I received an email last night Subject: A Measurable Goal for New Zealand.

To be honest, at first I thought it was Spam! I qucikly glanced at it on my Blackberry and saw it was from ‘admin@…’ – a very common sender of the Spam I receive.

It wasn’t until later that I paid closer attention and discovered it to be a legitimate email and one I am glad I didn’t simply delete.

While the email wasn’t signed off by anyone (and i don’t actually know anyone called ‘admin’) I fairly quickly guessed that it could be the doing of Lloyd Morrison of Morrison & Co. Morrison & Co is a New Zealand company that manages infrastructure investments on behalf of Infratil and the NZ Superannuation Fund.

The PDF attached to the email starts with the following quote:

“New Zealand needs a vision that will excite and motivate every citizen to reach new and heretofore unheard of heights. There is no reason why this country cannot be one of the most prosperous nations in the world and a model for others.”

Dr Michael Porter, 1998

I think this initative has a very worthwhile objective behind it and already there is some lively discussion as to what we need to do. There are also some interesting comments by Mark Burgess outlining how our quality of life has changed not only in a financial sense.

For more information and to add your voice to the discussion check out the NZX Blog at: A Measurable Goal for New Zealand.

Running an Internet Based Business certainly has it’s challenges and marketing / attracting customers is at the top of my list.

Many people have the notion that because the Internet is so far reaching that you have a market place on your door step. What you have is access to a market place but you still need to be found!

Also, using Google Adwords is not a silver bullet marketing strategy for web based businesses – it is an important piece in the strategy but not the be all and end all.

Another piece of the puzzle could be Banner Ads, however the following article provides some very interesting light on that subject:

What If You Ran an Ad, and Nobody Saw It?

The interesting thing about the article is that I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t looking at the ads until I forced myself to look at the ads!

The other interesting and encouraging thing is that paid search ads do work so I’ll keep using Google Adwords as a part of my marketing strategy.

Actually I’m not but when I first heard about the following topic I simply couldn’t believe the state of our nation.

As I am sure many of you do as well, I love a great shower! Or more accurately I detest a weak shower.

To hear about the proposed changes that will place limits on the flow rate of showers just seems that as a country we are continually focussing on small details and not big issues.

I can understand the need to conserve water and electricity etc but making allowable shower flow rates a law is one step too far!

You can read about the proposal in the NZ Herald.

The following comment in the article certainly sums up my thoughts:

“Does this Government have a mandate to mess around with our lives to this degree?” one blogger wrote. “We can’t smack our kids, now we can’t bathe them as we see fit either?”

I have heard some other intereasting thoughts/ideas regarding Sustainability based on experiences during my recent trip to ArchiCAD University in the UK. I will share those in another post soon.

With the two major news topics in NZ currently the Financial Market Turmoil and the upcoming NZ General Election the following website is of particular interest.

www.ipredict.co.nz

iPredict is New Zealands first real money predictions market. At a time when everyone is debating whether the current market should be left to sort itself out (as general theory suggests it would) or should be bailed out it interesting to observe what is, from my point of view, a new type of market.

Prediction Markets have actually been around since 1988 and harness the wisdom of crowds.

Like a stock market, stocks can be bought and traded and based on this trading a price for a predication is established that represents the crowds wisdom.

The majority of the current ’stocks’ on iPredict deal with our upcoming election. Even if you don’t want to become a trader it does provide some interesting insight.

Research shows that Prediction Markets have a very high success rate and from an election point of view the reasoning for this is:

Prediction markets beat political polling for two reasons. First, they ask the right question. Pollsters ask who you will vote for. Prediction markets ask who is going to win. Second, prediction market traders put money where their mouths are, so it pays to do a little homework.

iPredict is owned by Victoria Link Ltd, itself wholly owned by Victoria University of Wellington, and the Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation (ISCR), also in Wellington. Our primary purpose is academic research.

While iPredict allows traders to make money I have found it just as interesting to monitor the stocks without actually yet purchasing.

Check out the website for more information and to sign up if you are keen to trade!