May Travels

May is always a massive month for me and this year was no exception, with the annual People in Your Neighbourhood (PIYN) project and lots of travelling around New Zealand.

I started off in Auckland with a workshop for teachers from Matipo School in West Auckland. It was a gorgeous day and I was able to direct the taxi driver around the back-roads of Henderson having lived out west for seven years. I always enjoy sharing knowledge and resources with teachers, especially tools they can take back into the classroom or use to support their own studies.

Back in Wellington I met a few of the Christchurch HitLab crew from the  Human Interface Technology Laboratory of New Zealand. They are working on some really exciting projects and we showed them our 3D motion capture experiments with the Kinect camera. I can't wait to go down to the HitLab to see more of their work in Christchurch.

Both Chelfyn and I were involved in the live debate at the TUANZ  25th Anniversary at Te Papa. The idea was to look back from the year 2036 as if we were twenty five years in the future. I was on team 'Positively Glowing' supporting the view that New Zealand has done well. My team-mates were Vaughn Davis of the Goat Farm, and Haydn Glass from Vodafone. On the opposing 'Miserable Bastards' side were Chelfyn, Will Marshall from Enspiral and entrepreneur Lance Wiggs. A few risque jokes had to be pulled at the last minute due to the judges being a panel of primary school children, but I managed to get a Goat C++ gag in which caused snorts from a few people.

The following day I had lunch in Auckland with the delightful Miss Phloss, who as always was a vision in pink, before a meeting at the Biz Dojo in the Ironbank Building on K'D. I was staying in the Scenic Hotel and had an early night watching property porn on the Living Channel. The reason I was in Auckland was to deliver the Creative Business Toolkit workshop at AUT that I developed as part of People in Your Neighbourhood 2011.

I had a great session with Gareth Farry from the British Council, New Zealand and over twenty creative entrepreneurs, covering creative business structures, branding and online identity, an online business toolkit, Wordpress, Paypal, and a Social Media Masterclass in the afternoon. The mindmaps of the presentations have been published under a Creative Commons license and can be found at Mohawk Media to share or download. There's even more mindmaps under CC License on my Mindmeister channel.

I had a day back in Wellington before heading to Christchurch on the Monday for a lecture at the New Zealand's Broadcasting School. I talked about the future of media work and learning, the challenges, opportunities, skills and attributes the students were going to need when they graduated and the the top ten tools in my online media toolkit. Driving in from the airport you would ardly guess that there had been an earthquake, but on the way back I passed the central area which is devastated. There were no aftershocks while I visited but Cantabrians are dealing with them almost every day.

The final trip of the month was back to Auckland for a keynote at the annual Wai Care Expo for the organisers, water testers, and volunteers who help keep the waterways clean and have planted over 25,000 trees in the Auckland region. Afterwards I headed north to stay in Leigh for a long weekend with great friends, fantastic food, Fejioa bubbles from Lothlorien, and sea views.

Sunday brunch was spent at the nearby Torkington homestead working through mounds of sausage, bacon, kumara, potatoes in US style portions, though I was informed that it wasn't a full brunch as there weren't any scones or pancakes. I whiled away the rest of the weekend reading Vanity Fair before flying home feeling relaxed and well fed.

I've enjoyed my adventures around New Zealand but am happy to be home in Wellington for the next couple of months before my trip to Melbourne in July to run another workshop for People in Your Neighbourhood. I'll be starting a Teaching Fellowship at Victoria University next month covering Identity on the Internet alongside Kelly Cheesman (AKA VJ Kellective). I'm looking forward to being back in the Red Shed which is what the locals call the school of Architecture & Design which happens to be next door to the studio. I can't complain about the commute it's a mere three minutes from apartment to the lecture hall.