that a reforming president elect has been so completely dominated by the commercial interests he said he wanted to fix.

The other key point in the that documentary was an observation that many of the high profile economists and academics had their viewpoints deeply compromised by their own commercial conflicts. That is – they were part of the problem where financial sector lobbyists have / had around 5 lobbyists for every single congress person. Never mind the lobbyists for other sectors.

How and Where does this Affect Us?

New Zealand like many other countries is being pressured by huge corporate interests mostly from the US to accept commercially driven laws designed to protect globalisation and to undermine local sovereignty.

One example of this is that the debate over Pharmac and US TPP negotiations or should that be stand-over tactics.

Back in May this year the PM said of TPP and Pharmac

“Let’s wait and see – there are a lot of component parts here. We’re talking about access, through a free trade agreement, to arguably the largest economy in the world. That’s the prize if you can complete a US FTA, which is what TPP is,” he said.

More obviously though when the US sneezes we still tend to catch the cold. The US despite its downward spiral still dominates world trade thinking and any changes to such rules impacts greatly on smaller nations like New Zealand.

I’m with Kennedy Graham of the Greens on this issue.

“Graham said the Greens rejected the assertion a free trade deal was a massive prize for New Zealand, saying the massive prize would be the predation of New Zealand’s iconic agencies by American corporations.

If the US walked away from the negotiations because Pharmac was taken off the table “so be it”, he said.”

While looking for the Paul Hawken book  mentioned above I found and bought a copy of The Price of Civilization, Economics and Ethics after the Fall by Jeffrey Sachs. That is my holdiday reading. More on that next post when I finish it for now here is a video clip from him.

As Jeffrey says “The US is in a structural crisis”…

Since the global financial crisis (GFC) started in 2008 (or was it ’07) it has become more obvious that business as usual is one of the first casualties.

Some of us have been working on more sustainable business ideas as it has been clear for a long time that the “growth at all costs” mantra has run out of room. Looking back over this blog it has become a recurring topic as various economic, social and cultural indicators have started to redline.

However it takes a long time to change the culture around many of these driving ideas and so the GFC in many respects is now acting as a kind of circuit breaker to make businesses and consumers rethink out attitudes to all kinds of resources and business activities.

It is pleasing to see more sustainability projects gaining momentum. In the words of the Sustainable Future Institute project 2058

“The world is changing and, as New Zealanders, we need to think about what this means for us and our future.

Often strategic thinking only occurs in terms of the three-year election cycle, but this does not prepare us well for the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Promoting long-term thinking, leadership and capacity-building to manage an uncertain future is critical.

To help address these challenges and opportunities the Sustainable Future Institute is developing a vision of what a sustainable New Zealand may look like in the year 2058 and an overarching strategy to reach this vision – this is known as Project 2058.”

The italics and bolding above are mine but I certainly agree that we need to take a longer term view on all kinds of projects. In my neighbourhood I’d like to give a great big hat tip to GreyLynn 2030 which is part of the transition towns movement.

Some of you know that from August this year I have been lecturing part time on digital marketing at Unitec. It has been a great pleasure to be part of a 50 person cohort of students from NZ and many from overseas who are looking at business futures with fresh eyes.

In reading essays and assignments on future business from the students it has become apparent that many of us are unclear on where NZ makes its money and where our economic future lies.

We also just had an election campaign that was knee deep in platitudes and backslapping from a presidential style beauty contest. No surprise to see that the best looking pony won but the prime Minister is in lala land is he thinks an increase of 2-3% of votes is really a mandate for asset stripping and idealogy driven changes to education.

The Greens have won 14 seats and in some electorates got more than 20% of the vote. The National Party will ignore that at their peril. The rise of the Green party and what it represents is far more significant that any other demographic changes in the last election.

From the official results it is also clear that voter disillusionment with the parliamentary process is at an all time high for something like 1m voters not bothering to vote at all.

• The number of seats in Parliament will be 121.
• The National Party has lost one list seat compared to election night, and now has 59 seats in total.
• The Green Party has gained one list seat compared to election night, and now has 14 seats in total.

What we need now is for citizens to really examine some of the myths around the NZ economic and business future from a factual basis.

New Zealand is in a global economy and we need to rethink where our investments of time and resources go in the future. We need to build a more sustaining business culture that recognises that the same old, same old isn’t going to work.

The presentation by Sir Paul Callaghan offers some ideas for a way forward -(see video above) or link here if that embed doesn’t work  We need more innovation and smarter use of technology in business. We also need to stop perpetuating some of the old myths about NZ business and stop throwing good $ after bad.

It is time to look part the political posturing of yesterdays men ( politicians that is you) who are still thinking short term for the most part. Last week I was delighted to have a look around Fisher & Paykel Healthcare which is a $500m company that New Zealand needs more of.

It is time to reframe the debate and understand where NZ has real competitive advantage come from. Lets go there instead of leaving it to commodities markets and bankers who really are still stuck in a zero sum game. Time to remap and reinvent the future.

Here is a glimpse into the future of online shopping from Korea. What is exciting and significant here is that customers using mobile phones are able to use QR codes to short cut straight to a shopping cart by scanning those codes directly off a poster.

We have seen some use of QR codes and mostly it has been trivial to date.

“A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) designed to be read by smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, a URL, or other data.”

For QR codes to be useful shoppers need to have access to a QR reader cable ecommerce shopping system, a smart phone and fast, inexpensive mobile data.

The display posters are close to lifesize photos of each of the products. I can see this is an exceptional idea for extending online shopping functionality to busy locations where a billboard space might be available.

In effect shoppers are able to browse the equivalent of a several metres wide screen image of key products without going near a computer. Although to be fair their smart phones do need to be able to read the qr codes off the posters.

We need to do some more research on exactly how to do this for online shopping sites but I suspect billboard owners will be extremely excited about this

My QR code is displayed at left and if you have a reader you can scan my contact details but just imagine I could also sell you an ecommerce report at the same time.

Now we’re talking business !

P.S We’ve been watching all of the coupon sites and while that seems like a good way to drive offline media traffic on to online channels not all deals work that well for vendors or the media channels.

Also the price of accessing the old media (TV for the most part) is still expensive and the unintended consequences of a huge rush of traffic to a website or physical store is not easy to manage or profit from. Getting repeat business is not easy to do if most of the shoppers are deal takers who just chase discounts.

“We’ve also heard consistently from certain categories of businesses (very popular ones I’m afraid) that daily deals are uneconomic for them, which does raise questions around the sustainability of “50% off” daily deals for these types of businesses.”

Yelp CEO says they are working on new developments to the daily deal type of business.

My money is on QR codes and this store concept from Korea is the future of online stores and no unsustainable 50% off foolish deals are needed to get more online business by heading down the QR path.

In 2011 we are all born global and to do well in the competition for capital and other resources we need to develop better measurement frameworks for promoting New Zealand as a centre for innovation to the rest of the world.

Its election year in New Zealand and one old chestnut that gets wheeled out is the idea that

“NZ has some of the lowest R&D spend in the OECD” 

on twitter by @paulbrislen *

Igor Portugal posted a response on his blog Liberty by IP   – “One solution: How to increase New Zealand’s R&D spending and stop educated people from leaving the country”

Igor says

“My response to Paul is that I don’t believe that the statistics are accurate. New Zealand companies don’t have an incentive to account for R&D. In fact there is a big disincentive to account for it. If you hired someone or purchased something and your intention is R&D, that means that it is a capital expense.”

We have seen the ebb and flow of some of these tax policies before.

Changing taxation policies might make more R & D spend visible but in my view it is not really something that will stop educated people leaving the country – or help improve NZ’s visibility on the innovation stage.

I’d agree with Igor in that I think much of NZ’s true R & D is not measured very well at all. And kudos for him in making these 2 suggestions:

“Step 1. Make all R&D related expenses 100% tax deductible, same as operating expenses.

This step will remove the accounting disincentive. However, in itself it is not enough.

Step 2. Reduce the income tax burden for all employees that are engaged in Research & Development activities. Make it so the higher the qualification, the lower the tax burden.”

Both of these ideas are worth debating especially in an election year.

There are some related topic questions here as well. The one I’m most interested in is how to sell NZ as an innovation centre on the world stage and while R & D investment would help with that – I do think there are other measurements that might be useful.

1. Number of Patents Issued

Back in the about 1993 I recall Simon Upton (he was Minister of Research, Science and Technology) using number of patents as a global indicator. As I remember it NZ ranked very highly after Switzerland at the time as a place with a proportionately high number of patents.

At the time I debated this idea with friends and colleagues and we agreed that patents; while useful didn’t always lead to useful outputs in the commercial sense.

Furthermore in a world of open source and pretty much instant global idea traffic I know a fair number of projects that just can’t be bothered with the patent process and many NZ businesses who wish that they hadn’t done. Defending IP is an expensive business.

If you measured how much legal budget was spent on defending IP around the world the U.S would win but again as an indicator that wouldn’t tell us very much.

However if you don’t defend your IP any innovation capital that you have can be seriously devalued by competitors and other commercial concerns.

Have a look over at Innovation in NZ stats each month which lists the number of designs, patents and trademarks registered.

2. Measuring Inputs generally

Even if we can really measure inputs like R & D spend and Patents etc. – once again these don’t always lead on to commercial success so that won’t work either.  A highly visible input would be population and given that 20% of the NZ population lives in Australia and else where in the world as part of the brain drain or whatever you want to call that.

Inputs are important but what really matters are the actual business outputs. Managers compete for resources globally now and while that does lead to some odd results like having 1m Nzers’ out of NZ they are not completely lost to NZ as a resource. Even though on the face of it NZ should have a local populations of 5m+.

Ironically Simon Upton has been one of NZ’s more interesting exports and has been offshore since 2001 and currently works for the OECD in Paris -  environment division of the OECD. Someone please get Simon back here a vist please.

I’ve had the personal pleasure to meet up and work with NZ’ers around the world and just because they are out of the country doesn’t mean that we are forgotten. I would guess having an NZ perspective at the OECD from someone like Simon would be invaluable.

3. International Start-up Competitions

I was at a Start-up competition in SF last year where I saw a top 10 of ideas that were presented.  In NZ terms some of them didn’t rate very well at all but a key competitive factor I liked was that all of them could scale to a billion plus.

In NZ we don’t think about global scale enough and if we did – we could enter some of those competitions and clean up. Demo is one event that I know a number of NZ and Australian companies have benefited from.

Perhaps we need to leverage one of the Demo Global events and make that type of competition much more visible down under…

4. Global Innovation Index and GEM

Each year there are various ranking tables touted as the definitive standard on such measurements.I’m pleased to see that the Global Innovation Index uses both inputs and outputs to get to a ranking.

New Zealand rated 15th on the Global Innovation Index 2011. We are down from #9 in 2010 and well up from 27th postion in 2009.

“The Global Innovation Index is computed as an average of the scores across inputs pillars (describing the enabling environment for innovation) and output pillars (measuring actual achievements in innovation).

Five pillars constitute the Innovation Input Sub-Index: ‘Institutions,’ ‘Human capital and research,’ ‘Infrastructure’, ‘Market sophistication’ and ‘Business sophistication’. The Innovation Output Sub-Index is composed of two pillars: ‘Scientific outputs’ and ‘Creative outputs’. The Innovation Efficiency Index, calculated as the ratio of the two Sub-Indices, examines how economies leverage their enabling environments to stimulate innovation results.”

Given that the study is sponsored in part by INSEAD my recommendation is that NZ policy makers and voters get a copy of the Global Innovation Index .

“It cannot be claimed, however, that the GII model captures all dimensions of innovation across continents. Analytical chapters included in this year’s Report illustrate the richness of innovation, which is difficult to define, much less to encapsulate in a particular metric.”

I had a look at the country index for NZ which you can download as a pdf. We actually rank at # 2 in the world for Institutions – which includes assessments of our Political environment, Regulatory environment and Business environment. Get a copy of the Global Innovation Index Exec Summary here.

On some of the other indicators like Business sophistication we don’t rank so highly.

GEM is a regular entrepreneur research study which has  three main objectives:

• To measure differences in the level of early stage entrepreneurial activity between countries
• To uncover factors determining the levels of entrepreneurial activity
• To identify policies that may enhance the level of entrepreneurial activity

5. A Contrary View

New Zealand is a backwater with stupid hayseed tech workers who don’t know what they are worth and should be exploited by Silicon Valley and others. OK – I’m paraphrasing a bit here but what to make of this bizarre post from the SAI last Thursday. In my view – exactly how not to promote NZ.

How To Pay Your People Half As Much And Give Them No Equity  – Nicholas Carlson

In the guise of boosting NZ as a place to innovate here Carlson quotes Paul Cameron.

“He mentioned his family and a general allegiance to his native land, but his business reasons were:

• Tech labor is cheap here. Cameron says he can pay a good Kiwi iOS developer half as much as he would have to pay someone in California or New York. What’s more: Cameron says Kiwi start-up employees don’t demand – or even really know to expect equity. That means if/when Cameron’s company reaches a liquidity event, all the money will come back to him and his investors. Cha-ching!

• The government is giving away money to startups. Eager to jump-start a tech industry, the New Zealand government, funded by huge tax receipts from a huge, but commoditized agriculture industry, is pouring money into startups in the form of non-equity grants and limited partner investments in VCs firms.  You don’t have to be Kiwi to get this money, by the way. You just have to incorporate here, keep your profits here, and own your patents and intellectual property here.”

I can only think that he seriously misheard the conversation or that Paul Cameron has a very low opinion of his staff and that can’t be good for anyone. If he contacts you looking for staff it will certainly make for an interesting conversation starter…

The comments about equity are very cynical if they are true. I can think of a number of high profile NZ tech companies where staff have equity but because of the actual shareholding structure are unlikley to ever be able to cash out.  A liquidity event if it ever happens is more likely if the company has a global profile and can cash out via a trade sale in a much larger market.

I’d say it’s actually the opposite. NZ staff expect to be paid better now because the actual likelihood of a liquidity event being useful to them is just much more remote. That means you can’t trade off pay in the short term in lieu of equity. The cost of living is cheaper here.

And the idea that the gov is giving away $ to start-ups. Good luck with that one. I can only conclude that Nick is doing some link baiting here. Your views please.

* Paul updated to say He’d like to see more R&D in NZ

Last week was the annual TED conference 2011 in Monterey. Would have loved to be there but lucky for us David Cowan was and he wrote up his TED Talks 2011 guide over here - David said

“The 2011 speaker lineup lived up to prior years. You can never tell beforehand which ones will be the classics; this year the standouts turned out to be General Stanley McChrystal, dinosaur hunter Jack Horner, transplant surgeon Anthony Atala, Slate columnist Kathryn Schulz, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, poet Sarah Kay, Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim, and fourth grade teacher John Hunter.”

Read more of David Cowan’s guide to TED Talks 2011 over here David rated Salman Khan’s talk as 8/10

In watching the talk I was reminded about 3 ideas that have emerged as themes for me in recent times.

• Idea 1- Salman Khan says Let’s use video to reinvent education: (more below)
• Idea 2- Changing Education Paradigms – Education outside school by way of travel, exploration and rich media if extremely valuable but can be very distracting. (see Ken Robinson talk below)
• Idea3  -Many of us have huge trouble getting work done at work because of too many meetings or other “work” processes that stop us from being as productive as we can be. (see Jason Fried: Why work doesn’t happen at work – video link and my comments below.)

Salman Khan on flipping the classroom.

After he did some videos for his cousins – “they preferred him on YT to in person” – because they can learn from him at their own time and own space.

“He shows the power of interactive exercises — and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do you “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

(Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 20:27)

Most intriguing we get to see Bill Gates ask Salman a bunch of questions about “the future of education” from about 17 mins onwards.

Ken Robinson on Changing Education Paradigms

I saw that Sir Ken Robinson was in Palmerston North for the Inspired Impact Teachers Conference education conference back in January 2011*. I was reminded of the animated talk given by Sir Ken Robinson at the RSA last year. (* if you were there – I would love to hear about it.)

Watch at 4:26 for some thoughts from Ken on the way that our children get all kinds of great stimulation from a huge number of sources and then when they get to school they are penalised for finding the typical class room experience boring or too slow for them.

“Our children are living in the most intensely stimulating period in the history of the earth. …besieged by information.. and we penalise them for getting distracted… from what – boring stuff at school for the most part”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, there are many great teachers and parents out there doing their best for their children to help develop skills and strategies for managing all of the great resources available.

To me Khan’s work represents another step away from the book based learning that I experienced at school.

My daughter was lucky that her teacher brought a pigs brain along to school recently so that the 9 and 10 yr olds could get their science right up close and tactile. We have since supplemented that with videos and books but the shock and delight of having that physical object in the classroom will be treasured by most.

In my post last year 500m in Sight I mentioned the Digital Nation documentaries. There is an episode at the end which gives examples of video use in schools.

It is not just children that need help with managing distractions and over stimulation from media or work processes or general daily routines as Jason Fried explains.

Jason Fried on How Work doesn’t get done at work.

Work day becomes a series of work moments. Watch the excellent video below and for further reading check Paul Graham’s essays on the differences between managers and makers which I wrote about over here..

• What do you all think about these 3 ideas?
• Are Salman Khan, Sir Ken Robinson and Jason Fried onto something we need to care more about?
• How then – do we manage our time and resources better for ourselves, our work and our families?
• Important or not?

Footnote: After I wrote this post I found another example of a teacher using video to flip the classroom that was written about by Daniel Pink in September last year. That teachers name is Karl Fisch and he appears to be using the same approach as Salman Khan.

At this stage I haven’t researched the possible connections between Fisch* and Khan or if there are even any. Ideas can break out simultaneously anywhere but I do think that videos like the TED Talks series make a huge contribution to the spread of ideas.

As it turns out we have written about Fisch before as he made the video for Shift Happens. I really liked a more recent post on his blog where he talks about some of these ideas being developed in medical education as The Learning Studio.

Your homework: Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation

Planning for the next WordCampNZ event in Wellington is in full swing. As a trustee and one of the key organisers we are busy confirming speakers, sponsors and selling tickets.

If you are in Wellington or visiting that way plan to come along. It all happens on Sat 19th of Feb at Te Papa and for a half day on the Sunday.

We have 6 speakers confirmed with more to come and a super panel with some big names on the Saturday afternoon. Here is my list of 7 reasons to be at WordcampNZ this year. Not really in order

1. Michael Brandon is NZ’s top SEO guru and he knows WordPress inside out.
2. Paul Gibbs is a BuddyPress world expert from UK. BuddyPress is like facebook where you set your own terms of service.
3. David Farrar runs NZ’s busiest blog with 500-700 comments a day.
4. Julie Starr rocks on media and blogging at Evolving Newsroom.
5. John Ford is an expert on WordPress Security
6. Justin Sainton is talking coupons – a whitehot space now – NZ’s Groupy has just been sold to yellow
7. Super panel with Lance Wiggs and Richard McManus (RWW)

Wellington that week is going to be a blast with the well respected webstock conference on just before WordcampNZ.

I got to represent WordCampNZ on Radio Wammo Live today giving a quick run through of what the event is about. This is radio which is video streamed live. Video link is below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Working online in the marketing arena in NZ I’d say that I got got hit by the US global financial crisis up to one year before many other local businesses.

The only good thing about that; was experiencing an upturn a bit sooner than other local businesses. But it has been a fragile recovery in many respects.

In talking with experienced business people (with long memories) there has been a deep sense that our whole system is quite unstable and all those references to great depression are apposite.

The reasons for the great depression are still being debated as are theories on the global financial crisis that we are still working through.

Despite local (NZ) surveys of business confidence picking 2011 as a much better year ( and I think they are right) there is still an underlying unease that our business foundations have been very much shaken to the core and found wanting.

I’ve written before about the need for new business models and more sustainability thinking.

This time, however it is our entire cultural ecosystem that is at fault and we are in uncharted waters to the extent that a whole new paradigm is needed.

Raf Manji over on his excellent Sustento site makes similar points every month. Even when he is commenting on entertainment ..Gekko movie

The disconnect between the financial markets and the real world has grown so wide that a chasm has been created, a big black monetary hole which is dragging us all in. This film has much more impact than Mike Moore’s recent treatise on capitalism because it paints a truer picture: the excess, the egos, the glamour….and the frailties of us all.

There has been a film about some of the wider issues quietily clocking up internet views for the past 3 years – it is called Zeitgeist: Moving Forward and is about “system disorder”.

We are suffering from major structural system problems in our society. The values that we claim and like to support have been supplanted by more mercenary and life threatening behaviour.

“the main threat to human survival was nature – today it is culture”

Click here to view the embedded video.

SYNOPSIS: Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, by director Peter Joseph, is a feature length documentary work which will present a case for a needed transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society.

This subject matter will transcend the issues of cultural relativism and traditional ideology and move to relate the core, empirical “life ground” attributes of human and social survival, extrapolating those immutable natural laws into a new sustainable social paradigm called a “Resource-Based Economy”.

Having seen this movie I do like that it underlines the finite resources and systemic failure of our current economic systems. These are important questions – often obscured by too much theory.

The answers; as it turns out are not so easy to arrive at.

In that sense it is not much different than say Triple Crunch – Economics as if People & the planet Mattered, Transition Towns, The Oil Drum and others seeking to address our rampart out-of-control consumerism and headlong rush to the next economic crash. In NZ the good people at Grey Lynn 2030 as part of transition towns should show an interest in this movie.

I also liked the reference to the Equality Trust and their work on the “social determinants of health and on the societal effects of income inequality”.

Some of the talking heads would have been better introduced if we knew a bit more about them and current roles. Those talking head academic experts should be listed over here on the IMDB entry but as at post time they are not although Richard Wilkinson of Equality Trust looks to be one of them.

Dr James Gilligan is one of the experts (strangely Gilligan is not even listed in the credits) – he mis-pronounces Dunedin and refers to a longitudinal health study there but without giving credit to the Otago Med School. I mention this because it is useful to check sources and that is much harder to do if they are glossed over or not listed.

I would have thought Theodore Dalrymple (Dr Anthony Daniels might have been better in this part but I suspect that Dr Daniels views on causes and solutions would have been in conflict with the overall thesis.

I also found the soundtrack a little obtrusive at times especially in the first 40 mins – but a bit of a remix there would solve that. At one point I thought there may have been a party next door but that was an attemt at ambient drumming.

What makes it film a bit different is its blind faith in rational pure science and over reliance on altruistic technology as the answer to a broken system. There is a fair amount of coverage of the Venus Project and ideas of engineer Jacque Fresco in the last part of the film.

That thinking owes a great deal to the Technocracy movement of the 1920-1930′s and is perhaps the weakest point of the film.

There have been 2 earlier films in the series and robust set of discussions called an earlier version of the Venus Project a hoax. (I note that the arcosanti project in progress for 40 years had similar ideas but seems to be a bit stuck.) It also appears that the 2 earlier films may have been a bit out there with conspiracy theories so that is thankfully gone in this – the 3rd film of the series.

The interesting point about all of these different groups (transition towns etc.)  is that many of them are beginning to understand that our current monetary systems are just not working out and something must be done – urgently.

The frustrating part is that, yet again we have another bunch of people looking to be a movement who don’t appear to be talking to others already active in a similar space.

If the zeitgeist people want to build a movement they need to lose the wacky science and concentrate on clearly defined themes and messages that are supported by environmental activists, monetary reformers and concerned citizens.

I’m hopeful that the Zeitgeist movement as they like to be called actually has some economists on the payroll somewhere and can make better sense of this because we do need better outcomes for all.

I had higher hopes for this film, but for now Triple Crunch and Transistion towns make way more sense to me.

Back on Sept 26th along with 450 others we made it across the bridge to TEDxAuckland 2010.  I was able to take my daughter (9 going on 19) and one of my work colleagues.  As DialogCRM I was the CRM Partner for the event and helped out on a few other areas and was delighted to be able to do that.

Special thanks to Richard Hollingnum and all the other speakers and helpers too. Here are my notes from the day. Apologies for the delay in getting the post live but better late than never as they say.

First up Cindy Gallop was skyped in from South Africa. The technology quality of the call was very challenging and it wasn’t until near the end of her talk that she got any real cut thru. “Make sh*t happen. ” was a call to arms. I think Cindy also invited us to all visit her in NYC.

A key point here was to break actions into micro-actions – write them down on cards at the back and get started converting intentions into actions.

Renee Liang made an instant connection with us as she weaved her story of being NZ born Chinese (Piokiwi) on Chinglish blogger & poet. Renee is also part of Funky Oriental Beats (FOB). For me this was FAB thunderbirds are Go time. Renee has excellent timing and her droll sense of humour (very kiwi) warmed up the house nicely.

Richard Loseby was up next. What is it with advertising and adventures in Afghanistan ? One of my favourite reads in 2003 was Shantaram by Greg Roberts*. I have read Richards book but on this telling I’m afraid I got a bit distacted by a story about a goat and walking a lot (700km) and this note by @elysey

One Beep have some radio technology which enables the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) users to power up their computers. This is a project with a big vision and it won global recognition in the Image Cup. I think the team missed a great opportunity to lose their suit jackets & come up with a more spontaneous presentation when (ironically) their tech demo didn’t work. I’m sure we will hear more from these guys.

Divya Dhar has an impressive background and her talk covered some big ideas on P3. I loved that my daughter got to watch some other young women going places. At times though; (and this applies to some of the other young speakers.) I did wonder if a a couple of G&T’s and a few more personal anecdotes may have been a good idea.

Getting that balance between head and heart is a fine thing and we saw it a few times during the day.

Ms 9 (my daughter) thought Divya’s talk was a bit “alice in wonderland” ish. Not sure what she meant but again – great to see young people rising up into leadership roles. I know how much effort it takes to prepare a presentation and totally appreciate that but creating a connection with an audience is harder than it looks.

The benchmark TED related talk for young speakers has to be Eva Vertes who at 19 shared her journey towards a more radical theory on cancer and use of stem cells is at times a bit of a stretch. However she does manage to weave in a back story and sense of purpose that brings the audience along for the ride.

TEDxAuckland will be remembered for the number of young people presenting and pushing the envelope. There is a huge challenge there to all of us and it reassuring to see and hear from some young people who are committed to change. Over on TED there is a series of TED under 30 talks.

Stephen Knightleys talk on gaming connected with me as I have projects in the same territory. Augmented reality and gaming approaches to a range of topics have been successful. About this time I began wondering if Richard Loseby and Greg Roberts were both game characters how they would compare.

Jonathan of the learning Connexxion had some great stories of how everyone could learn to draw and even a few jokes sprinkled in there. He was someone who had seen a few bad days but had pushed through and art learning conection is in the transformational business.

Star Jam’s Julie Bartlet was the high point for me and I suspect many others. Her project helps disabled kids chase their dreams and there is always a risk with this type of content that it becomes an exercise in manipulation. Julies personal connection to the project was evident and when her brother came on stage I suspect a few people reached for their hankies. Later on a group of young performers from Starjam performed a few songs. Not my kind of music but no doubting the heart in both presentations.

There were so many great presentations and the audience was great too.

My personal favourites were @plumjungle @tokyolovein who did a messy delightful break all the presentation rules kind of effortlessly entertaining set.

Here is the plumjungle video of the day below. Thanks Michael for the lovely photos – even got one of me.

Here is Michael taking photos Plum Jungle story over here on Fundbreak and their fundbreak application over here. We need more crowdfunding projects here. Also like Kickstarter but here is a post on them and 8 others crowdsourced funding platforms.

* Special bonus for reading this far. Shantaram interview from ABC in 2007 Greg Roberts.

Love the bit about NZ Passport best one for a man on the run and the idea that the only thing he is now qualified for is advertising.

Down to the wire is an archive project for NZ internet*. A new competition launches on Nov 11 so enter if you would like to be part of that. Watch the video below for more details.

*Down to the Wire is a permanent resource for New Zealand that tells the story of how the Internet has shaped Kiwi lives.

Not just over the past 21 years, but in the future too.

We look forward to evolving both past and future chapters with your contributions. So let’s start with 2010, which we will launch on 24 December.

As it happens I have been working on some music archiving ideas and projects and so I’m very much looking forward to see how this complementary project unfolds.

I’ve worked with musicians all my life and ironically some of the current opportunities that are coming up for musicians are because the “music industry” doesn’t understand that curating a culture is very different and much better than trying to simply exploit it.

Granted not all music business people are the same and there are legal rights issues galore but I’m positive about the future of NZ music and related cultural history.

For more information on the music project follow the deleting music website and a very fine related post by Simon Grigg over here called A Trillion Shades of Happy.

Much of our recent cultural history is disappearing and we shouldn’t let that happen.

“Just to make the point stronger, the following albums, from 1974 onwards, all important musical landmarks (and some are rather good too) are either unavailable or only out there in shitty first generation CD issues with appalling sleeves:

• Car Crash Set
• The Dance Exponents (the Mushroom albums are in print but almost unlistenable, the Ze Disc one has never been on CD)
• The Body Electric
• Grace (wonderful sweet soul from the Ioasa Brothers)
• Fuemana (parts of it are on Amplifier)
• The Deepgrooves Double” etc.

Watch this space as they say. There are a number of music collectors, journalists and other stakeholders who all see a future where contemporary and historical music / culture should not be lost.

Finally – if you are interested in NZ music 1918 to 1960 something go get a copy of Chris Bourke’s book Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964:

Graham Reid has a great Lost Dawn summary over here .

Now if I was able to I’d say something dramatic like  – “I’m off to the bookshop – I may be some time…” but its back to work for me.