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

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

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

My regret if I did have one would be around business projects I didn't take a leap of faith to take advantage of. I don't however believe in regret as each part of ones life is purely a "step". None of us are perfect, and often we will trip. So long as we get up and do our best to put right what we broke, everything is good. If you like, all these moments become learning's ... they weave the colour and texture into the blanket we call life. I've always been proud of coming from a very entrepreneurial family, and one that has been astute at picking trends. #1 In the early 90's after years on Compuserve To View More >>

Ok, it might not be the travel that has improved it, but being stuck on a plane for 12 hours certainly allows time to focus. The task for Day 11 of "31 days to build a better blog" is to prepare 10 blog posts for use in the future, when time or imagination are working against you. So here is what I did # 1. First I took the trusty Moleskine notebook that @PJ_Danny gave me for Christmas and at the top left of each opening wrote a blog topic. I set myself the challenge of doing 40 and kept at that one task until I had 40 openings with a blog topic on each. #2. Next I went through, and on each opening To View More >>