I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Good first day at FOO baa camp.
As an anti-conference I really like the format where the participants decide what’s talked about. All credit to Nat who dragged an impressive group of people up to Warkworth. Cool to get face time with people I read daily like Russell Brown, Juha and Mauricio.
I was impressed that Communications Minister David Cunliffe and Judith Tizard are here. I’ve heard DC speak at many events. He is very generous with his time and has become impressively knowledgeable on the issues. I like him.
We had a stimulating group session on broadband. He heard loudly and clearly that Peering is the next big issue. I suggested the Internet Efficiency Bill. (I wanted to blog that in case it sticks and I can claim it later.)
In a second smaller session with DC and JT covering growing the IT industry we were able to dive again into Procurement as an IT industry issue. I got my Procurement Ombudsman suggestion in there again.
We had a good discussion on Government Grants. This followed on from an excellent discussion with FRST CEO Murray Bain a few nights ago where we talked about the benefits of support via Convertible Notes rather than Grants. I’ll do a specific post on why later.
There were some impressive young Entrepreneurs in the room who are operating from here and selling globally. Export hero’s! I feel strongly that we need to create that sense of aspiration and duty to export.
There are some very cool unsung hero’s here, like Richard Hulse, who with very little funding has created the exceptionally useful podcasting features for Radio New Zealand. Also Ben Goodger from Google (hero), a bunch of people from Australia and even a very nice fellow from Orange in the UK. Lots more people to meet tomorrow.
Great to get out of the main cities. All the Wellingtonians are soul searching as to why we live in the weather we do.
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Figured it was about time I left a comment here :) Nice to meet you and really inspiring to hear your ideas on the broadband issue last night.
Will any of the goings on from the FOO Camp be made available - online or otherwise?
Further to this - I just read Russell Brown’s post on Public Address. It contains an excellent overview and links to many other participants thoughts / photos etc.
http://www.publicaddress.net/default,3919.sm#post3919
Ironically enough, you’ve missed the best weather in Wellington this year. Glad to see the Foo/Baa went well.
Apropos your comment on grants versus convertible notes, most business people I know don’t want to be charity cases - that’s why we run businesses. I tried the notes instead of grants idea on NZTE and FRST (or whatever they used to be called a few years back under the Nats), when I was running a not-unsuccessful mid-scale hitech business called Deltec, and we’d just been awarded a big development grant.
I suggested that it would be a fairer deal for the tax payer if the govt got covertible notes for its money, rather than just giving us a big pile of dosh. If the business succeeded - whether through trading profits. IP sale or business sale - the taxpayer got something back. If not, the govt as investor was no worse off. (A bit like a one-off VIF fund deal). And as a spin-off, business tax could go down!
The reply I got then was that the govt preferred grants because there was no political fallout. A notes scheme was an investment which had to be accounted for, and which the opposition could slag off if the deal went pear-shaped. I tried this again recently and got almost exactly the same reply - this time from a Labour minister’s flunkey.
While there are some very worthy strategic programmes and initiatives driven by politicians and public servants (eg VIF), I continue to run into this kind of self-serving, cynical and short-term thinking. What about getting value for the taxpayer’s dollar, while lowering the administrative cost and tax burden at the same time?