Creative Biz NZ

the g33k show

2008-06-29T14:05:00.001+12:00

Pods on geek culture, snapshots of the future, and debate on emerging technologies. Fridays from 8 p.m. on Alt TV & podcast at theg33show.com weekly. Launching Friday 1st August 2008!

Video podcast with PlanHQ founder Tim Norton

2008-06-03T00:33:00.001+12:00

This is a great video interview from Simon Young at iJump with Tim Norton, founder of live business plan tool Plan HQ, which I recommend for any creative company or SME to keep their direction and goals on track easily.

You’ll hear:

How to market an intangible product on almost no budget.
Communities - join or build?
The practicalities of blogging and video podcasting to build audience trust
How open should you be online?

iJump.co.nz » Video podcast » Jump In #22: PlanHQ founder Tim Norton

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Helen Baxter to be an International Mentor at the X|Media|Lab

2008-05-09T16:52:00.008+12:00

Helen Baxter of Mohawk Media has been invited to be an international mentor at the Wellington X|Media|Lab think-tank on Commercialising Ideas.

"X|Media|Lab consists of a one-day Keynote Conference that showcases all the Mentors as Speakers. The Lab itself is an intensive two-day creative ideas and business matching environment for the selected participants who get to work directly on their own project ideas with a range of the world's best digital media experts, and build business opportunities with other Lab participants."

The "X" in X|Media|Lab stands for: Cross Platform, Cross Disciplinary, and Cross Cultural and is series of international think-tanks held in eight countries in 2008. The international line up for the Wellington X|Media|Lab in May includes mentors from Google (Mountain View), Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation (Bangalore, New York), Intel Digital Home Group (Los Angeles), ReadWriteWeb (Wellington), The Guardian (London), and Mohawk Media (Auckland).

For more visit: http://www.xmedialab.com

Having a laugh

2008-04-25T11:56:00.002+12:00

The Economist reports that Having a laugh at work is very important if you want to hang onto great employees and increase productivity:

"The best bet may be to hire people with a sense of humour. That was the philosophy of Herb Kelleher, the legendary boss of Southwest Airlines, an airline that is actually a pleasure to fly. One of his staff delivers one of the better and curiously timely lines, “We’re sorry for the delay, but our automated bag smasher is broken and we are having to break your bags by hand.”

How to Take Great Breaks at the Office

2008-04-25T10:39:00.003+12:00

Life Dev is a great site full of posts on Productivity for creative people. How to Take Great Breaks at the Office has some useful tips for incorporating mini-breaks into your working day. I'm all for micro and mini-breaks, as freelancers & entrepreneurs need to take some chill time whenever they can.

Which "Star Wars" Character Would Be the Best CEO?

2008-04-25T10:23:00.002+12:00

HR World poses an excellent question with, Which "Star Wars" Character Would Be the Best CEO? Their view on Princess Leia:

"Leia embodies today’s concept of the career woman. Beautiful and put together, yet adept at firing a blaster or manning a ship, the princess could command a company with her drive and courage alone. This senator and leader of the Rebel Alliance possesses a devotion to duty and freedom, which could work both for and against her. Her metal bikini might also distract her underlings. "

* Note to self. Do not wear metal bikini around underlings.

Impossible is merely an opinion...

2008-04-14T18:37:00.002+12:00

Thanks to Lisa for sharing one of her inspirational sayings. She says:

"My fav quote is from Justin Herald who says "Impossible is not a fact it's merely an opinion" I love it!!"

Nothing is impossible. Never put in your own limitations. Even walking seemed impossible once, but we learned how to do it step by step.

40 Things You Have to Know Before Starting a Web 2.0 Business

2008-04-13T15:09:00.004+12:00

40 Things You Have to Know Before Starting a Web 2.0 Business is a very useful for anyone thinking of venturing into the new dotcom boom. The last is particularly important:

"All of these rules are going to change. The nature of the web 2.0 world is that it fluctuates with the latest consumer demands. Be prepared to take on new faces and try new things in order to stay alive in the changing Internet."

25 Quotes From Famous Entrepreneurs

2008-04-13T11:09:00.002+12:00

This is a great list of 25 quotes from famous Entrepreneurs. I particularly like this one:

“The key is to just get on the bike, and the key to getting on the bike… is to stop thinking about ‘there are a bunch of reasons I might fall off’ and just hop on and peddle the damned thing. You can pick up a map, a tire pump, and better footwear along the way.”

-Dick Costolo, founder of Feedburner.com

What colour will your bike be, and where do you want it to take you?

11 Innovation Lessons from World of Warcraft

2008-04-13T10:55:00.004+12:00

The makers of hugely popular online game World of Warcraft, share 11 Innovation Lessons they have learned. Such as ‘Fail Often, Fail Fast,’ and Move Quickly in Pieces. This is a wise piece of advise especially for those dealing in online alchemy:

"build in small increments, review with the clients and continually iterate the design until the customer is satisfied.”

The quicker you can get the screens the better, and with flexible open platforms such as Drupal you can literally develop with the client by your side. It's a lot more efficient than wasting time documenting.

Above all don't be afraid to give something a go even if it doesn't work out:

“As Alan Mullaly said when he led Boeing Commercial Aircraft, ‘We celebrate mistakes; bring them into the open, because we can’t help fix what we don’t know about.’ ”

Entrepreneurs Thrive During Bad Times

2008-04-11T17:49:00.004+12:00

Business Pundit points out that in turbulent economic times, entrepreneurs often thrive.

"In this economic turmoil gold and silver are thriving. New highs are being reached on almost a daily basis. If you have invested in precious metals than this is your time.
Entrepreneurs are like precious metals they know how to thrive in bad times. With unstable times there comes incredible opportunities. Capitalizing on these opportunities separate you from the doomsayers. It also provides income opportunities that may not have been there in the past."

UK plc: A Confederacy of Dunces, Clones and Psychopaths?

2008-04-05T15:49:00.001+13:00

The Peter Principle, the Negative Selection Principle, the Law of Unintended Consequences, the Procrustes Principle and the Psychopath Principle dictate that the UK will inevitably underperform.

Introduced by Canadian sociologist Dr. Laurence Johnston Peter, the Peter Principle is defined in The American Heritage Dictionary as: ‘

The theory that employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent.’

According to Dr Peter, only those within a company who haven’t yet reached their level of incompetence perform any productive work, and long-established companies tend to have a much higher concentration of incompetent managers than new, growing companies.

A Dune Guide To Business

2008-04-05T15:45:00.002+13:00

What wisdom can digital entrepreneurs gain from famous works of literature? A Dune Guide To Business from Steve Spalding uses Frank Herbert’s, Dune.

“The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.” –from Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib by the Princess Irulan

The Four-Hour Work Week Top Ten Tips

2008-04-03T21:36:00.001+13:00

1 Check e-mails once a day at most, and never first thing

2 Wriggle out of meetings

3 Delegate, or outsource, all labour-intensive tasks

4 Practise being awkward, so you're not troubled with trifles

5 Take outrageous liberties with your working practices without asking permission. You can always apologise afterwards

6 Apply Pareto's Law: focus on the 20 per cent of work that produces 80 per cent of profits

7 Dump the 80 per cent that produces 20 per cent of profits

8 Cultivate “selective ignorance”. Don't waste time reading what's of no relevance to you

9 Liberate yourself gradually from the workplace, claiming to work more efficiently from home

10 Don't defer having fun till you're too old. Take two or three “mini-retirements” each year

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, Vermillion, £10.99

Uk Future Innovators

2008-04-01T14:27:00.003+13:00

This is a great report from the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts in the UK on attitudes among young in the UK people today:

"Young people believe their own passion, motivation and personal attributes will be more important in helping them pursue the career of their choice than qualifications, according to a new survey from NESTA, due to be published today. They’re driven by a desire for personal fulfilment ahead of money, and by personal interest over altruism.

Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO of NESTA, said:

“If predictions are correct, 50 per cent of the jobs that will be available in 10 years time don’t yet exist. On this basis, it becomes harder to predict what qualifications someone will need in 2020 and it is more important to give them a broad range of skills to prepare them for all the options. This means encouraging young people to be confident, creative risk-takers who will be more likely to come up with new ideas, lead business or drive social change”.

For more visit NESTA's Future Innovators space.

MsBehaviour says...

2008-03-27T16:24:00.003+13:00

Don't pin your hopes on one big project. Open up as many opportunities as you can.

You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss

2008-03-23T14:13:00.003+13:00

Another great essay from Paul Graham at Y Combinator:

Founders arriving at Y Combinator often have the downtrodden air of refugees. Three months later they're transformed: they have so much more confidence that they seem as if they've grown several inches taller. [4] Strange as this sounds, they seem both more worried and happier at the same time. Which is exactly how I'd describe the way lions seem in the wild.

Watching employees get transformed into founders makes it clear that the difference between the two is due mostly to environment—and in particular that the environment in big companies is toxic to programmers. In the first couple weeks of working on their own startup they seem to come to life, because finally they're working the way people are meant to.

I have seen the transformation myself. It's never too soon to start out on your own.

Six Principles for Making New Things

2008-02-16T19:40:00.005+13:00

Paul Graham from technology seed funder Y Combinator has a simple recipe of six principles for making new things.

He says,

"I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly."

I completely agree and advise people developing a new website to get to screens as quickly as possible as why document when you can do. I also advocate that you start simply, launch fast and then roll-out extra features in stages.

5 Ways to Build Amazing Client Karma (And Boost Your Business)

2008-02-06T21:51:00.000+13:00

Samuel Ryan at Freelance switch has an excellent post on how to build excellent client relationships.

"let’s be honest — there will always be someone who can do parts of your job for less money. The problem is that such people only give the bare minimum. Build “caring consultancy” into your projects and your clients will see you as more of a partner than a contractor."

Providing high quality customer service is important, but beware becoming 'a member of the family', as people don't always treat their family members with respect. Too close and you lose the professional boundaries. Too distant and there is no client / agency loyalty. Finding the happy medium is key.

After all you're in business to make a profit, not friends.

Your Startup on a Shoestring

2008-02-06T13:37:00.000+13:00

Business week reports on how much money you really need to start a business, which is probably less than you think and much less than in the days before the Internet.

There is some very sound advice given here on keeping costs low, hiring contractors rather than staff, stay flexible and invest either your time or money in marketing or 'funketing' as one little creative business in Nelson now calls it.

After all Funketing is key to keeping your cash flowing and debt free.

Seven things employees want most to be happy at work

2008-02-04T21:14:00.000+13:00

It's very easy to give a pay rise but harder still to give the sort of benefits that make staff want to stay:

Increasingly, workplace specialists are discovering that for many workers, the "happiness factor" depends heavily on intangibles, such as respect, trust, and fairness.

"Study after study has shown that it is the small things that make workers feel committed to an organization," says Barbara Glanz, an author specializing in workplace issues.
"One study shows the top three things workers want are interesting work, full appreciation for the work they do, and a feeling of being in on things."

There is one very easy thing you can do every day. Always remember to say thank you!

17 Unbeatable Ways to Create a Peaceful, Relaxed Workday

2008-02-04T20:35:00.000+13:00

Zen Habits suggests seventeen excellent ways to have a perfect workday, every day. Start slowly, plan ahead, do less and achieve more instead. Above all take lots of regular breaks. Most people's focus starts to slip after about 45 minutes, so schedule in more micro-breaks and you may be surprised at how much quicker you can work. We are not machines, we are human beings.

Top 10 Ways to Fire the Client From Hell

2008-01-31T18:42:00.000+13:00

Sometimes clients are more trouble that they are worth, and all that there is left to do is fire them:

"Clients are the lifeblood of any business. Without them, your venture simply doesn't exist. On the other hand, some clients are so bad that your business, not to mention your personal sanity, is better off without them. So what do you do when you have a client that pushes you to the brink? You fire them! Here's how to give 10 of the worst offenders the pink slip without burning bridges."

This is all golden advice if you want to remain happy and profitable.

Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?

2008-01-31T17:54:00.000+13:00

"Whether you’re trying to solve a tough problem, start a business, get attention for that business or write an interesting article, creative thinking is crucial. The process boils down to changing your perspective and seeing things differently than you currently do.

People like to call this “thinking outside of the box,” which is the wrong way to look at it. Just like Neo needed to understand that “there is no spoon” in the film The Matrix, you need to realize “there is no box” to step outside of. "

by Brian Clark on 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking.

P.S. There is no spoon.

Creative Business Tips at Twitter

2008-01-27T15:04:00.000+13:00

You can now read MsBehaviour's CreativeBizNZ tweets with tips, tools and advice on running a creative business at Twitter: twitter.com/creativebiznz