On Wellywood, Murdoch and English accents

31.03.2010/10.00

The good news today is that Wellington Airport is ofﬁcially in two minds about what type of sign it will put up on the Miramar cutting, which means that the ‘Wellywood’ sign protest has had a victory of sorts. I’m thrilled at the news because it shows people power—especially people like Anthony Lander who […]

Didn’t take long to ﬁnd Sonico’s limits

21.03.2010/03.06

I seem to be on a lot of social networks (Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Vkontakte), so I thought I’d look in to Sonico. I can see why it’s not as big as the others. For a start, there seems to be insufﬁcient globalization of its features. Try entering a Chinese ﬁlm in to the favourite […]

Vista was just a duo today

18.03.2010/11.04

Due to others’ appointments, the Vista Group meeting today was a mere duo: myself and Jim Donovan, Esq., who will give up blogging in 10 days. It meant it was the second-least well attended meeting in our history. Jim has never let us forget the least well attended one. I have always said that […]

The rise of the city brand

17.03.2010/12.51

I don’t have the other writers’ permission to show their side of this Facebook dialogue, but we had been chatting about growing the creative clusters here in Wellington as one of my mayoral policies. I wrote: Mostly by focusing on growing creative clusters and taking a bigger slice of the cake. So it is […]

The Downfall of ‘Wellywood’

11.03.2010/04.27

Necessity is the mother of all invention. I never thought some of the Der Untergang (Downfall) parodies could be topped, but I think this just happened. You may also like The rise of the city brand Chatting to TV, radio and internet journalists for the mayoral campaign Live from Level 3 Steve Guttenberg shows us […]

The ‘Wellywood’ sign: people power gets things done

10.03.2010/06.18

That was a very interesting 30 hours. I found out about the ‘Wellywood’ sign yesterday afternoon, through Twitter, and Tweeted to say I hated it. Little did I know then that there was a huge Facebook group—6,000 strong at the time of writing—where Wellingtonians were making their voices known. And when I got there […]

A spoof ‘Wellywood’ sign seems out of touch to me

09.03.2010/09.16

I was interested to see a Tweet today (via Daniel Spector) asking if I would object to the erection of a ‘Wellywood’ sign in Miramar that would parody the ‘Hollywood’ one in the Hollywood Hills, Calif. The answer is: yes, I would. For numerous reasons. First, it’s naff and tacky. Secondly, why do […]

Did I mention I dislike junk faxes?

08.03.2010/05.34

I received yet another junk fax today, which I believe are not permitted under the Telecommunications Act. My enquiries to Telecom suggest that this is the case. This time, it’s a well known business based in town and in the Hutt. And you know what? I’ve now made a mental note not to go […]

Trading identities in the personal branding space

05.03.2010/02.52

The day the current mayor, Kerry Prendergast, announced her intention to stand for a fourth term, I was asked by a few media colleagues what I thought. The wittiest reply I gave to Salient, as it was an email interview, and I seem to be cheekier in writing than I am in speaking. I won’t […]

Wellington needs free wiﬁ and jobs, not a council that goes nuts with spending

02.03.2010/12.23

Funny how a media article can inspire you to send out a release, especially when you’re a ratepayer and you wonder if our City Council of élites understands how hard it was for us to make that money. In today’s case, it was Lindsay Shelton’s Scoop Wellington op-ed about Wellington City Council going nuts with […]