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.

Last week I had a week off.

Based on the following I can’t imagine when Rod had any time off:

Rod Drury, Selwyn Pellett enter NZ Hi-Tech Hall of Fame

Rod Drury joins NZX board

Accelerate 2010

The great thing all of these have in common is that even while Rod is building a world class company he still has time to give back!

Great work Rod

Over the last few weeks I have been taking care of Customer Care for our Cadimage Tools International Customers. It is certainly a job where you get right down to the detail and consequently you may have noticed a drop off in my blog postings!

I have also fallen behind in reading everyone else’s blogs but I have come across a few things that are either great, cool, I agree with or just plain weird!

There is the recently released Dell Adamo which is a pretty cool looking, extremely thin laptop.

Xero has made two great announcements – Xero Personal and a massive increase in Revenues

Andy Lark has a good point about Rugby going global – it must be tough being in the US and not being able to watch the All Blacks. I also though his post on Critical Non Essentials was interesting.

There are the Mindflex puzzles where you use your brain power to move objects!

Lastly there is a post about 10 Secrets To Staying Informed About Web Design – I think this could help me keep up with all my blogs not just those on Web Design, but I haven’t yet had time to read it!

So most of my readers by now will know I am a 100% Xero convert – though I am still waiting for the much anticipated Foreign Currency Release later this month to complete my transition.

Anyway I was recently catching up on Rowan Simpson’s blog and discovered a link to a wonderful analysis of investing in Xero and a model (I suggest you read the article and download the model from Sam’s site) to determine customer numbers and revenue requirements to achieve an acceptable rate of return on your investment given the risks etc.

While I found the analysis extremely comprehensive I was more intrigued by the author – the name rang a bell.

Reading various other posts on www.samstewartnz.com made me more sure this was an old acquaintance from my university days.

So I sent an email with a few snippets of history that would have been a  little strange were it not the same Sam Stewart but as it turned out it was.

Sam has spent time in Wellington after studying at the University of Auckland and is now currently in Brisbane.

Just goes to show you don’t need to rely on Facebook to catch up with old friends!

It was great to see Xero’s recent annoucement about raising more capital.

The main thing this highlights to me and I talked about this in an earlier post: Even with economic times being the worst they have been for 60 years there is still opportunities to grow.

It also highlights that I have heard mentioned previously “Raise Capital before you need it as it will be easier to source than when you actually need it!”

Which is why on Saturday we did the 5 man-relay not the Solo Ultra-Marathon of the Te Houtaewa Challenge 2009

At 8:30 Saturday morning Sally set off to run the first 3 km section of the 63km Relay down Northland’s Ninety Mile Beach. For the next 4:47:19 we took our turn to run a 3km section and then drive down the beach slowly making our way from the bluff to Ahipara.

The team consisted of:

• Gav
• Ed
• Wazza
• Sal
• Me

All of them seasoned pro’s having run the event as many as 6 times before (it only started in 2003!) I was new to the relay but had run the extremely monotonous Half Marathon back in ‘99.

The guys were a little nervous at the start when they heard there were 5 other teams entered this year, however the nervousness was uncalled for as we ended up winning by over 45minutes.

Hats off must go to Tony Ahern though as he finished only 38 minutes after us having run the whole 63km himself!

Hats off also to the organisers – the event is very well run and has a fantastic Far North Community feel about it.

Sitting here as I fly over Siberia I can’t help but think how one of Xero’s strongest selling points is also – presently – an enormous weakness!

The beauty of Xero is that it is an Internet based Accounting Package – meaning where I can connect I can view and work on my accounts.

With the start of our new financial year I finally converted my 4 remaining companies onto Xero. In one of my accounts I now have over 350 Bank transactions to reconcile.

While sitting here with not a lot else to do I can’t do a bank reconciliation.

This post is a little tongue-in-cheek really! While I will have to reconcile my accounts at some stage the one thing I enjoy about flying is that it does prevent you doing some things and therefore forcing you to do others such as read!

As I said at the start being online is what I perceive as one of Xero’s biggest assets. Being a central online system  is fantastic, especially considering how much I travel currently. The files for my old accounting system add up to 150mb which to continually copy backwards and forwards became a nightmare on poor connections and there was always the inherent risk of losing data if other people accessed the files in the meantime.

So thumbs up for Xero, I know in the near future I will have an Internet connection while flying and will be able to catch up on my accounts. But in reality while flying I enjoy not being able to do things more than I would enjoy being able to!

With a New Year fast approaching and most economic news regarding 2009 being negative Xero have launched a great little thread on their blog.

Top 5 Success & Survival tips for 2009: tell us yours

There are so far only a couple of comments but I am sure over the next few days there will be lots of insightful advice.

My comment was:

Stay positive! I believe state of mind is all important. It certainly doesn’t trump all business advice in tough times but helps keep things in perspective.
Remember sometimes the best opportunities are available in tough times so don’t stop looking out for them.
Remember that business should be fun, why get out of bed if you don’t feel positive and full of energy!
On top of this remember to keep a constant eye on cash and expenses – but you should be doing that anyway!

While I appreciate being positive won’t make all the bad news go away it certainly helps. It also gives you perspective regarding all the tough decisions that may need to be made along the way.

Anyway, go add your comments now…

During my recent trip to the UK and Hungary I was able to fit in Xero’s presentation at the London Apple Store.

I had only been in the UK for 2 hours but decided it was the best way to catch up with Hamish and the team and see how things were going for Xero in the UK.

I have visited the Apple Store on numerous occassions but had never really appreciated how BIG it was till I had to find the presentation area towards the back of level 1.

I am continually amazed at what happens in an Apple Store – at one level it is basically a large, free, Mac based internet cafe. People check their email, update their Facebook and one guy was sorting himself a date on Polish Dating UK!

Anyway, back to the Xero presentation. Hamish and his team did a great overview and it was fantastic to see this NZ Company getting a great response and positive feedback to their innovative accounting software (who would have ever thought those two words would be used together!)

The Apple Store presents a somewhat difficult environment as it is hard to determine exactly how many of the people in the presentation area are there for the presentation and how many just are using it as seat and some timeout in an otherwise chaotic environment!

All I know is that Hamish believed the event to be a great succcess and is likely to do it again in the near future.

For any of you running a small business I definitely recommend Xero – currently available in NZ, the UK and soon AUS!

Over the last few days i have found screeds of items on the new Google Chrome. Rowan Simpson has taken the application view point further with some interesting results inlcuding a great Xero app for the Mac.