I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
Follow @roddrury
Like Jason Calacanis I’ve been thinking about retiring from blogging for a while.
I’ve been blogging now for over 5 years, 1626 posts, 3 companies, 3 children and 10 kilos. I’ve really enjoyed the experience and have had so many fantastic opportunities come out of it. I’ve met some great people.
There are a few reasons for retiring from regular blogging. Most of the goals I set out when I started I’ve achieved, and there are not enough hours in the day to get through what I need to get through - especially with a young family and growing business.
As Xero is going really well and we have such a strong and talented team its time to make some room for our other voices. I’ll still contribute from time to time at http://blog.xero.com.
I remain passionate about developing software companies from New Zealand and creating a step change in our broadband connectivity. I’ll continue to drive those issues forward as much as I can.
I’ve tried to share my journey and some of the things I’ve learned as much as I can. I’m proud that it has motivated other people to do big things and share experiences so that we can make the boat go faster.
My favourite aspect of blogging has been revealing that we’re all just people and that business can be a lot of fun. I think my favorite post was the one on bed time stories.
I fully encourage people to take up blogging, and I look forward to following the stories of other entrepreneurs going global and sharing their highs and lows.
Thank you and goodnight.
Milestone. First blog here was 5 years ago today. Saturday 21 June 2003.
(It would be the weekend if we weren’t in IT.)
Billy is one of the many great people I met at Quest. We were travel buddies on a few trips.
I’m a cross between football coach and computer nerd.
Much as I love technology, my favorite topics are about people, leadership, and teamwork. That’s my passion for coaching coming out. There’s no better feeling than helping someone to succeed. In my current role, I get to marry passion for people with the coolness of technology.
Worth following Billy if you’re interesting in the people and personal development side of tech biz.
Miraz has upgraded me to WordPress 2.5. The admin interface is *dare I say it* beautiful in comparison.
The editor seems to now work in Safari. Yay!
Might be time I did a blog overhaul as well.
Miraz put me onto MarsEdit as a WordPress editor for OSX.
So far I like it.
WordPress is now up to 2.3.3 and problems of last week seem to have cleared up.
As I don’t have VisualStudio.Net on my machine anymore I’m starting to learn a bit about WordPress to get my coding fix.
Or something else nasty happened. Maybe WordPress was exploited.
You may have noticed I’ve been quiet for a few days but my WordPress site was crippled by some nasties.
There was hidden messages, pages deleted, links added in, couldn’t post. Horrible.
My regular WordPress dude has moved to Oz and I couldn’t even write a post to ask for help.
Siggy recommended local WordPress wiz Miraz who came in like a guardian angel and sorted me out. Thank you so much.
I’m now up to WordPress 2.3.3 (editor still doesn’t work in Safari).
Lots happening, posting flurry coming.
Newsgator has server side accounts so you can download the Windows, Mac, iPhone or BlackBerry clients and be fully sync’d across all devices. They also have web access.
I’m really excited about being able to quickly check feeds on my BlackBerry and having them marked as read on my Mac.
I’ve been using NewsFire for a year now. While it is nice and simple there has been no innovation. So Newsfire out and Newsgator in. Will download BB client as soon as I get near GPRS again.
Killer move by Newsgator. I bet their servers are getting hammered.
When you’re traveling you often miss out on news stories, especially from home. It’s also interesting see what is big news in each country. In the UK it was all about the tragic McCann’s story and the bizarre focus back on the parents.
One story that I’d been hearing little bits about was the F1 issue with McLaren fined $100m and thrown out of the constructors champs. F1 is not my favorite form of motorsport, but the money spent and the politics of it is fascinating.
There has been a growing trend for online newspapers to have blogs. Tracking back over an issue the blogs can provide better insights into the story. I found this commentary of what was going on behind the scenes of F1 fascinatingly raw.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/formula_one/
I’m traveling for the next 10 days. Work (which is sport) and Sport (which is great for work). Will post and moderate as I can.
Tim dJ just flicked me a note …
Been using the wayback machine recently:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030411081113/www.drury.net.nz/CloseWhichGap.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20021209080947/http://www.drury.net.nz/You were blogging back in 2000? impressive
That’s spooky.
I love what Tesla are doing with their electric car and their communications strategy.
Turns out that reality has set in on their updated prototypes and they have had to add 200lbs of weight which brings the driving range estimates down from the promised 250 miles to (a still excellent) just over 200 mile range.
They front foot the issue with this blog entry: Range Reality
You can tell that they are really passionate and I’m sure their market will forgive them by being up front and communicating the bad with the good.
David has had me on about how I murder apostrophes.
With Kate (an ex-journo) on the team I have asked her to locate a guide to, our friend, the apostrophe.
(1) An apostrophe is NEVER used to make a word plural (plural means more than one).
Eg. (These examples are correct):
- One friend, two friends
- Once office, two offices
- One guess, two guesses
- One Helen, two Helens
- One Xero, two Xeroes
(2) To make a word into its possessive (possessive means belonging to) form, add ’s to the end. Eg. (These examples are correct):
- Rod’s (belonging to Rod) car, Rod’s BlackBerry, Rod’s MacBook
- Tineke and Hamish’s son Jack, Hamish’s phone
- People’s Republic of China
- The NZX’s Mark Weldon
NB. If the word is in its plural form (three dogs, two buildings) that you want to make possessive and finishes with an S already, only add an apostrophe to its end, not another ‘s. Eg. (These examples are correct):
Three dogs’ breakfast (breakfast belonging to some dogs – the breakfast of the dogs)
Two buildings’ rates (the rates of the buildings)
(A trick to check that you are right in an apostrophe situation is to read the sentence backwards and see if it is “of the†eg. Breakfast of the three dogs means it needs an apostrophe.)
(3) If a word ends in S in its singular form (James, Thomas) and you wish to make possessive form (eg. James’ breakfast) there are two schools of thought, so you can choose how you want to deal with it: e.g. James’ breakfast (belonging to James) and James’s breakfast are both correct.
The only exception is with classical names, like Socrates or Jesus, where the single tailing apostrophe is used:
Jesus’ disciples (belonging to Jesus)
(4) Some words are THEMSELVES possessives and need no apostrophe. For example:
- his, hers, its, their, whose
- His dog
- The dog is hers
- No it is their dog
- Whose dog?
(5) Where you are using a word that is a contraction of two words, put an apostrophe where the missing letters are. For example:
- We’re (we are - A is missing)
- haven’t (have not - O is missing)
- Can’t (can not – O is missing)
- How’s that? (how is that? – I is missing)
(6) You DO need the apostrophe to make a plural if you are writing a symbol: Eg. 1’s 2’s
The apostrophe seems difficult to use because we speak in a manner that is different from how we write. If in doubt, rephrase or expand the contraction you are attempting to write. Written English does not necessarily read better if it is written as you would speak it. Adopting a more formal style can be clearer.
Particular pitfalls – these are correct:
- Its colour – has no apostrophe, means the colour belonging to it
- It’s a success – means it is a success
- Theirs – no apostrophe, means belonging to them
- There’s no need to panic – means there is no need to panic
- They’re on their way – means they are on their way
- Their house – means the house belonging to them
Russell gave a great example of how the community can add value.
RB is on the advisory board of Sound Archives NZ. He has requested a “do you know anything about this recording?” feature (I guess to a wiki type application) where people can jot down anything they know.
On Te Ara (the NZ online Encyclopedia) RB made the point that it is not user generated content - It is (funded) experts only.
Compare David Lange on Wikipedia and David Lange on TeAra (I’ll add link when TeAra comes back online).
Interesting.
Also good to see/hear Paul Reynolds in the flesh. He has such a voice on National radio.
I had a good chat to Mark Cubey over lunch. He’s producing Kim Hill on Saturday mornings at the moment. Mark is one of those guys I’ve always wanted to meet. He was writing at Salient when I was at Vic (20 years ago), was on Rip It Up and Loop.
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.
Does anyone have video blogging production facilities in central Wellington. e.g. to produce shows like rocketboom
Would be a great little business for someone. We’d signup for a spot a week. Be great to be able to book a slot, take some vid, have it edited and then files dropped in all the usual formats.
Email me if interested. Possible funding available if someone wants to set up.
Blogging solves a 20 year old mystery and exoneration of the Beagle Blokes from the Hamilton Easter Tourny Rugby Post incident.
Confession from Auckland Rowing team.
I managed to dig up an old photo of Rex (Beagle 1000).
We miss you buddy.
I’ve resisted the “5 things you didn’t know about me” thing for a few weeks but it’s a slow news day so here goes…
- I was an extra on the 80’s not a smash hit movie Shaker Run starring Leif Garrett (who was never on set when I was on). I remember the food was good. There must have been great tax breaks for films in ‘85.
- I was also the middle boxer in the first Mitsubishi Chariot commercial.
- I stuttered badly through school and into my early 20’s and was completely scared of the phone. I can’t remember how many times someone would yell down the line at me thinking I was a crank caller but I was just trying to get ‘hello’ out.
- I don’t drink much anymore but I was in the Victoria University Beagle Blokes drinking team (I was Beagle #2001 of course) and was told to leave town by the shortest possible route by a Waikato constable one Easter tourney.
- The main reason I did Information Systems (as part of an Accounting degree) was because the papers were internally assessed and I could get to the mountain earlier. I worked on Coronet in ‘87. The first time I had been in the snow.
Everyone I know has been tagged 30 times.
Denis at IT Law just flicked me this link to a new blog from the CEO of Marriott Hotel.
Denis wrote:
Just thought you would be interested to see the quality response Bill Marriott has received since his blog site went live on Tues 16Jan.
See http://www.blogs.marriott.com/ then flip to the comments - fabulous, person to person, he’s “management by walking around” Man & they get it, C2B in action.
I am totally impressed with the initiative, link to consumers & feedback from readers (Marriott guests).
Bill has captured a great audience (as he says he makes notes on all his trips now he aims to display them & get feedback - not a PR ploy). Me for one am impressed big time. It’s a reality check as to the power of technology as a tool. It works.
This is like an inside running to the boardroom (maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration!!).
I hope other big company CEO’s see Bill’s reception.
Thanks again to Andrew for speedily making changes to my WordPress site.
I’ve done a bit of a page reorg as (very) often your comments are more interesting than my own rantings and there has been some useful discussion over the past few weeks. So you can now see Recent Comments (——-> over there).
In 2006 I somewhat achieved my shameless self promotion goals so my bio comes off the front page into the site navigation bar. (The reason for the personal brand pumping will be obvious soon.) These pages are just ‘Pages’ in WordPress and managed just like Blog Entries.
For those not familiar with Trackbacks, these are where people have linked to a blog entry from their own site. You can go and see what they say.
For those of you wanting to deploy Recent Comments the plugin information is here.
Next big release of WordPress is due on January 22. Looking forward to seeing what’s in there.
Thanks for all the comments on the iPhone post. Great discussion.
Lots of interesting points but I thought this was worthy of a Post. Cisco General Council Mark Chandler blogs directly on the Trade Mark issue. Having the General Council blog I think is a new point in Blogging history.
Update on Cisco’s iPhone Trade Mark
I love this hook …
At MacWorld, Apple discussed the patents pending on their new phone technology. They clearly seem to value intellectual property. If the tables were turned, do you think Apple would allow someone to blatantly infringe on their rights? How would Apple react if someone launched a product called iPod but claimed it was ok to use the name because it used a different video format? Would that be ok? We know the answer – Apple is a very aggressive enforcer of their trademark rights. And that needs to be a two-way street.
Of course this could be part of the Steve Jobs ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about’ strategy - before the name is changed to the ApplePhone.
The point of this post however is: all companies should have a blogging strategy. It may start as a feel good marketing tool, but what a direct way to get your message out when unexpected circumstances occur.
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