When I go on about free wifi, itâs not just some vague election promise. Someone mentioned that I should have put the reason behind the message on my first billboard, but the reasons are too plentiful.
Itâs not just about giving businesses and tourists the access they expect in a modern society. Itâs also about signalling that Wellington is open for business, especially the type that can grow this economy with Kiwi entrepreneurship at its core. And itâs a great tool for transparency. Brad Gallen shared this link, and while these werenât the apps I had in mind originally, they show that in a creative world, people will come up with great ideas if you give them the infrastructure.
While the Open311 API has come from San Francisco, under Mayor Gavin NewsomâJenâs husbandâthereâs no reason we couldnât have come up with it here. But now that it has been developed, we should use it. There are five apps that Mashable has identifiedâand these are the sorts of things I can envisage popping up in Wellington if I am elected mayor.
Wellingtonians can elect someone who will give little more than lip service to transparency and technology, or someone who will use both to create and grow the city we deserve.
A contact of mine kindly sent me an invitation to a Chinese business networking site, called Ushi. All seemed well till I looked at the terms and conditions, which have, inter alia:
You agree to abide by any and all the related Chinese laws and regulations of the Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China, Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China and its implementing regulations, Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Preserving Computer Network Security (âSecurity Decision of the National People’s Congressâ), Law of the People’s Republic of China on Guarding State Secrets, the Telecommunication Statute of the People’s Republic of China (âthe Telecommunication Statuteâ), the Computer Information Security Protection System Regulations of PRC, INTERIM PROVISIONS GOVERNING THE MANAGEMENT OF THE COMPUTER INFORMATION NETWORKS IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA CONNECTING TO THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK and measures for implementation, Administration of the Maintenance of Secrets in the International Networking of Computer Information Systems, Administration of Internet Information Services Procedures, MEASURES FOR SECURITY PROTECTION ADMINISTRATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORKING OF COMPUTER INFORMATION NETWORKS, Administration of Internet Electronic Messaging Services Provisions (âElectronic Messaging Provisionsâ). You also agree to be fully responsible for any behaviors and the any possible result due to the misuse of your account and password in this or that way. Any violation of Security Decision of the National People’s Congress may constitute a crime and you might be prosecuted for the crime. According to the Telecommunication Statute, telecommunication users assume liability for message contents and result transmitted via a communication network. In any case, should Ushi.cn have reasons to conclude that any of your behaviors, including but not limited to any of your words and other behaviors, have violated or may violate any of the above mentioned laws and regulations, the service offered by Ushi.cn will be immediately terminated at any time without prior notice.
Mainland China has an awful lot of laws relating to the internetânot very Confucian.
This scares me off, big time. Iâm cool with contract law and copyright law, and I have the basics there when it comes to the PRC. The rest: I really donât have time to look up the legislation and procedures.
It is so tempting to accept the invitation, given the way the business world is heading, but until the Peopleâs Republic can do something about cleaning up its legislative framework, itâs a no to Ushi.
Iâm sure that when browsing other Chinese sites, I have not been confronted with quite this much. Or maybe I just havenât browsed enough in the dot-cn space?
With the first billboard going up in town, Iâve been asked about whether my free wifi programme will cost ratepayers.
In a word, no. The wifi programme will be supported by selling the space on the home page.
Upkeep of such a service, and I am looking at several alternatives, is in the low five figures, though considering the benefits to Wellingtonâs GDP is measured in the millions, itâs a sound investment.
Where it could wind up costing Council is in the expansion of such a network. However, there are low-cost ways of doing that. The high figure is NZ$250,000 to roll it out to different areas, but lower figures have been proposed.
I would like to roll out free wifi to more than the central city, targeting neighbourhoods that could benefit from the educational uses of the internet. Newtown and Johnsonville seem to be communities that could benefit most greatly.
Iâd do this after the central city programme was successful and I think the figures will support my intentionally conservative estimates. There will be ratesâ gains to Wellington City thanks to productivity, improved businesses, and new businesses. If all indicators look good, then the rollout will continue to cost ratepayers the grand sum of zero dollars.
There are other ways, too, to make free wifi pay. Last week, two of my supporters sent me an article on Starbucksâ plans to capitalize on its free wifi service.
In Starbucksâ case, itâs launching a network that has premium content in news, entertainment, wellness, business and careers, and âMy Neighborhoodâ.
No money is changing hands: instead, the companies, such as Apple, are paying Starbucks for the opportunity to get new business.
And if Starbucks can do it, why canât Wellington City? The idea of opening up the home page to advertisers (incidentally, there is already interest, and we havenât even launched) is the same principle, albeit in a limited way. Expanding it during year one to include premium content from Kiwi creatives can only be a good thing for how we see our city.
My friend Edward Talbot, and his friend and business partner Rowan Wernham, launched their Snapr (sna.pr) service today. Itâs the ideal way to share geotagged photographs in the 2010s, and I expect these guys to do some great things as Snapr takes off.
Snapr was the only Kiwi (if not southern hemisphere) venture to show at SXSWâs Accelerator competition this year, and is a perfect example of how New Zealand talent can take on and change the world.
I foresee Snapr having a big take-up by netizens, especially as we move more into greater smartphone usage, mobile snaps, and augmented reality.
In their release, Ed and Rowan state: âSnapr is a big public channel for people to share whatâs happening in their life. We love the idea of a map with crowdsourced photos, you can look in anywhere, discover new people, and find neat things going on.
âMobile snaps are less about aesthetics, they are an immediate way to show what is going on where you are.â
The release goes on to describe the service. âPhotos on Snapr are viewed via a map based interface. Snaps from the same place and time are naturally brought together.
âAn iPhone application [a free download] allows users to upload photos, send tweets, and view the map on the go.â
The founders have their favourite images already grouped on the site, and you can begin to see how it works. Here are Rowanâs, and here are Edâs.
While founded in Auckland, this is the sort of business I see starting in Wellington under my mayoral policies: high-tech, creative, even game-changing. Itâs where the level playing field allows Kiwis to reach punch well above our weight.
On Thursday, 5.30 to 7.30 p.m. at Meow, Edward Street, come along and have a chatâweâre doing a âmeet the candidateâ session. Itâs not as formal as the fun evening we had at Soiâitâs a chance to come and pick my brain, and let me pick yours as we head into the real election season.
The do is to raise local awareness, talk issues, gather donations, build a vocal âstreet and Tweetâ team and generally press the figurative flesh (this wording is from Daniel Spector, and expresses the intent well).
Wellington needs real change in this mayoral election, and as I am now the only non-politician running, I intend to head in to the mayorâs office with a real sense of what Wellingtonians want.
Beyond free wifi, I know we want greater transparency in the city, and that we want to feel part of a greater, global community. And, right now, I canât see any of my opponents understanding what these ideas mean.
Travelling overseas a few times a year does not make one an internationalist. This is something you live, evidenced by your experience and your record of wanting to do good for your city. Have a glance at the Facebook page if you like, and, of course, you can Tweet me at @jackyan.
We will have a fresh new batch of brochures as well, thanks to the Colour Guy in Lower Hutt. On Thursday, letâs have more dialogue and catch up.
Between a few of us here and my friend Pete in the UK, weâve spent nearly two weeks trying to get OpenX to work. Weâre finally getting ad-serving technology put in in-house, after years of relying on the US ad networks we primarily work with. Itâs also walking the talk: since I have advocated that Wellington moves to open source if I am elected mayor, then it makes sense that our Linux servers are running ads off an open-source ad-management program.
The first problem might have been caused by me personally: OpenX wouldnât install. Pete re-uploaded the files, we chmoded the directories, and away we went. Autocade has been the first domain to host the ads that we are sending along, and itâs been so far, so good.
However, today we decided to give the home page of the Lucire web edition a go, and encountered a problem.
All was well for the first few hours, but then I noticed something strange: two different computers at this office were behaving differently with the geo-targeting.
We had fed in banners from two of our US networks. Letâs call them network A and network B. They were set, for New Zealand, to display at these percentages (roughly):
Network A: 98 per cent
Network B: 2 per cent
On computer one running Windows XP, the above was working.
On computer two running Windows Vista:
Network A: 0 per cent
Network B: 100 per cent
Iâve a fair idea of how geo-targeting works and two computers on the same network going through the same router with the same (outward) IP address do not, in theory, behave differently.
But, as Homer Simpson once retorted, âIn theory, communism works.â
I hope the boffins can explain this one, because usually I have gone against expert advice to get computer hardware working. (The network was hooked up many years ago by yours truly, doing the exact opposite of what the instructions saidâafter, I might add, the instructions failed. My personal laptop and its Bluetooth connection were hooked up by finding the most illogical method possible.)
Surfing to the OpenX forums (Pete had been on the chat earlier, but no one was around), I tried to log in. Unfortunately, this proved impossible and errors followed:
No one was there at all, presumably due to the database error shown at the bottom of the page:
So, if any OpenX experts are out there and can answer our geo-targeting question, please give us a shout in the comments.
Despite fiddling around with all these online ads, thereâs one company I know I will never deal with. And itâs not as though the online ad industry has come to us with clean hands, either, so this sullies them further.
After surfing on July 10, I found I could no longer get on to Facebook. Every time I typed www.facebook.com, I got the screen below (excerpted):
Which led me to here:
Somewhere along the line, I must have got to a web page that hijacked my web browser. It didnât alter the hostsâ file, and I was eventually able to correct this by deleting all cookies and clearing the browser cache, but it left me with one clear message: I will never deal with Mediaplex.
Based on the above, this conduct is highly unethical and is nearly as bad as planting a trojan or a virus on to a userâs computer. And Googling the incident, I found that many others had encountered the same, sometimes when typing in other sites.
I was saddened to find out that Mediaplex is part of Valueclick, a company I dealt with for years. We eventually ended our contract with Valueclick. I donât recall the reason exactly, but I suspect it was down to the low advertising rates the company delivered. There were no concerns over its behaviour.
When I was on the Mediaplex site, I noticed that Commission Junction was part of the same group. We have been asked to join CJ many times during the 1990s and 2000s but always read the terms and conditions. It had something similar to this clause (which is in its current agreement):
Dormant Accounts. If Publisher’s Account has not been credited with a valid, compensable Transaction that has not been Charged-back during any rolling, six consecutive calendar month period (âDormant Accountâ), a dormant account fee at CJâs then-current rate shall be applied to Publisherâs Account each calendar month that Publisherâs Account remains an open yet Dormant Account or until Your Account balance reaches a zero balance, at which time the Account shall become deactivated. Transactions will not be counted if the Transaction subsequently becomes a Charge-back.
In English: if you donât make a sale over six months, they have the right to charge you. When you pay it all back, they kill off your account.
Thereâs nothing illegal about that, but considering every other affiliate programme we have seen does not do that, then I bet a few people who were less careful about reading their agreements would have been taken by surprise. I found it questionable, and refused to deal with the company. (It seems, if you believe some of the links on Google, that we got off lucky.)
This latest stunt tarnishes the entire group: Commission Junction, Mediaplex and Valueclick. Caveat proponor.
Iâd love to know what that application is and under what address I used, but, as I said, I believe this is a complete work of fiction, like Google claiming to support free speech or the presumption of innocence. I know for a fact that thatâs bogus. At left is the other one, which probably turned me more anti-Google than anything else. Blogger. I no longer have any blogs on the service, and logging in to my old Blogger Dashboard confirms this. Well, they arenât too good at mathematics down in Mountain View, because 0 equals 4 there. Surely it doesnât take months for the Blogger count on the Google Dashboard to catch up? They are owned by the same company, after all. Finally, in the âNo s***, Sherlockâ file is this one at left. There had better be no contacts in Talk, considering I never signed up to this service (oh, it appears in âMy Productsâ, too).
Do pop in to your Google account if you have one, and just cast a cursory glance down the page. Head in to your Dashboard to see what data Google holds. Hopefully you wonât have as many weird entries as I do.
As news emerges that teenagers have spent less time on Facebook, and there are more profiles getting closed on the social network, Sony has released its newest trailer for The Social Network.
After 9-11, itâs time to tell the âotherâ story of the ânoughties. And if Facebook is the topic of a Hollywood ïŹlm, then this could mean it has jumped the shark.
Whatâs next? A new social network where privacy is respected? Or, something more radical?
Modern kids in the first and second world might want that newfangled âreal lifeâ next, because to them, the internet is ubiquitous, not special. So why not balance what was once a novelty to us with what we once found to be normal? As we once said: try it now, do it more, things youâve never done before. The mainstreaming of extreme sports, if you will, simplified to basic exercise and enjoying the outdoors. It almost seems new.
Simplicity seems to be âinâ in so many facets of life, whether itâs a netbook without bells and whistles, or the old-shape Audi A4 with SEAT Exeo badging. Somewhere along the line, practicality finally found its place ahead of wank. It can happen in some economic recessions.
Real life: more valuable to the teenagers of the 2010s than we thought. Itâs back in vogue.
PS.: Thanks to Stefan Engeseth for inspiring part of this post.âJY
In plain English, when a city is hundreds of millions of dollars in debtâdepending on who you believe, the figure is between $200 million and $400 millionâhow do you get out of the hole?
1. You can sell the family jewels, and thereâs water left. We tried this in the 1980s, and now so many foreigners own New Zealand companies that the profits go offshore and we lose a source of tax revenue. Not good, doesnât work.
2. You can put up the rates for residents to the tune of 5·58 per cent and hope they cover some of this. (The figure was 5·5, then 5·75âso much for transparency.)
3. You can keep praying that the Rugby World Cup will give a temporary boost and hope no one notices that the other years arenât as prosperous.
4. You can look at what the city has in terms of creativity and intellectual capital, and build on that, especially if the world values the innovative thinking of New Zealanders.
Of the four, I prefer (4). This present mayor and council favour (2) and locked in that rise for us a wee while ago.
I know in some circles my name has become associated with the free wifi for the central city promise, but it goes a bit deeper than that.
Free wifi is like having roads in a city in the 21st century, and right now, what we have is like paying tolls on every single road we drive on.
Compare this to Finland, who enshrined in law the right to broadband, which became effective yesterday (July 1). This means every citizen in Finland has a legal right to having broadband at a minimum speed of 1 Mbit/sec. With netbooks and cloud computing on the rise, this seems to be the logical thing to do. The old ways of having programs on your computer are disappearing.
Get the infrastructure rightâafter all, Singapore and numerous US cities have done it, and Wellington has to play catch-up with Dunedin and Whanganuiâand we can get other things right.
The sectors that have the greatest potential in the 2010s, and in my mind are the biggest earners for New Zealand companies, are the tech and creative sectors. Both rely on the ânet and a more visionary direction for Wellington in a huge way.
Clustering, mentoring and financing are the things we need to do, and they have to be driven from the top. Some are done through lobbying by a business-minded, pro-Kiwi mayor and council (rather than a pro-foreigner one). Others can be driven through council itself. But we need a shake-up in order to do this.
They are all possible solutions, and some are happening now at an ad hoc level.
Iâd want to help those companies that are Kiwi-owned or will remain majority Kiwi-ownedâthis helps with job creation, with the cityâs rates and with the countryâs tax take. And if Wellington becomes a centre for this activity in the 2010s and demonstrates that we are an advanced economy, who knows what else we can inspire around the nation?
Itâs not an overnight solution. But I know we have businesses out there that can generate millions for the New Zealand economy. Thanks to our social consciousness, many are sustainable. We already have examples in businesses Iâve cited many times before: the Sidhes, Wetas, Silverstripes, Catalysts of this world are creating jobs for Wellington. We just need to expand on that and stimulate innovation.
Equally important are the need for transparency and changing the culture within the Wellington City Council, topics for other posts.
My friend and colleague at the Medinge Group, Ava Hakim, passed on a few papers from her day job at IBM. The first is the latest edition of a biennial global CEO survey, while the second asks the next generation of leadersâGeneration Y. The aim: to find out what these groups think about the challenges and goals for CEOs.
Unsurprisingly, both studies (involving thousands of respondents) had commonalities, though Generation Y placed global awareness and sustainability more highly on their list. Creativity, however, is ranked as the most valuable leadership trait. What society doesnât need, they tell us, is the same-again thinking if we are to make progress in the 2010s. The old top values of âoperational excellenceâ or âengineering big dealsâ no longer come up top in this new decade.
Or, as I heard from one gentleman yesterday, we canât afford to have the sort of âexperienceâ certain people tout, for they do not have 25 yearsâ experienceâthey just have one yearâs experience, over and over again, 25 times.
You know Iâm going to say it, so I might as well: this sounds like the sort of âexperienceâ some of my political opponents have had, day in, day out. Groundhog Day comes to mind.
Indeed, the studies indicate that we have a far more complex world, and same-again thinking isnât going to cut it.
In the first study (emphasis in original):
Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs. Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organizations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realize their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas, and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.
The most successful organizations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into core processes. They are adopting new channels to engage and stay in tune with customers. By drawing more insight from the available data, successful CEOs make customer intimacy their number-one priority.
Later:
Facing a world becoming dramatically more complex, it is interesting that CEOs selected creativity as the most important leadership attribute. Creative leaders invite disruptive innovation, encourage others to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They are open-minded and inventive in expanding their management and communication styles, particularly to engage with a new generation of employees, partners and customers.
And:
Creative leaders consider previously unheard-of ways to drastically change the enterprise for the better, setting the stage for innovation that helps them engage more effectively with todayâs customers, partners and employees.
The study also highlights an increase in globalization, especially in developing markets, leading to greater complexity. It also says the most successful leaders are prepared to change the business models under which they operate.
In fact, the world we now live in demands that our leaders are globally aware, and see the need to compete in a global market-place.
The implications for this city are that Wellington can no longer afford to see itself as merely the capital of New Zealand or the geographic centre. It is one of many cities that must compete for attention and resources at a global levelâwhich means creating world-class centres of excellence for our industries. Creating such clusters can even help them stay domestically owned.
The study indicates that the style of leadership is going to be, necessarily, internationalistâwhich means we canât afford to have leaders who are monocultural, and fake multiculturalism. This, like any aspect of a brand, must be embodied for real. It doesnât mean giving up what âbeing a New Zealanderâ is; it does, however, mean that we have to be able to communicate with other nations and cultures, seeking advantages for ourselves.
Innovation is a driver both in terms of internal processes and as a core competenceâso leaders had better be prepared to do this. And being closer and more transparent with customersâor in the case of a city, citizensâis something practised by the most successful leaders, says the study. It reminds me of the topics in the first book I contributed to, Beyond Brandingâwhere integrity and transparency were at the core.
When it comes to the Generation Y study, the results were similar. This table summarizes the two quite well, and notes how the two groups differ:
I donât want to be giving the impression that the second study is less important, but realize that some of you are sorely tempted to see me wrap up this post.
I will say, quickly, that the lessons are clear: the next generation expects leaders to be globally minded and sustainable.
Chinese respondents in the second study, in fact, valued global thinking ahead of creativity. This perhaps highlights where the Peopleâs Republic, above the other Chinese territories, is heading: looking outwardly first and delivering what customers in export markets want.
As creativity is naturally a trait among Wellington businesses, itâs nice to know that many are already prepared for the challenges of the 2010s. And some of our most successful names would not have got to where they are without global thinking, even if some have been acquired by overseas companies: 42 Below, Weta, and Silverstripe come to mind.
However, I canât see these traits being reflected in politicsâand thatâs something I hope we can change in the local body elections, for starters.
When I go on about free wifi, itâs not just some vague election promise. Someone mentioned that I should have put the reason behind the message on my first billboard, but the reasons are too plentiful.
Hereâs a relatively new entry on my Google Dashboard (left). After confirming that my Adsense account was shut, it insists I still have an account to 
At left is the other one, which probably turned me more anti-Google than anything else. 
Finally, in the âNo s***, Sherlockâ file is this one at left. There had better be no contacts in Talk, considering I never signed up to this service (oh, it appears in âMy Productsâ, too).
