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

Well today, has been a pretty exciting day. Apple launched their latest professional photography software, Aperture 3, and for me it was particularly special as we (Queensberry) were involved in our own small way. After approximately a year of working with Apple, including a trip to Cupertino in October, today's announcement shared information on how professional photographers could buy our wedding albums through Aperture. Using a cleverly developed plugin our clients can now use their favourite image tool to order albums from us. It's not just exciting because we're working with Apple, but I've To View More >>

Why oh why do people find providing good customer service so hard? I guess probably for the same reason so many people struggle with relationships, that is that they co-exist, rather than truly throw themselves into the situation in the effort to find a real connection. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that the customer is always right, they often aren't but in that moment they do deserve to feel significant and cared for... Often that just takes a little empathy and a smile. Why is it that when people talk about great business they can rattle of a list of companies specializing in various To View More >>

Yesterday I wrote about how not to travel. To be sure, living stupidly out of balance as I've been is damaging to your health, depressing and unsustainable, but working 9 to 5 doesn't seem to work either. Being careful, never putting in extra effort when required, will almost always cause an enterprise to flounder and it's not the making of good "War Stories". In my office is a bookshelf full of business books and autobiographies, and at home I have shelves full of the same. You never read, "Well we started the business, it all went well and I made it home early every night." Instead the stories To View More >>

Earlier this week I was looking for space on my Laptop, and came across a very bloated Photobooth folder. When I reviewed the images contained I realized it's not safe to leave your laptop unattended. My daughters forever the techno geek actors left my laptop full of images and movies like these ... LOL they made me laugh out loud. Thanks Girls To View More >>