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.
Iâve a bit more reason to moan about Google of late, after a few more dodgy happenings on the site.
But before I do, some good news: I found a very good search engine. And itâs not Bing.
Ironically, one of the alternatives to Google search that I liked was Yahoo!, but even that company now has switched to Bing. However, it still has some search tools that others can tap in to.
From what I know, Duck Duck Go (or, to use the siteâs own convention, DuckDuckGo) takes some of those data and supplements its own. Itâs surprisingly comprehensive and accurateâsomething I could not call Cuil, which once saw itself as a Google-killer.
I got a similar feeling in 1998 when I ïŹrst saw Google. âWow, this is much better than AltaVista!â Now with Google doing more evil, DuckDuckGo is a breath of fresh air. None of that âsupplemental indexâ BS, either. It also promises that it wonât store your private information. That, too, feels revolutionary in 2010.
I liked Google better, too, when it just delivered good services, and didnât bother with who I am or tried to pretend it was a social network.
Hereâs the real kicker: the founder of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel Weinberg, emailed me after I sent in a compliment. I remember when either Jerry or David did that back in 1994 or thereabouts on Yahoo!. Youâll be lucky to get that now.
I donât know what that says to you, but I would have thought that that meant I would never get Buzz.
Wrong.
What part of ensuring that my name could not be found did Google not understand? What other US laws has it violated this time?
Itâs pretty rich for a company that did not have, the last time I looked, a privacy policy for Buzz.
So, I went and deleted my profile again. This time, it did kill Buzz, though I still have 777 connections in my Social Search. How does it know, if I am no longer supplying data for that?
I also really donât want to know the 285 friends-of-friendsâ searching habits and Tweets. (It still insists I have four blogs with themâthe actual number is zero. I wouldnât trust Google to be able to do arithmetic correctly.)
But hereâs one big down side to not having a Google profile. Google suggests you can be contacted through the company by not signing up to a profile with them! In your Google account, there is now this:
You are now a member of something that hasnât even been invented yet! This is probably how, after all, it got all those Buzz users earlier this year. Google has âpre-consentâ!
Clicking on âNew Serviceâ results in a 404. I donât know what game Google is playing, but something is rotten in Mountain View.
I can moan all I want, but I have acted and have drafted a letter asking Google to remove the unwanted services from my account. I would delete the whole account, but for a couple of services where colleagues have asked me to set things up (notably Analytics for the Medinge Group websiteâcontrary to Googleâs own claims, I cannot remove myself as an administrator).
So why whinge? Hopefully itâll have you checking your own Google accounts to make sure there arenât unwanted things there.
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.
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.
Some weeks ago, as we neared this milestone, I planned to write a small blog post on reaching 1,100 cars at the Autocade site. And to show that these milestones are not rigged, we wound up with a fairly ghastly motor at that 1,100 mark.
I learned the sad news that Norman Macrae, CBE, ææ„ç« , passed away on June 11, just shy of his 87th birthday.
Norman was one of the great visionaries and forecasters of the 20th century, and served as deputy chief editor of The Economist till his retirement in 1988.
Among his forecasts was the fall of the Berlin Wall, the advent of the internet, the move toward teleworking, and the pressing concerns of sustainability and the global income gap.
His work included a series of âretrospectivesâ written from a future date, which continued Normanâs trade-mark analysis on current and emerging trends in the global economy. With his son, and my friend, Chris, Norman authored The 2024 Report, whose predictions of broadband internet and its implications, made in 1984, only began coming true over the last decade. At the time, critics said Macrae and son were too optimisticâalthough history has proved them right.
I sent my condolences to Chris earlier today. The world has lost one of its foremost business editors, a great socioeconomic expert, and visionary.
Without Chris I would not have joined the Medinge Group, and it was through him that I realized so many of the Economist forecasts that I had read over the years were the work of his father.
I understand The Economist will publish an obit this week.
Certain media are reporting the cityâs [debt] in the $200 millionâ$300 million mark but our outside-council research reveals this is a very conservative estimate. Itâs likely to be more.
Regardless of whether itâs $200 million or half an (American) billion (scary just saying it), any deficit thatâs nine digits long canât be good for a relatively small city.
One of my plans after I get into office will be to balance the budget, which is why I have been going on about growing jobs and businessesin such a big way. In a very shortcut way of explaining it: more new businesses, more ratepayers, fewer reasons to increase the rates. Which, I might add, this current administration has already locked in for us over the next few years, letting the next mayor get the blame.
I object to any cuts in library services, even if there is a strong denial that that is happening. In a knowledge economy, we cannot afford to create a class system of the knowledge-rich and the knowledge-poor.
On this note, recently I asked Don Christie of the New Zealand Open Source Society to examine an open-source strategy for Wellington City. For starters, we discussed how the library software is a proprietary system that costs this city a considerable amountâwhen there is a New Zealand-developed open-source program that many other cities have implemented.
While it would be nice to keep believing we can afford expensive software to run city services, I donât like debt, and I certainly donât like owing people any money.
And Iâm not prepared to sell off our water to technocrats or any profitable part of the family jewels to see the hundred-million figure reduced.
There are good examples of open source working for cities and creating significant savings. Zaragoza, Spain, has been moving to a complete open-source desktop. And itâs not the only one.
Furthermore, open source will mean jobs in Wellington. This will mean new jobs. I have already gone on about the tech clusters being a vital part of this cityâs economy. Open-source skills are in high demand, and if overseas trends are anything to go by, we can attract these skilled people to our city. Already Wellington is a centre of excellence in many IT-related fields. Iâm talking about extending this and making a real claim to open-source. Let the world know that Wellington is the home of not just the most advanced software and visual effectsâ companies, but logically extend that to open source as well.
Itâs projected that by 2020, 40 per cent of jobs in IT will be open-source-related, so if we donât do it, another New Zealand city will. Iâm not about to give up one of our most important advantages, one which has been emerging in the capital since the 1990s.
Such moves can be done with the city and Wellingtonâs private enterprises working togetherâbut this will need to come from the top, and be put in motion by a mayor whoâs passionate about job creation. Itâs one of the biggest challenges we face, and I seem to be a lone voice on focusing on this for our city.
There have been a few times in the history of this blog where I stepped away from writing regularly. At the end of 2006, I had a pretty good excuse: I was in France. This time, my reasons for stepping away for a few weeks do not include: (a) I was spending too much time with the Miss Universe New Zealand contestants; (b) laziness; (c) being trapped in 1983 and discovering that DCI Gene Hunt controls the Lost island.
I was, however, chatting to a few more of the parties that we needed to realize some of my election promises. And doing a few media interviews. And looking at more ways Wellington could get nearer balancing its budget, as our deficit has ballooned over the last decade.
On May 15, I joined my opponent, Councillor Celia Wade-Brown, on Access Radioâs Espace Français, in what was my first political interview in French. I expected a nice-natured chat till our hosts said they wanted a political debate. So the Councillor and I gave the audience one, coming from very different angles. I believe we are the only two Francophone candidates. And I donât think Access does a Cantonese programme.
You can listen to the interview here, though they only store the programmes for six weeks. You can also download from this link.
I kept Leauna Zheng waiting for weeks while I prepared my emailed responses to her interview for Skykiwi, the leading Chinese expatsâ site in New Zealand. Despite her wait, she wrote a marvellous article (in Chinese, here), and for those of you relying on Google Translate, please note that the term Chinese expatriate is not translated correctly. (I believe this is the first Chinese-language interview to include my name in Chinese ideographs.)
And, finally, my interview with Bharat Jamnadas on Asia Down Under aired last Sunday. Heâs very kindly put it on YouTube, though the aspect ratio is a tad off and I look thinner than usual. There are very nice comments from two members of the Wellington business community, Laurie Foon of Starfish and Brent Wong of Soi, to whom I am extremely grateful.
The conversation at the end about Wellington v. Auckland was a good laugh, but there were some serious bits.
And this Tuesday just gone, it was a pleasure to play a âdragonâ in a Dragonâs Den-style setting analysing some of New Zealandâs entrepreneurs for New Zealand Trade & Enterprise.
My thanks to Bharat, Leauna, Kenneth Leong, Laura Daly at Access Radio, Jean-Louis Durand and Arlette Bilounga, and Maria Gray and David Powell.
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.
