Last Day For Your "Plain English Awards" Submisions

Today is the final day for your submissions to 2009 Writemark Plain English Awards so I urge you all pop over to http://www.plainenglish-conference-awards.org.nz and nominate your entries and be in to win an award presented on 18th September 2009 at the Museum Building, Wellington:

Category 1: Plain English Champion

• Best Organisation
• Best Project
• Best Individual or Team

Category 2: Best Plain English Document

• Public Sector / Non-Government Organisation (NGO)
• Private Sector

Category 3: Best Plain English Website

• Public Sector / Non-Government Organisation (NGO)
• Private Sector

Category 4: Best Sentence Transformation (the easiest one to enter!)

Category 5: People’s Choice

• Best Plain English Document
• Best Plain English Website
• ‘Brainstrain’ Document
• ‘Brainstrain’ Website

It's On! NZ Open Govt Data Barcamp/Hackfest

Yaay, we have confirmed dates and venue:

• Saturday 29th August - barcamp
• Sunday 30th - hackest
• National Library (Wellington)

Subscribe to NZ Open Govt Data Barcamp and Hackfest

Email:

Visit this group - ttp://groups.google.com/group/nzopengovtbarcamp

The following is from the group to promote the group (excuse the use of <table>)
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Welcome To WaveAdept

It's been a long time coming but Dave Livesey (@daveadept) have finally launched our new company - WaveAdept (@waveadept)

What is it already doing:

Connecting your people, tools and information to make you more productive.

Whether you use Microsoft Office, Open Office, or a different set of tools, we streamline your business with simple tools that you will actually use.

Very similar to the work MiramarMike.co.nz has been doing ... which begs the question, "So, what does that mean for this blog and MiramarMike.co.nz?"

WaveAdept will be the name on the business card for organisations that want to use our services. MiramarMike will be be used to represent myself in all facets "professional" that fall outside of WaveAdept.

To give you some guidance, Mike from WaveAdept will be:

• The person engaged by companies around collaboration
• Presents at "cloud computing" events
  (come along this Friday - http://wellingtoncloud.eventbrite.com/ - $0, 2 hours)
• Who helps organisations shoot old intranets
• Implements Google Apps for you
• Introduces and runs agile/Scrum development

The current MiramarMike will still be the person that:

• Advocates for open data from the Government
• Presents "using of the Web" to communities/groups
• Promotes Open Source use
• Is sarky, challenging but always thought provoking
• Is involved with barcamps and the like - NZGovtOpenData anyone?

There's bound to be fuzzy boundaries between them both and in those circumstances expect to get two business cards as we all work it out :-) Plus there will be cross-posting on both this blog and WaveAdept, if that looks like changing I'll let you know with plenty of advance warning.

Neither will ever wear a suit.

Both will sport the awesome brooch from Sue.

Any questions just ask - you can choose to go formal with WaveAdept or professional yet informal with MiramarMike :-)

Here We Go Folks, It's All On ...

Here we go folks, it's all on ... strap yourself in for the ride of your life ... weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ...

If you thought Google had lost it's mojo, it's panache, it's disruptive nature by being bloody wealthy then you were wrong.

THIS is battle lines drawn.
THIS is bringing it on.

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.

.

.... but THIS (Google Chrome OS) is where we (some) think it's going:

... today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be

This battle will take around 18 months (ever had a child, it's such a short time looking back eh!).

Can you feel the difference, are listening to the way your IT people are talking, feeling the weight that incumpents are carrying ... the world is changing folks, are you?

BTW: I remember being at a IT conference in the 1980's when someone stated that they, "... want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot ... " - 20 years to wait for something JUST TO BLOODY WORK, not too long to wait ... is it?!?

NZ SharePoint Conference - my preso for Friday

It's really just pictures so you'll have to come along and hear the words.
Having said that I will post the commentary over the next few days.

Um, if you're wondering about the Barbie slides, blame Joel Oleson and Paul Culmsee

Bringing In The Cloud

View more documents from Mike Riversdale.