Creativity is the spark that occurs when you combine seemingly unrelated things, shove an uncooperative idea into an unexpected context, or look at something familiar in a radically unfamiliar light. That spark of creativity is fun and essential, but much more difficult and rewarding is turning that spark into a steady flame or bushfire of…
Continue reading →There’s only one thing I want to say today: Christchurch, you beauty! When people ask me what I’m about, I tell them I’m building the future I want to live in. We’re all doing that today, here at Lightning Lab Christchurch Demo Day. Look around you. The New Christchurch is filled with diversity and entrepreneurial…
Continue reading →One of my “day jobs” is providing lexicographical software development for a number of dictionaries around the place. One project using my Freelex software that’s recently been launched is the Legal Māori Resource Hub, by Māmari Stephens at the Victoria University Law department. Māmari recently gave a talk about the lexicon, corpus, and resource hub…
Continue reading →So they asked me what TEDx talk I’d like to give in ten years time. My answer was: The End of Money
Continue reading →I’ve just launched a new blog, NZ Startup of the Week. Every week, I’ll be featuring a Kiwi startup going global. Be sure to have a look.
Continue reading →I’ve just returned from a 3-1/2 month trip, mostly holiday with my wife Kate and 11 year old son Dan, in which we visited Hong Kong, Vietnam, Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain, and the USA, generally avoiding big cities. Naturally, it was important to stay well-connected every place we went, so we employed a combination of…
Continue reading →Every Passover, at least one guest asks us how we made the brisket. Here’s my mom’s recipe for brisket, or as we used to call it af Idish, flanken. It uses the classic Eastern European “gedempt” or braising cooking method. Ingredients: Slab(s) of brisket, about 100g (just less than 1/4 lb) per serving Onions, about…
Continue reading →So you want to “Connect with me on LinkedIn” – awesome! But there needs to be a bit more for me to accept. 1) Tell me why Simply asking to connect ain’t enough – let me know why, is it for a particular job, because of my background, due to something of mine you read,…
Continue reading →Should our children be taught Christianity (or any other specific religion) in state schools? If this is of interest to you, read on… I’ve been invited by David Hines to join the Secular Education Network’s mediation at the Human Rights Commission, in which they are lodging a complaint against the Ministry of Education in an…
Continue reading →In the wake of the recent Paris killings, I helped organise an interfaith meeting of Jews, Christians, and Muslims at the Kilbirnie Islamic Centre. All three faiths denounced the killings, as per our media release from the Wellington Council of Christians and Jews. The meeting had reasonably good media coverage from Radio NZ, One News…
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