^ two of the star-attraction tiger cubs born at the Auckland zoo, in one of those moments that has the whole crowd going “awww…..”
Auckland had fair weather for my return, so I spent a few hours enjoying the sun in Western Springs park and the zoo.
Tag Archives: New Zealand
Opotiki
The best down time I’ve had on this trip so far was a visit to David and Sally Kibblewhite (who had been my teachers at Woodstock School) in their beautiful home in Opotiki, on New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty. The weather was beautiful: I finally got to see some sunshine after days of clouds and/or conference rooms. But there was something strange and unsettling about the light. Was my body, tuned for the high sun of the northern hemisphere summer, rebelling against the return to short winter days? Or was it that the sun was on the wrong side? I never did figure it out. I also would not have said that I knew much about the night sky, but that, too, looked wrong. I did finally see the Southern Cross, which included the brightest star I’ve ever seen in any sky, anywhere.
What I Did in Wellington
I was in Wellingon, New Zealand, this week, where my old friend David Earle had arranged for me to give presentations/seminars hosted by the Ministry of Education. These were open to all, and the attendees were a cross-section of government, NGOs, and local community representatives.
- Monday: Extending Conversations Through Social Media (pdf) – about 40 attendees
- Tuesday: Using Video to Enrich Conversations (pdf) – about 20 attendees
- Wednesday: a two-hour open-ended conversation with ~10 people about everything from video formats and compression to building traffic to the difficulties of hosting for a department of defense
The attendees seemed to find the info useful, and I was at least as interested in hearing their stories: the usual problems with nervous managers, unwieldy systems and software, and Terms of Use that make it illegal for government departments to use some popular online tools (e.g., Google Analytics – but that’s being worked out).
I took the opportunity to mention slx.com, Sun’s soon-to-release SaaS video platform, which could be a useful solution for some departments which need to be able to publish video easily and without restrictions on length, and possibly limit access to insiders and/or a predefined set of users.
You might also like:
Kiwi Coffee Billboard
Billboard in Wellington, New Zealand, which prides itself (rightfully enough) on its coffee.
