Kia ora koutou ITP members and supporters, I’m feeling a bit flat today - do you ever have days like this? Someone I trust did something that rocked that trust yesterday which got me thinking about the importance of trust for productive teams, to foster innovation, reduce stress and boost morale. You can read my thoughts on this here. 

The Nelson branch of ITP held a debate recently on Nelson’s sunshine wages. Simon Ferrari ITP Board member wrote a great post on LinkedIN unpacking this long held behaviour conducted in my home town. “‘Sunshine wages’ is a term used in the Nelson Tasman region to explain that the Nelson Tasman sunshine is included in your remuneration package. Your employer pays you less than the national average for your skills and effort because you live in a sunny region.” Sunshine wages has been around since I was a child - is this unique to Nelson? Are other regions of Aotearoa effected by the same poor employer behaviour? 

If you don’t live in Wellington you won’t be aware of just how quiet the capital is right now. Civil servants are all waiting for new Ministers to be appointed and give their departments marching orders, while also wondering whether they will be casualties of inevitable cuts to headcount and where their new priorities will fall. I won’t call it calm as many agencies are trying to second guess what the new government is thinking and orienting themselves to be ready. It’s just quiet, quiet on the roads, in the streets, in cafe’s, shops and restaurants. 

I can’t write this pānui without mentioning Bird of the Year - I love this competition and John Oliver has really taken it to the next level this year. If you haven’t watched his clip yet here is a link. I heard this morning the voting has been so overwhelming scrutineering will delay the announcement next week. You can still vote, so if you want to counter the John Oliver campaign for the Pūkeketeke then you need to vote. 

Finally, I wanted to reflect on the time I spent last week at Haeata School in East Christchurch Ōtautahi - which was fabulous.  Haeata campus is for learners from year 0 (5 year olds) through to year 13 (17/18 year olds) so it’s a very unique environment. We arrived right on school lunchtime and immediately post assembly so noise was the first thing to strike me, happy, cheerful noise of students awaiting their kai. There I heard stories of parents who are upsold expensive laptops by stores when their 8 year old only needs a Chromebook, or are locked into expensive financing deals. We are going to work together with the Ministry of Education to provide a guide for parents on which device is needed for each stage of the schooling lifecycle to help manage costs and arm them with information when they go into a store.

Haeata is just one of the many schools in Aotearoa who face challenges when it comes to adopting digital technology, struggle to attract and fund digital technoloogy teachers who are in short supply, have whānau with no internet connections in their homes or no devices capable of doing school homework. My heart breaks for this and other schools so the more we can collectively do to help improve their outcomes the better.

Events coming up

Fireside Chat with Emily Blythe - you can register here - I will be talking to Emily on Wednesday at 4:30pm about her winning New Zealand Innovator of the year at the Kiwibank New Zealander of the year awards, her success as an entrepreneur, the role of great mentors and her advice for others wanting to start their own business. 

This Wednesday the 15th, 4:30pm, Register here. 

Fireside Chat with Kendra Ross - you can register here - next week I will be talking to Kendra about all things Cyber Security, her reflections on the recent government changes, advice to the incoming government and cyber capability for the sector. 

Next Wednesday the 22nd, 4:30pm, Register here. 

Blogs this week

Peter’s editorial today - Optus outage nightmare, OpenAI’s app store moment - on the disastrous outage from Optus in Australia on Thursday, leaving millions of customers without internet for 14 hours and without access to the emergency phone system. These things happen as Peter describes but this was momentous. He also talks about OpenAI’s first Dev Day this week and the launch of their customisable agents for ChatGPT, speculation they are developing a hardware device and more. 

Peter’s blog - Pulling the plug on the internet for a day, what would it cost the world? - inspired Brendan’s cartoon today as well - Inseparable. The cost to NZ $158 million, to the USA $11 billion. Crazy money. An interesting read. 

Our guest blog this week - A new Silicon Valley manifesto reveals the bleak, dangerous philosophy driving the tech industry - takes us though the development and dominance of Silicon Valley on this industry, where things have soured, a colonial vision and a very dire warning we all need to heed. 

Trust: The glue that holds the workplace together - as I mentioned earlier I have written on Trust this week, why it’s important for teams and fostering an environment where Trust can be gained. 

Survey - what tech annoys you most at work? 

Reminder to fill in this survey on what annoys you most at work. LinkedIN and Teams are featuring so far. But what else? 

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CD)

Looking for resources on how to get up to speed with CI/CD - well one of our Tauranga based members pointed me towards this set of resources from CodeFresh you can check out. 

Te Reo Māori Digital Technology Terms

Full glossary is here. I am off for a girls weekend so these are words I expect to be using:

kiriāhua = selfie 
pōhi = post 
rārangi waiata = playlist

Have a great weekend everyone, kia pai tō rā, Vic