At the Creative HQ graduation, I was presented with Creative HQ Community award by my friend and fellow entrepreneur Rod Drury. The award was in recognition of my contribution of Wellington entrepreneurial community and development of the Summer of Code programme.

I want to say thanks for the award on behalf of myself and rest of the team how helped make Summer of Code. We had a lot of people help with Summer of Code, my thanks especially goes to …

Peter Torr Smith, who stepped in and got things done things done when I had to do real work. Sarah Wattie - Summer of Code organiser extraordinaire, who ran everything smoothly. The team at Creative HQ and PWB, who on hearing about the Summer of Code, got behind the programme and said yes to our crazy ideas. And finally, Joseph Stuart and his team at FRST. Without Joseph and the support of FRST, Summer of Code never would have happened. Thanks Joseph, for all your support and help to make Summer of Code a reality.

Honestly, the Summer of Code was a blast. It was a lot fun and its been great to have so many people involved. Summer of Code in essense is about people ie How we get smart students into smart companies!


For those of you that don’t know what happened on last years Summer of Code, here’s a run down.

Summer of Code Key numbers:

· 44 students applied (36 from Victoria University, 8 from Massey University)

· 32 students were tested across software development fundamentals, web development and database skills

· 19 students were interviewed

· 14 students hired by 6 companies

· 2 students exited the programme to take full time jobs

· 3 students are now working full time for their companies, 6 students are now working part time for their companies.

We ran seminars to increase our students knowledge from some of the best mind’s in the world.

• Rod Drury of Xero on “Software Development in NZ” and Nat Torkington of O’Reilly on “Start-up culture”
• Microsoft presentation of Xpressions platform
• Hayden Vink of Hansel on “Interaction design” and Sam Ng on “Usability”
• Paul Gold of Trade Me on “Running High volume databases”
• Milton Ngan of Weta Digital on “Distributed systems”
• Stephen Cheng of Innaworks on “Mobile phone Development”
• Rowan Simpson of Trade Me on “What I learnt from Trade Me”
• Tomek Piatek of ProjectX on “Code Management”
• Michael Koziarski, Rails guru on “Ruby on Rails”
• Mark Robotham from Creative HQ on “Incubators”
• John Clegg of ProjectX on “Writing better resumes”
• Chris Di Bona of Google on “Open Source and Google”

Here’s some quotes from CEO’s of the companies involved.

“Summer of Code’s been a huge success, look forward to more of the same next year, this is set to become a key recruitment channel for us, and I’m certain that this is raising the bar on young IT talent in NZ and providing clear incentives for that talent to stay in Wellington and New Zealand and make it happen.” - Tim Norton, CEO of PlanHQ

“We had two awesome students working with us over the summer break, and I’m proud to say I think we gave them a good dunking in the deep-end of the life of a web 2.0 start-up (the rough and the green!). They formed a core part of our team over for 3 months and brought a lot of energy, enthusiasm, insight, and innovation with them.”

– Peter Torr Smith, CEO of Hirethings.com

“Absolutely fantastic effort all round. I honestly think it was one of the most impressive efforts toward massive productivity I have ever had the personal pleasure to witness being coordinated.”

- Andrew Mayfield, CEO of Spikefin

“When you put smart students and smart companies together, amazing things happen. It’s been a fantastic experience to see the students develop and the companies prosper during the Summer of Code. All of the companies involved have benefited tremendously by the input of their students.”

- John Clegg, CEO of ProjectX

“The Creative HQ Summer of Code was a fantastic success for SilverStripe. We found two excellent students, Andrew O’Neil and Jeremy Shipman, who fitted naturally into our working environment. Their skilled contributions (programming, testing and documentation ) have noticeably improved our CMS product and adoption by our open source community. They are now working with us through their University year, and based on this success, we look forward to supporting Summer of
Code next year.” — Sigurd Magnusson, SilverStripe.

Thanks everyone, and one last plug for Summer of Code 2.0 from Rowan Simpson

“If you’re a smart Comp. Sci. student you should be all over Summer of Code 2.0!”

More info on www.summerofcode.co.nz

We’d like to welcome Paul Gold, who has joined ProjectX as part-time CTO.

Paul has recently began consulting after finishing at Trade Me as their resident database and infrastructure guru. Paul also was a part of last year’s summer of code.

Paul, will post more about himself shortly.

I am giving an encore of my resume seminar at Victoria University MSCS this Tuesday (the 29th of May) in Cotton 249 at 11am

If you’re a student and looking to improve your CV then come along and get a few tips!!

Yesterday was a blur of cardboard boxes, packing tape and miles of cable, as we moved offices from Creative HQ at 25a Marion St to Agriculture House. Despite the rather bucolic name, it’s actually right in the middle of the suity end of town, with the entrance at 12 Johnston St just around the corner from Featherston St.

We’re still in the process of getting everything unpacked and back to normal (and sorting out minor things like phones), but we’ll update our website and ZoomIn pages very soon with our new details.

In probably the most bizarre news of the weekend, the register reports that MC Hammer has been selected to be on an expert panel for a tech start-up event.

Next we’ll be seeing Vanilla Ice as an interaction designer and Milli Vanilli as communication specialists !

Wellington-based international on-line mapping company ProjectX Technology
(www.projectx.co.nz) has been recognised for its bold ambition, technological
success and contribution to the community by being selected as one of four
finalists in the Cyber Gold category at this year’s Wellington Gold Awards.

Founder and CEO John Clegg say ProjectX is thrilled to be recognised in this way.

“We are proud to have been recognised and placed amongst Wellington region’s
best and brightest. To be one of four finalists is a huge boost for us as a young
start-up company and it’s a great incentive for us to do even greater things. Next
year we’re going for gold.”

The company, which is part of Wellington business incubator CreativeHQ, has
fingers in several pies. It specialises in developing online mapping tools for the
everyday person in the street.

Their flagship product is the free map website - zoomin.co.nz – which is about more
than just finding something on a map. Users can view or add photos and video,
read other people’s comments and reviews and add information of their own.

The company also created TradeMe’s Smaps product, which became the most
used mapping site in New Zealand within just three weeks of being launched.

ProjectX has already won two TUANZ awards (Telecommunications Users
Association of New Zealand) for craft and inspiration in 2006.