Founded by Max Farndale 1947 - 2018
3 Nov - Chinese Mayors representing around 80 million citizens will gather in Wellington on 3-4 December for talks with their Kiwi counterparts. Fifteen Chinese mayors and vice-mayors from mid and large-sized cities will visit for the second New Zealand China Mayoral Forum to further strengthen relationships between regions of both countries. They will be joined by 33 mayors from across New Zealand, from our biggest city Auckland to some of our smaller regional centres.
The Forum, hosted by Local Government New Zealand and Wellington City Council, is the second time Mayors from China and New Zealand will meet, following the inaugural 2015 Forum in Xiamen.
Trade and investment opportunities in tourism, education and primary industries will be central to discussions at this year’s Forum. China is New Zealand’s largest source of foreign students, with 34,000 in 2016, second largest source of tourists, with over 400,000 visitors in 2016, and in 2016 took $9.4 billion of export goods with primary products top of the list.
A business forum and matching session will also provide an opportunity for businesses from both countries to engage in discussions on future trade and investment opportunities.
LGNZ President Dave Cull says the Forum is an excellent opportunity for both the country as a whole and the regions to enhance relationships with New Zealand’s largest trading partner.
“There is much to be gained for our communities in developing a greater understanding and appreciation of how China operates,” Mr Cull says. “Face to face meetings at the sub-national level provide the opportunity for the representatives of our cities, districts and regions to engage directly and look for mutually-beneficial economic development opportunities.”
Wellington Mayor Justin Lester says the capital is proud to be hosting the event, and he will be looking to share the Wellington story with the visiting contingent.
“China is a hugely important partner and destination for Wellington business. I’m very excited that such a major forum is being hosted in the capital,” Mr Lester says. “This will be a great opportunity to show off what we love about Wellington to an important international audience.”
The Forum is supported by platinum sponsor the China Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand and the Bank of China, with additional support from sponsors Huawei, the University of Otago, the University of Auckland’s Centre for Asia-Pacific Excellence, Victoria University of Wellington, Silver Fern Express Ltd, China Travel Services Ltd and the New Zealand China Council.
The talks will include mayors, vice mayors and officials from the following Chinese cities: Xiamen City, Beijing City, Guangzhou City, Shenzhen City, Hohhot City, Guilin City, Dunhuang City, Baoji City, Qingyuan City, Huaibei City, Liaoyang City, Heihe City and Qingdao City. Attendance from another two cities from Ningxia Hui People's Autonomous Region and Hebei Province will shortly be confirmed.
The talks will include mayors and officials from the following New Zealand towns, cities and districts: Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin, Palmerston North, Tauranga, Rotorua, Hastings, Whanganui, Rangitikei, Timaru, Taupo, Matamata-Piako, Central Otago, Nelson, Gisborne, Clutha, Tararua, Manawatu, Central Hawke’s Bay, Hurunui, Hauraki, Porirua, Marlborough, Gore, Selwyn, Kawerau, Opotiki, Kapiti, Ashburton, Invercargill, Upper Hutt and Hutt City.
| A LGNZ release | November 3, 2017 |||
3 Nov - Plant & Food Research's John Mitchell has led a programme trialling wireless sensors in kiwifruit as a way of detecting abnormal fruit. Wireless sensor technology may one day be used in the horticulture industry to detect diseases or defects in stored fresh fruit. A Plant & Food Research team developed a sensor at its Hamilton base at Ruakura, New Zealand and has been trialling it for green kiwifruit at a commercial cool store in the Bay of Plenty over the past two seasons.
Programme leader John Mitchell said the research unit wanted to find a scientifically sound way to detect any abnormal or undesirable fruit while in storage. At the peak of this season the team had 440 devices placed in 56 different pallets from 24 growers throughout the coolstore.
Mitchell said the sensors had functioned well over both seasons.
The bulk of New Zealand's kiwifruit is harvested from April-June when it is then graded, packed in pallets and stored in cool storage for up to six months.
Once stored, it was difficult to access individual packs of fruit to check its quality. If affected fruit was not identified and removed from packaging, it could spread throughout the stored crop and cause greater fruit loss, he said.
Continue here to read article on FreshPlaza || November 3, 2017 |||
3 Nov - Don’t miss what’s right under your nose, which may be an engineer with the right mix of curiosity and talent, says Leda Glyptis. They are the key to your future. For the last four years, I have had a rough pencil sketch sitting on my desk. Stick figures, infrastructure diagrams and Cupids. In this time, I’ve moved jobs, companies and continents. Yet, this sketch is still to hand, resplendent in bad art, coffee stains and all kinds of creases and rub marks from frequent moves and frequent handling.
It started life as a jovial attempt at explaining to HR what type of person I was trying to hire. It turned my star engineer into a stick figure character building bridges, busting legacy and getting a hug from the Corporate as the latter realises that said star engineer is the key to not just working out the future, but making the future work. Him. Star engineer extraordinaire. Not what he does, not what he knows: who he is.
Taking a step back to take a leap forward
Our banks are complicated beasts fed by unexpected growth and strategic acquisition, not design. Infrastructure came to serve the business, which in turn grew around the point of sale, itself reflecting the client need or at least the market opportunity. As things changed, tweaks were made and complexity was added. We didn’t scrap and start from scratch at any point. We optimised and streamlined, and above all else we specialised. There is hardwired separation between functions in banks. The silos may emerge separating units out by virtue of what they do or who they do it for; slicing functions by business or creating groupings by ‘step’ in a value creation process. Whatever the heuristic tool deployed, separation exists partly for regulatory proposes and partly to get a handle on the complexity of the business. After creating complexity, we added complexity to manage said complexity. Anon. The result is a degree of specialisation so extreme it becomes de-skilling to staff, who often become unable to change what they can only see a fraction of, and process has to trump logic in the absence of adequate information.
This situation is even more extreme in corporate and institutional banking, where such labyrinthine complexity is matched on the client side. That correspondence isn’t accidental – the organisations grew together and the constraints of available technology were common, as were the drivers of profitability. It worked, but there was no science behind it. It was good because it worked, and now it doesn’t really work any more, which means that no matter how good you may be within this setup, the setup is no longer any good.
What’s technically available combined with regulatory trends and increasing market demands means that it’s not your delivery that needs to be revamped: it’s your entire organisation, since it was a vehicle suited to a particular product, a specific delivery discipline, a moment in time. We know that. We are dealing with that. But old habits die hard and we’re still trying to fit change in the same organisational shape, still hiring and managing with the old hat on: looking for ‘fit’, looking for people who can do the job, even as it’s changing, because they’ve done it before. We’re looking for people who can prove they have the technical or product knowledge we needed yesterday, so we can tackle tomorrow. We’re still all about knowing, not learning. I hate to break it to you, but that doesn’t work any more.
Do what no one has done before. Every day
The stick figure at the heart of all this, my then star engineer, wasn’t a star because of what he knew. He was a star because of what he was willing to learn, and what he was able to do with what he learned. He was hired as a Java developer, and started playing with REST APIs in his own time, before it turned out we needed that skill for the day job. He was learning Scala and Kafka in his down time, had a PhD in theoretical physics and was a bit of a film buff. And if you’re like my HR guys, glazing over at this point, then wake up! Because it matters. His innate curiosity and tinkering nature matter. The fact that he’s interested in seemingly unconnected things absolutely matters. The fact that he has a horizon absolutely matters, because in a changing world of emerging capabilities, it’s who he is, not what he knows, that will make him useful to the corporate; his willingness to learn, understand, tinker and observe. Not what he did before, but what he’s willing and able to do next.
Assuming you could find him. Assuming you could recognise the super power. Assuming you manage to hire him. Do you understand what about him makes him valuable? Do you know how to manage him to get to that value?
The star engineer in question once ran regression testing on the colour distribution of candy in M&M packets. True story. The batch number apparently has no impact on how many brown ones you get. It was an ongoing experiment: every time someone in the lab had M&Ms, the data was logged and crunched (pun intended). Once a week, he would run the analysis and observe. It took no more than five minutes a day, but it worked wonders for the atmosphere in the lab. The shape of the questions the young’uns felt permitted to ask. Not just about candy. And that wasn’t even his intention. He genuinely wanted to know how the colour distribution worked, and without asking. He wanted to work it out. That’s the whole point. But every time a client visited the lab, the business wanted the M&M board covered up, and that’s when my stick figures went from joke to talisman.
In a world that’s coming to rely on learning more than knowledge as a survival skill, a business needs at the very least the ability to learn to recognise what it needs to learn in order to survive. M&Ms may not hold the answer to everything, but looking for patterns, answers and paths does. And if you find someone who thinks that way and can cut code, hire them and then give them a hug. Mould your organisation around them, because they will find a way to deal with your legacy and take you into the future. And since they like to learn new things, they will learn how you make money today. And since they like figuring things out, they will play around with how you can make money tomorrow (till they work it out).
As I said: stick figures, infrastructure diagrams and Cupid. Let’s face it. The infrastructure diagrams were for you, to reassure you. They don’t need them. They see the matrix. It’s time to stop seeing the people that hold the key to your digital future as stick figure abstractions with unknowable skill sets, and it’s time to get to know them and let them get acquainted with the guts of the business. The separation of old has outlived its usefulness. It’s in the way of your future profitability. Away with it. Love your engineers. For they shall build the Earth for you to inherit.
| A BANKNXT release written by Leda Glyptis || November 3, 2017 |||
About a year ago, I left my job as a salaried mechanical engineer because I didn’t have as much ownership in my projects as I wanted. I wanted a career with more accountability and engagement with what I was working on, and I wanted more control of how I was spending my time.
So I decided to become a freelancer. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to start an engineering consulting firm (which sounds way fancier than freelancer).
Being a freelance engineering consultant means you get to pick your clients and projects and be flexible in how you spend your time. But being a freelancer also means that you don’t always know when your next paycheck is coming. That stress aside, you can make your freelance life much easier by following a few simple rules.Engineering Consulting Requires the Right Tools and Materials
I’m a mechanical designer, which means that I make my clients’ ideas into physical things, such as an insert for a blender or a mountable light fixture. In addition to ideation, I design, model, and prototype, so to complete projects, I need access to a modeling program and a 3D printer. By joining a hardware-specific co-working space, I have access to those tools whenever I need them. Think about the tools you need and whether you have access to them. A few up-front investments in time or money can help you out in the long run.
Because I also make prototypes for clients, I need materials. Through my network of makers, I’ve discovered many raw-material suppliers and manufacturers (mostly local!) that are already vetted. Never underestimate the power of your network. You can also use the Internet; the Internet has everything.
Make Connections, and Follow UpKnowing where to find opportunities is one of the biggest struggles for freelance engineering consultants. In my co-working space, I’m surrounded by people with ideas for physical products, so our needs often match up. But uncovering those needs requires interacting with people or—gulp—“networking.” Networking doesn’t need to strike fear in your heart. Going to industry meet-ups in your area is a great way to start. Look for meet-ups with people of various backgrounds; that way, you’ll connect with more people who may need your skill set.
Continue here to read the full article released by Redshift || November 3, 2017 |||
A free trade agreement (FTA) between India and New Zealand has stalled, with one official describing the deal as surviving on “life support” write Shane Cowlishaw and Sam Sachdeva for Newsroom
While the focus is currently on the looming TPP deal and how that will be affected by New Zealand’s decision to ban foreign property buyers, it had been hoped some progress could have been made towards a deal with India, the world’s second most populous country.
Last year, then-Prime Minister John Key visited India and after meeting his counterpart Narendra Modi said great progress had been made.
"They were the most forward-leaning statements around a free trade agreement we've heard from the Indian government. (Modi) wants to make progress relatively rapidly and he wants it to be comprehensive," Key said at the time.
"Prior to coming here we weren't really going anywhere on the FTA - now you've got some very clear direction."
Despite that direction, no progress appears to have been made in the year since.
Several diplomatic and trade officials spoken to by Newsroom in India said there had been no movement and work was barely sputtering along on “life support”.
Dairy was the issue, with Indian businesses wary of letting New Zealand into the market and little chance of a change in stance.
A more plausible scenario was working towards a bilateral or multi-country deal involving Sri Lanka, and sending New Zealand goods to India through the close neighbour which had its own FTA with India.
Speaking to Newsroom in New Delhi, New Zealand’s High Commissioner to India, Joanna Kempkers, said there had been 10 rounds of negotiations between the two countries but admitted the deal was on a “slow boil”.
“It would be fantastic for New Zealand and it’s one of our key objectives but we’re realistic to the difficulties of that because, while New Zealand ourselves might not be a problem, we do have some sensitive sectors, dairy being one of them.”
While there were some “commonalities” between the New Zealand and Indian industries, there were areas where New Zealand could be of particular value, she said.
CONTINUE HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON NEWSROOM || NOVEMBER 3, 2017 |||
3 Nov - Australian telco giant Telstra has completed the purchase of MTData as it bids to strengthen its IoT capabilities. Specialising in connected vehicle and fleet management technology, MTData, also Australian-owned, has around 70 staff and also operates in New Zealand, the US, Canada, the UK and the Middle East. The purchase price is yet to be disclosed.
Telstra already operates the largest mobile network in Australia, which is also one of the largest in the world, and is looking to diversify its portfolio of assets.
In a blog post, Telstra’s Executive Director of Global Products Michelle Bendschneider said: “MTData will bring fresh expertise to our business, including the technical know-how and software expertise to help fast track our Enterprise Connected Vehicle offerings.
“It’s part of our goal to build out our IoT ecosystem for our customers. It also supports Telstra’s focus on being a leading provider of innovative technology solutions for customers in Australia and globally.
“Since MTData began in 2003, the team has been built on a culture of innovation and a resolute focus on developing solutions that provide a tangible benefit to their customers’ business.”
MTData serves industries including transport and logistics, mining, oil and gas, agriculture and waste management. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, it was named on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 list.
| An AustraliaBusinessReview release || Nov 3, 2017 |||
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
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