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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
Dear Member
This month’s message is brief because holiday breaks have overshadowed business activity during this period and I must say that more long weekends would be easy to get used to.
On Anzac day I attended the memorial services at Hellfire Pass and the Allied War Cemetery in Kanchanaburi at which I laid a wreath on behalf of the Chamber. Even though I have had the honour of doing this previously I still find it a sobering and humbling experience. Those who attended also listened to very memorable addresses given by our Ambassador Brook Barrington at both services.
While mentioning our Ambassador I would like to add that at the end of June, Brook will be coming to the end of his 3 year posting to Thailand and soon after will be returning to NZ to take up a new position in Wellington. Brook will be attending his last CK networking event in late June so please make a note to come along to say farewell and thank you for the cooperation and assistance he has provided the Chamber during his time in Thailand.
This month a flyer has already been sent out to advertise our Beachead Networking Function which is being held in conjunction with NZ Trade & Enterprise at the Conrad Hotel on Friday 22nd May. The cocktail reception will welcome members of NZTE’s SEA Beachead Advisory Board to Bangkok and it will provide members and guests the opportunity to meet and network with other leading Thai and NZ companies actively doing business in this region. Please note that this takes the place of our usual Corporate Knight networking event that would have been held the following Thursday and we would also like to thank Karlene Davis and NZTE for kindly sponsoring the evening
We hope you will be able to join us at this reception and we look forward to seeing you there.
Kind regards
Cris Dunning
President
MAY CHAMBER NETWORKING EVENTS
CORPORATE KNIGHT NETWORKING EVENT
Friday, 22nd May 2009 @ 6.00pm
Conrad Hotel, All Season Place, 87/1 Wireless Road, London Room
This coctail reception kindly hosted by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise will welcome members of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise's Southeast Asia Beachheads Advisory Board to Bangkok and introduce the Beachheads Programme.
New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) administers a global programme, called the beachheads programme which is targeted at New Zealand companies taking the next step to develop their business overseas and build a stronger local presence. The programme has been established in eight regions or markets currently – US, UK, Dubai (Middle East), Japan, Southeast Asia (SEA), India, China and South America.
The Southeast Asia (SEA) Beachheads Programme was established in June 2007, with its centre of administration based in Singapore. A core group of senior advisors was appointed to kick-start the programme, whose primary role is to facilitate the companies’ access to their networks and provide mentoring advice on their growth and expansion strategies. Since then, the board has expanded to appoint in-market advisors based in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.
The SEA Beachheads Programme adopts a distributed model. What this means is that companies can set up their business operations in any of the countries within SEA, and be part of a larger beachhead community tapping the expertise of the board advisors and NZTE in-market staff on a whole range of market entry and expansion issues. The SEA Beachheads Advisory Board meets every six weeks with new participants which have been accepted into the programme by the New Zealand Beachheads Advisory Board.
As of today, 114 New Zealand firms from the biotech, education, food & beverage, infocommunication technologies, creative and services, specialised manufacturing and wood based industries are currently in the beachhead programme.
For more information about New Zealand Trade & Enterprise’ beachhead programme, including a profile of the Advisory Board and senior advisors, please refer to the following URL:
www.nzte.govt.nz/beachheads
Quiet month this month folks - that's all we have!!
KIWI COMPANIES IN THE NEWS
Auckland Company Wins Coveted Webby Award
 Auckland based design firm Alt Group is in a New York state of mind – the company has just picked up its third major design accolade in the City this week – a coveted Webby Award.
Auckland based multidisciplinary design firm, Alt Group is having its best week ever, with the company Tuesday, May 5 picking up the Best Associations Award at New York’s prestigious 13th Annual Webby Awards.
The Webby win tops off what has been an epic award winning week for the company, which saw them take home a Silver and Bronze Pencil and two Merit Awards at the One Show Design awards (widely regarded as the one of the advertising industry’s most prestigious international awards programmes), and a Gold Cube award and two Bronze awards at the ADC (Art Directors Club) Awards, both of which were held in New York.
Beating off stiff international competition, Alt Group won the prestigious Webby Award for their Create an Effect campaign, which was devised to raise the international profile of New Zealand TVC production companies.
Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honour” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video and mobile websites. This year’s awards attracted more than 10,000 entries from over 60 countries.
Alt Group’s Create an Effect campaign was launched at the 2008 Cannes Lion International Advertising Festival through New Zealand Trade & Enterprise’s JustAddNewZealanders website (www.justaddnewzealanders.com).
Dean Poole, creative director at Alt Group, said the brief for the campaign was to raise the New Zealand screen industry’s profile at Cannes Lion, cutting through what was a noisy and demanding market and driving the target audience – industry decision makers and potential production partners – to www.justaddnewzealanders.com, where they could learn more about New Zealand’s screen industry.
“Winning a Webby is a huge accolade for us and demonstrates agency collaboration. Our web team collaborated with web gurus Shift to showcase New Zealand’s design talent in offshore markets.” said Poole.
“We relished the opportunity to work with Alt on such a strong campaign,” said Che Tamahori, managing director of the website’s developers, Shift.
“We’ve collaborated with Alt for a couple of years to evolve the platform for the JustAddNewZealanders website, and it continues to go from strength to strength. Alt’s vision has produced the perfect showcase for New Zealand’s creative sector.”
Of the campaign, Poole said: “Cannes Lion is a place where the screen production industry celebrates itself and is involved in a lot of networking events. While it was important we developed a campaign that connected with the fun and frivolity of Cannes, we also had to ensure we conveyed the key messages – that New Zealanders understand how to deliver creative experiences that engage an audience, pack an emotional punch, and create memories.”
The Create an Effect campaign was developed around ‘New Zealanders bringing storyboards to life’ and connected directly to the industry and representative companies, with the ideas executed through a series of three-dimensional onomatopoeic sound effects, such as Boom, Screech, Thwak, Kapoow, Thud, Blammo, Screech and Zapp.
Street teams were equipped with signs and armed with digital cameras to record interactions, with the images then being published on www.justaddnewzealanders.com.
David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards, said: "All of this year's winners embrace the Internet as the medium where they can take risks, experiment, and share new ideas.
"All of our winners have helped make the Internet a richer, more exciting, and more vibrant experience."
In addition to picking up a Webby Award for their Create an Effect campaign, Alt Group also received an Official Honouree mention in the Corporate Communications category for their work on www.humoffice.co.nz, the website for Formway Furniture’s revolutionary office system, HUM.
The Official Honouree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work submitted that exhibits remarkable achievement. Just 12 entries were declared Honourees in the Corporate Communications category in this year’s awards.
The Webby Award winners were announced on last night (May 5, 2009) and will be honoured at a star-studded ceremony, hosted by American actor and comedian Seth Myers in New York City on June 8.
NZ Music Website in World's Top 50 Websites
www.specialsurprise.co.nz, the website of New Zealand musician Luke Buda, from the band The Phoenix Foundation, has been included in the Favourite Website Award’s (FWA) top 50 websites of 2008. The website, created by Wellington interactive advertising agency Resn, was shortlisted from all 365 of the FWA’s Sites of the Day in 2008.
The Favourite Website Award (FWA) is arguably the number one award for innovative web design, with over one million visitors each month. It was named the top web award in the world in the Chicago Tribune’s ‘World Wide Web Awards Award’, beating the likes of the Webby Awards.
Rob Ford, Principal of the FWA, described Luke’s site as a case of “simplicity making for something unforgettable. The FWA showcases future thinking, progressively designed sites who use cutting edge technology, together with inspirational ideas, that lead the way for future generations.”
www.specialsurprise.co.nz is also a finalist in the prestigious One Show Interactive Awards in New York on 4 May, competing against interactive campaigns by brands including Nike, Diesel, Nokia, Burger King and Nintendo.
Luke Buda’s website now receives over 10,000 unique visitors each month, who spend an average of seven minutes engaging with the music and content. The majority of visitors come from the United States.
Luke Buda says the site’s success has gained him an international cult following. “Resn really pushed the boundaries of what I thought was possible for the website. They’re a hugely creative and thought-provoking team to work with.”
In the last 12 months four websites created by Resn have been selected as FWA ‘Sites of the Day’, including sites for 26000 Vodka and Kiwi band Minuit.
Steve Le Marquand, Creative Director of Resn, says the combination of a Top 50 and four Site of the Day awards has cemented Resn’s reputation as one of the leading interactive agencies in the world.
“Winning a FWA award four times is amazing but making it into the Top 50 is exhilarating. It shows creative New Zealanders can rub shoulders with the world’s biggest brands and advertising agencies. The fact that we have won two of our FWA awards for promoting New Zealand music is something we are really proud of!”
About Resn
In March Resn was named the Best Digital & Interactive Agency in Australasia beating out a record number of entries from agencies across Australia and New Zealand at Creative Magazine’s Hot Shop industry awards.
Resn’s site for Kiwi band Minuit also won the Best Music Website category of the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Web Awards, the 2007 Pixel Awards Music category, and received a Merit at the 2008 One Show Interactive awards and was an Honouree at the The 2008 Webby Awards for Best Music Website.
Apart from their international clients, Resn have created websites for some of New Zealand’s top music acts including The Black Seeds, Liam Finn and Pacific Heights. Resn are currently designing websites for Fat Freddys Drop and Shapeshifter.
KIWI CORNER
Some recent Kiwi Snippets and Quotes:
A tribute to the jandal.
Foxton mother Amanda Howell, 30, is a self-confessed jandal freak she wears them all year round and she even strings them up on her wire fence along the Foxton Straight.
Her obsession started two years ago, when she won a pair of jandals at the pub and decided to string them up on her fence. Now, she has about 60 pairs, not including the odd ones, from children's polka-dot flip flops to old grey thongs. The Kiwiana fence is becoming iconic, she said. "If you Google 'jandal fence' it comes up with my Bebo page."
The string of rubber footwear was temporarily moved to her parents' fence next door for six months while she was away, but she has transferred her collection back and hopes to fill the entire fence. She has plastic ties in her letter box so people can stop and string up their own jandals.
Toilet paper use queried.
Toilet paper and pen purchases at the MidCentral District Health Board are under scrutiny by Parliament's health select committee.
It wants to know not only how many "sanitary paper products" and "writing instruments" it buys, but what proportion of them are green. Board member Jim Jefferies said he struggled to believe what he was reading when he saw the questions the committee put to the board about its financial performance and current operations. "These questions are being asked by people in government of a multi-billion dollar sector." Boards throughout the country had already run up a $90 million deficit in the first seven months of the current financial year. "I'm trying to get my head around why they want to know how much toilet paper we use."
Environmental issues, including efforts to promote car pooling, recycling and energy efficiency made up one of five main themes among the 50 questions put to the board.
"Perhaps sanitary paper products include hand towels as well, and it wouldn't be fair to compare us with others, because maybe they use more hand driers than us."
Mr Jefferies said the level of detail demanded was ironic in light of other questions about how the board planned to halt the growth in bureaucracy."We must have an army of people running around answering these questions that never get us anywhere." The committee asked for material sent in response to be stapled rather than ring-bound.
NZ's hottest businessman bares all - almost
Hot on the heels of his win as New Zealand's hottest businessman, Rob Fyfe is stripping off for the company's latest commercial. The Air New Zealand CEO topped a recent Stuff poll for New Zealand's sexiest businessman by a comfortable margin. Fyfe will appear in upcoming Air NZ ads now posted on YouTube, seemingly wearing nothing but body paint and underwear.
ICT
Wellington ICT Professionals using Youtube to get their message to the world
A Wellington ICT professionals network Unlimited Potential hosted W2W (Wellington to the World) late last year in conjunction with KEA to provide a platform for some selected IT companies to be able to present their products and services to international potenetial clients, investors and partners.
The presentations were captured and distributed by using Youtube. A second event is being planned for 2009. You can some of these and there effectiveness by checking out www.youtube.com/UPW2W
NZ's first National ICT Innovation Institute opens
 CHRISTCHURCH
New Zealand's first National ICT Innovation Institute, known as NZi3, has opened at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. The new purpose-built facility has also been recognised as the most environmentally-friendly educational building in the country.
Prime Minister the Hon John Key was the official guest at yesterday's opening. He was joined by three other Cabinet members, senior representatives of the Institute's founding partners Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Jade Software Corporation and Tait Electronics, and other stakeholders. Mr Key said Christchurch's reputation as a hub of innovation in New
Zealand would be cemented by the establishment of NZi3. He said economies benefitted from partnerships between universities and industry.
The New Zealand Government awarded the University of Canterbury $9.7 million for the development of NZi3 through its Partnerships for Excellence programme, on the proviso that it secured matching funding from the private sector. NZi3 Director Dr Darin Graham said the Institute, with its location on the edge of the University of Canterbury campus and its external focus, would allow greater interaction between researchers and industry.
Tait Electronics Managing Director, Michael Chick, spoke on behalf of the Institute's founding partners. He paid tribute to his company's founder the late Sir Angus Tait who, he said, was a "powerful mover in the establishment of the Institute". "In no small part we are here today as a result of Angus's tenacity, vision, commitment and determination. And of course, like the other founding partners from industry, because Tait was prepared to put its money where its mouth was."
The opening coincided with the announcement that the New Zealand Green Building Council had given the new purpose-built facility a five-star green rating. The NZi3 building is the first educational building in New Zealand to be awarded a 5-star rating.
Among the researchers based at NZi3 is PhD student John Stowers who is working on the development of vision for the control and navigation of unpiloted aerial vehicles.
MANUKA HONEY: IMPORTANT CONDITIONS IDENTIFIED
Power of manuka honey
Research identifies conditions important for antimicrobial properties
Auckland, New Zealand. 4th May 2009 Research has identified what makes manuka honey good for treating and preventing bacterial infections.
Studies at Plant & Food Research have shown that manuka honey, a high value honey made by bees who feed predominantly from flowers of the tea tree bush, has a specific mixture of compounds which results in its antimicrobial properties. The research also showed that the activity of this antimicrobial mixture, which stops bacteria from growing and halts the development of infection, depends on the oxygen levels and acidity of its surroundings.
The research, partly funded by the Foundation of Research Science and Technology, is being conducted with industry partner Comvita, who are investigating the use of manuka honey as a natural ingredient for foods with added health benefits.
In addition, trials tested the safety of manuka honey in humans, and it was shown to have no deleterious effects.
“Manuka honey is known to be an effective antimicrobial, and this research is aiming to understand what controls these properties and how they could be utilised in foods,” says scientist Douglas Rosendale. “For example, we’ve shown that, when treating stomach bacterial infection, the antimicrobial activity of the honey does not affect the natural balance in the gut. We also know that the antimicrobial compounds are mostly active under certain environmental conditions, so we can assume that eating natural manuka honey will likely be effective in controlling bacterial infection in the stomach, but will probably show less activity in the lower gut where concentrations will be lower and there is less oxygen."
“Comvita products provide added health benefits derived from New Zealand’s natural fauna,” says Ralf Schlothauer, Comvita’s General Manager Technical. “By understanding the properties and safety of substances like manuka honey, known to have antimicrobial qualities, we can responsibly harness the power of nature and develop products that will enable people to live healthier lives.”
Plant & Food Research and Comvita are also investigating properties of manuka honey which may be useful in wound healing.
lant & Food Research and Comvita are also investigating properties of manuka honey which may be useful in wound healing.
QUALITY OF LIVING GLOBAL CITY RANKINGS 2009
 Mercer survey
Auckland (4) retains its position as the highest ranking city for quality of living in the region. Sydney follows at 10 and Wellington in New Zealand at 12. While the majority of the region’s cities retain a similar ranking to last year, Singapore (26) is the region’s highest riser, up six places since 2008. The city has gained importance as a financial centre and offers a wide range of international and private schools to cater to its expatriate community. Beijing has also moved three places in the ranking, up from 116 to 113, mainly due to improvements in public transport facilities from the Olympic Games last August.
Dropping down in the rankings, mainly due to a decline in stability and security are Bangkok (from 109 in 2008 to 120) and Mumbai (from 142 to 148). Thailand’s political turmoil continued throughout 2008 and 2009 with frequent and violent demonstrations and rallies taking place in Bangkok. Terrorist attacks in Mumbai have led to the city’s decline in quality of living for expatriates. Dhaka in Bangladesh holds the lowest ranking in the region at 205.
Mr Parakatil commented: “As a region, Asia Pacific is highly diverse. Recent political unrest and terrorist attacks in some cities in the region have negatively impacted the quality of living there. In addition to providing an appropriate hardship allowance, companies need to make sure they review their expatriate strategies by implementing specific safety measures such as ensuring their expatriates’ accommodation is under surveillance and providing effective channels of communication should evacuation be necessary.”
For city infrastructure, Singapore has the highest score world-wide (109.1). The city boasts an airport with excellent facilities and connections, as well as an efficient and extensive public transport network. Other high rankers in the region include Hong Kong (8), Sydney (11) and Tokyo (12). Dhaka ranks lowest in the region at 197.
http://www.mercer.com/qualityoflivingpr
SPECIAL MID YEAR DEAL FOR NEW ZEALAND THAI CHAMBER OF COMMERCE MEMBERSHIP:
 New members joining from 1st June 2009, will have their membership extended out to 31st August 2010, for the same price as an annual membership - Baht 4,500.
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