Time is racing by and the last week is a case in point!

Last Friday at our lecture on Quantitative Methods we had a two-hour test on confidence intervals, hypothesis testing and regression. Then on Saturday we had to hand in our 3,000 word essay for Managing People and Organisations. The essay covered a personal case study using the four frames from Bolman and Deals Reframing Organisations.

However, to really indicate how fast time is flying by, yesterday I received the course outlines for our next two papers:

Operations and Supply Chain Management

Financial Reporting and Control

Within 15 days our first quarter will be wrapped up and we’ll have a brief break before launching straight into quarter two!

The winners for the 2009 ArchDaily have now been announced:

http://www.archdaily.com/51666/archdaily-building-of-the-year-2009-the-winners/

It was great to an ArchiCAD designed building took out an award:

http://www.archdaily.com/51658/building-of-the-year-2009-sports-zamet-centre-3lhd/

As a company we have continually engaged external sources to help us with the ongoing development of our business.

Two years ago we undertook a significant strategic planning exercise with Helen and Greg Cross from Cross Ventures and we are currently working extensively with Brian R Richards with regards to the strategic branding of our international business.

Both of these engagements have been project based engagements which have focused on specific areas of the business. Strategy however, isn’t something that can be simply looked at on a project by project basis and requires constant review and adjustment.

I am therefore pleased to announce that Lance Wiggs has joined the Cadimage Board of Directors. This is a significant step forward for the Cadimage Group as Lance is our first non-executive director and this marks the start of our next growth phase.

Lance brings a wealth of experience from around the globe and has already started contributing to the direction of the business with a full on 3 hours yesterday afternoon to drop him in the deep end.

Tracey and I are really excited about this next period of development for our business and are stoked to welcome Lance on board! (pun intended)

There are just a few days left to vote for your favourite architecture of 2009 in the ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards.

It is great to see New Zealand’s very own Pacific Environments Yellow Treehouse in the finals along with a number of ArchiCAD finalists from around the globe.

Check out the finalists and place your vote: http://www.archdaily.com/49280/archdaily-building-of-the-year-awards-2009-the-finalists/

Last Wednesday I visited the sunny (or not so sunny as the case was) Hawke’s Bay for Accelerate 2010.

For a number of years Rod from Xero has been wanting to hold a conference to help accelerate growth in New Zealand business’ – specifically hi-tech.

The conference was held at the wonderful Black Barn Vineyard a wonderful setting.

Apart from the delayed flight the day got off to a great start with Andy Lark giving us his latest views on the Virtual Era.

A long lunch gave ample opportunity to network with everyone and sample some of Black Barn’s wines.

The afternoon session was quite loose with a chance to share ideas and issues that people are experiencing and hear insights from some of New Zealand most successful entrepreneurs and investors.

One of Rod’s aims was to get the ‘city folk’ into the provinces and as such it was great to meet a number of new people all based in the Bay.

Overall it was a fun day and I look forward to next years event

Cheers Rod, Odette and the Black Barn.

Well it’s been 23 days since my first MBA Diary which is a direct indication of how busy it has been!

Having not been at Uni for a number of years I felt it was important to attend a number of courses regarding how to get at all the wonderful resources and it was just as well I did as with the development of the Internet the Library is far from what I remember. The ability to access enormous resources and databases is both amazing and overwhelming.

Following these seminars we had our first ‘real’ block of lectures which went amazingly well. The concept of a 6 hour lecture sounds full-on and to a large extent it is. However, the lectures break up the time well and so far 6 hours has passed incredibly quickly.

Last week was not a ‘lecture week’ but I still managed to visit Uni four times! We have a group Presentation to make this Friday so we have had a number of group sessions to pull that together. It has come together well and this week we are into the final tweaking and rehearsing. While we are looking forward to the presentation it will also be good to ‘knock it off’ so we can concentrate on other aspects of the course as well.

Last week I also attended a monthly MBA breakfast which is a great opportunity to meet others who are at various stages of their MBA. Last weeks breakfast featured Bill Payne an angle investor from the US. The breakfast helped reinforce one of the main reasons for doing the course which was to network.

There has been an enormous amount of coverage of Air New Zealand’s recently announced Cuddle Class.

Most has been extremely positive and as a loyal Air New Zealand traveller I am eagerly awaiting it being rolled out on the Auckland-London route (about 12 months away I think!)

To me the great things about the announcement are firstly how closely it followed the announcement of Air New Zealand winning airline of the year and in so doing helped to reinforce this. Secondly, it is great to see good old kiwi ingenuity challenging the norm and leading the world.

Having been fortunate to have travelled extensively I agree wholeheartedly that Air New Zealand is the best!

For those of you who know me you will know I don’t generally buy-in to the whole area of Political Correctness – I’m probably a little too competitive! That’s not to say I think it is a bad idea but there are so many cases that are simply insane.

Take for instance this case where an employer was told that it was discriminating to advertise for ‘Reliable Workers’  - like the post title says “What is the world coming to?“

After much speculation the most anticipated announcement this year in the tech world was made an hour or so ago in San Francisco – Apple is launching the iPad Tablet Computer.

While the iPad is not simply Apple’s answer the Amazon Kindle it is interesting that a couple of years back Jobs said the whole concept of Amazon’s Kindle is fatally flawed because people don’t read anymore.

Maybe Job is getting older as in the words of Benjamin Franklin:

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

As to the question of when this will arrive in New Zealand (we are still waiting for the Kindle) who knows.

I’m sure later today Chris Keall from the NBR will have more information so i’ll keep this post updated.

Update:

OK I was wrong – actually Kelly Gregor from NBR did an update!