NZ projects get Booster Seat for Silicon Valley

Do you have a NZ start-up that would benefit from a month in Silicon valley / SF ?

Booster Seat is for you – you are up for

• Return flights for 2 people to San Francisco;
• Accommodation in San Francisco for 30 days; and
• Up to 2 desks at the new kiwi run, SOMA district office space “The Landing Pad” to work from during your stay.

The total prize is limited to NZD$10,000, so depending on how schmancy you are with your accommodation, you might have some spending money left over too

NB. This competition is not restricted to web startups. You might have a growing business that wants to enter the USA market or just a great idea that you want to make fly. If the idea is good and the passion is clear then you’re in the running.

Entries close on August 14th 2011 full details on the booster seat site.

There are other competitions in the US such as DEMO and various Launchpad events organised by O’Reilly that would be great to work into the timetable if you win.

I wrote about some of these at “is R & D Spend a useful Measure of innovation?

Being on the ground in Silicon Valley is the very best kind of R & D – big wave to Nicole Fougere & Rich Chetwynd for funding this competition.

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Scott Gilmour at TEDxAKL ’09

Last year at TEDxAuckland Scott Gilmour presented on the I have a dream project that he has been

I have a dream aims to inspire the whole school and related community by helping a whole class

Scott was one of the founding members of this group. The full video of his presentation is over here on the TEDxAuckland website. Or below (if you can see the embedded video.)

TEDxAuckland 2010 is on again Sunday 26th September 2010 from 10:00AM (Registration from 8.30 AM) at Westlake Boys High School Campus, North Shore City, Auckland. Tickets are $100 from Ticketek (no essay this year) Go here to buy online.

Speakers haven’t been announced but you can be sure they will all be world class. Don’t wait too long to get yours as tickets are going fast.

Software will be unpatentable in NZ

Paul Matthews at 12:52 on Thursday, July 15. 2010 in NZCS Blog Despite what appears to be a big-budget lobbying effort by the pro-patent fraternity, Hon Simon Power announced today that he wouldn’t be modifying the proposed Patents Bill hence software will be unpatentable once the Bill passes into law.

This is significant. As we’ve previously pointed out software patents aren’t black and white, and there are certainly pros and cons. However on balance, we believe they represent a far greater risk to smaller NZ-based software providers than opportunity, and there are many cases where they have significantly stifled innovation.

We believe it’s near impossible for software to be developed without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents awarded around the world, hence many software companies in New Zealand, creating outstanding and innovative software, live a constant risk that their entire business will be wound up overnight due to litigious action by a patent holder.

Read the rest of Pauls update over here at NZCS News

Measuring Social Media – MarketingNow Measurement

I was at Marketing Now in Melbourne earlier this week where Laurel Papworth presented the slideshow included below on different approaches to measuring social media.

It was in the context of a 2 days series on social media and the most significant trend for me was to see how social media thinking has evolved and view some of the structures, tools and thinking around these approaches.

For example Peoplebrowser looks to be very useful in shaping the various use case and scenarios for businesses.

There were many other great presentations but I personally like Laurels sense of humour and her blog is always worth checking out.

TEDx Comes to Auckland

On October 1st – Auckland will get a local taste of TED when a TEDx event is held over in Takapuna.

“In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Our event is called TEDxAuckland, where x=independently organized TED event. At our TEDxAuckland event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

It is being organized by The Department of Doing Ltd under official license by TED.

The first event is scheduled for Thursday October 1st, 2009 at Westlake Boys High School.

Applications to attend TEDxAuckland 09 will be made available via the TEDxAuckland website on 1st August 2009″