There seems to be some mis-understanding about Creative HQ offers the residents.

Here are 10 things about Creative HQ from a resident’s prespective.

Creative HQ (CHQ) provides:

1. Subsidised Office space – ie. Internet, Fax, phone systems, desks etc.
2. Discounted rates for key services – Accountants, Lawyers, Employment laywer, business coaches, and media training etc.
3. Mentoring – Every company has a couple of mentors who work with the companies every month to help them accelerator their growth. They get at least 3 hours of mentoring time every month for free. The list of mentor includes previous CEO’s of EDS and IBM etc. They have a wealth of experience their skills covers a wide range of knowledge.
4. Network Opporunities – CHQ has plenty of functions. There is a lot of cross pollination between various business people, groups and associations in Wellington.
5. Access to VC funds – We have access to VC funding networks. Most companies at Creative HQ are at a pre-VC stage.
6. Knowledge share –
   * We have monthly seminars on a variety of topics eg. Funding, employment law, running accounts, tax, HR, company structure.
   * Learning from other companies inside the incubator about the in’s and out’s of running a start-up company.
7. Colloboration – Many companies work together on projects. Eg. LetUseIt and ProjectX are running the CreativeHQ “Summer of Code” for benefit of CHQ, residents and CHQ Alumni. I have met several CEO’s that I am sure that I will together on future ideas.
8. Free stuff – We get the opportunities to participate in seminars and training that benefit the CEO, and the companies involved.
9. Kudos – Getting into CHQ requires a bit of effort that prove the viability of the business idea and the level of commitment of the people. This helps open doors for those companies as they have been “qualified” by CHQ. I can personally say this kudos has helped us with PR and our grant applications.
10. Social side – Its great to have a support network of people who understand the trials and tribulations of running a company. We have a tight knit bunch of companies in here. We have a great time in our journey together in creating our businesses. ( Out of the companies that have graduated over the last 2 years, over 6 of companies that have moved into new premises together)

The focus of Creative HQ is to help people take a smart idea and turn into reality.

IMHO I would thoroughly recommend that any person who has an idea, to come and talk to the people at Creative HQ or (other incubators in NZ). For one, its good practice to have smart people asking the right questions about your business ideas.

In our case, we had difficultly explaining our idea, and this process really helped us to define our pitch.

Idealog’s article is now online. ProjectX features in the section “
Mash it Up”.

And here’s the link to the full article on Silcion Welly

Just read that IE 7.0 is out… (I’m not going to switch over until they sort out running multiple browser versions.)

I am interested to see how long it takes before IE 7.0 overtakes IE6.0’s market share. This will be interesting to see if IE 7.0 follows the typical Technology adoptation curve. (ie. Innovators / Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards).

Looking at web browser stats on ZoomIn tonight, IE 7.0 is definitely in the early adopter phase on ZoomIn. And Firefox 2.x is even further behind.

Anyone want to place some some bets on when IE 7.0 will pass IE 6.0 ?

ProjectX are in the news again. We have just featured in an article in this month’s Idealog. The article is profiling on how Wellington is helping to make the web cool again in New Zealand. Trade Me, SMH aka. Starnow and ProjectX are highlighted as some of the Wellington companies leading the new wave. The article also offers some sage commentary from Web 2.0 guru Richard McManus and O’Reilly veteran Nat Torkington.

Wellington is hotting up with start-up fever. I know of 4-5 startups that are currently in the pipeline. With Weta now scaling up in terms of people and projects (more movies, animation and games) , Wellington is a buzz with all the activity. There are going to be some good opportunities for skilled people to work on some kick ass projects.

I’ll post a link to the article once its live online.

Working for a startup is hard. You never know what’s coming around the corner. Trying to predict what will happen next is nearly impossible. It’s very easy to get caught up in this never ending simulation of “what if” scenarios. At the end of the day you find that none of those scenarios actually happened and that you ended up doing something completely unforseen.

Well, you can strategise, plan for every eventuality and worry all you want. Nothing good will come out of it because by the time you achieve your goals (if you don’t go mad first) you will be so tired (and possibly mad) that you won’t be able to enjoy it.

So what’s the answer? The answer is very simple. Plan but don’t let your plans fix your direction. Acknowledge life’s inevitable obstacles but don’t be discouraged by them. Believe in your idea but stay open to changing it. Oh, and every now and then sleep in and be late for work. It’s good for your brain and your soul.

You won’t have any less work to do if you choose to follow these deceptively simple rules but you will be more relaxed, happier and productive. And when you finally reach your destination you will be able to look back and smile as you remember your hard but pleasant journey.

Uses the Sieve of Eratosthenes technique, and the intruiging inject() method.
This returns an array of all the primes between 2 and 1000 inclusive.

(2..1000).inject((2..1000).to_a) {|res, i| res.select{|n|n==i||n%i!=0} }

As some of you may have heard the Wellington Ruby on Rails developers community (WellRailed) is organising a seminar on Ruby on Rails for complete beginners. This doesn’t mean that only beginners should come though. Everyone is welcome as you all have something to contribute, be it a simple question or an insightful answer. The seminar is jointly organised by Tomek Piatek, Tim Haines and Nahum Wild.

What: Getting started with Ruby on Rails – a community based approach
When: 6:30pm, Tuesday, 31st October 2006
Where: CreativeHQ, 25a Marion Street, Te Aro, Wellington (behind Resene Paint)
Map: http://www.zoomin.co.nz/nz/wellington/wellington+central/marion+street/25/
Presented by: Nahum Wild
Intended audience: Anyone interested in Ruby on Rails.
Prerequisites: Interest in Ruby on Rails. Knowledge of programming in any language will be useful during the live demo.
Refreshments: Hell pizza
Cost: Free. It’s a community event. It is our turn to give back.

The format will be as follows:

• Arrive between 6:30 and 7pm.
• Start at 7pm: Welcome and introduction
• Quick overview of Ruby on Rails and its main underlying design pattern: Model-View-Controller
• An end to end demonstration of how to build a simple blog application in Rails.
• Q&A time.

A traditional computer science refreshment consisting of pizza will be served during the Q&A session by our sponsors ProjectX Technology. Also, the kind folks at The Pragmatic Programmers publishing company have donated a copy of “Agile Web Development with Rails” which will go into a draw on the night. In the spirit of honouring those who taught us and helping those who come after us anyone with more than a year of Rails development experience is not eligible for this prize as you won’t need it. If you are an expert you won’t miss out though as all WellRailed members are now eligible for a 30% discount off all O’Rielly books. Come to the seminar to find out how.

This will be a popular event (how could it not be with all that pizza). Due to the limited size of the venue we can only accommodate 30 people. Please register today by sending an email to tomek.piatek@gmail.com. We will send a notification to the list to let you know how many places remain.

Please help us promote this event by telling your friends about it.

About WellRailed

We are group of software developers based in and around Wellington. We share a common passion for technology which can make our lives easier and we want to share our knowledge with other, like-minded people. We have an active mailing list. Everyone is always welcome to subscribe to the list: http://groups.google.com/group/WellRailed. Once you have subscribed you can send your posts to WellRailed@googlegroups.com . You can also access and search through the list archive on the group page http://groups.google.com/group/WellRailed.