31 May
Posted by jessie.e.mckay
Photo by Alex Lovell-Smith
The Top 40 Awards evening was held last night in the beautiful Sargood Centre at Logan Park. The sweet sounds of The Mentalist Collective, the stunning art works by the Otago Polytechnic P Lab (print lab), delicious catering by Otago Polytechnic and some inspiring speeches by Henk Roodt (Audacious Entrepreneur in Residence), Louis Brown (Cultivate) and Audacious 2012 winner Ryan Everton (Globelet) all contributed to making the night a real success. Thank you to our fantastic sponsors Upstart, WHK, DCC, Cultivate, Otago University Business School and Otago Polytechnic. Thank you also to our five talented judges, Paula Hellyer (Glow), Jason Leong (Pocketsmith), David Frame (ANZ), Alan Bauchop (ADInstruments) and Louis Brown (Cultivate) for all your hard work. And of course, a huge thank you to all of this year’s Audacious entrants. If you didn’t make it into the Top 40, please do not be discouraged. We are still here to help all students get their businesses off the ground, so continue to be in touch, come and visit us at 63 Clyde st and get some further advice on your business.
Finally, in no particular order, the top 40…
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31 – May – 2013 |
10 Oct
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
The final, penultimate Audacious event of 2012! The Audacious Awards Ceremony…
This evening was about so much more than awarding a few prizes to the winners of this year’s challenge. It was a celebration – of creativity, of taking risks, of people following their passions. From Audacious starters, to young entrepreneurs and established business-people in Dunedin, this evening was a gathering of this community to celebrate entrepreneurship.
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10 – Oct – 2012 |
09 Oct
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
I had the opportunity recently to present a course on writing and presenting technical proposals and reports in Zimbabwe.
Even as I was flying into Victoria Falls in the far north of Zimbabwe I was not sure exactly where I was supposed to present the course. On arrival I was met by a friendly driver from ZPC (Joseph) who told me that we still had to drive about 80 km south to the town of Hwange. This area is rich in coal and obviously the ideal place to set up a power station. And what a fascinating place!
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09 – Oct – 2012 |
12 Sep
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Awesome feat by the ever enterprising David Booth and Harry Uffindell! The two have entered their start-up Meatmail in Audacious this year, selling and distributing meat-packs from the Mad Butcher to students at Otago. They currently have over 80 clients and are planning to expand big time. You can catch the piece at this link.
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12 – Sep – 2012 |
10 Sep
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
We manufacture the future every day through every action we take or fail to take. The faster we act, the faster the future closes in on us. Work harder, work smarter, work more efficiently – these are the rallying calls to the war on the complexities we face. But some of these complexities exist precisely as a result of our attempts to combat them. Let me explain.
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10 – Sep – 2012 |
06 Sep
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
“I looked for support from the older women I assumed were mentors at my work, but I never got any. In the end, I realized that they did not have my back when I needed them most. It made me feel like I hadn’t been valued at all there, despite working hard and doing my job well.”
“My friend’s daughter killed herself last year. She was 14. They’d moved. She’d started a new school. She was bullied. She never told anyone about it. She assumed she was alone and everything was hopeless.”
“In my office, women can be really judgemental. I eat lunch on my own sometimes just to avoid things.”
“Tell me more. What are your aims?”
Some weeks ago, I wrote a post telling how I found my team. The above quotes are just some of the things strangers have been saying to me when I’ve taken the opportunity to talk about Throw Like a Girl.
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06 – Sep – 2012 |
05 Sep
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
So we had the Audacious 60 second pitches a few weeks ago, the first part of the competition for second semester. The venue at the Apartment was excellent and it was great to see all the faces behind the ideas, to experience their personalities and their unique perspectives on why they’re doing this and what they’re passionate about. And SO much variety – from showing us the products themselves, to a theatrical performance (Black Cat Early Learning) to Annabelle Molloy singing along to the Ghostbuster’s theme song.
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05 – Sep – 2012 |
04 Sep
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
The following video features Jarod Chisholm of Audacious sponsor WHK and 2012 Audacious judge, as well as Andrew Lloyd of the National Bank. For someone who hasn’t actually started a business and doesn’t need to write a business plan, I found this remarkably helpful.
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04 – Sep – 2012 |
01 Sep
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Our decisions and actions are a function of how we experience the world around us. Seeing the world differently takes effort. You have to let go of pre-conceived ideas, you have to question your firmly held beliefs and you have to make a call on what has to be untouchable. Often this last directive is missed, and people end up being a bad copy of something and nothing noticeable. Simply put: use new glasses and new ears and remain true to yourself.
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01 – Sep – 2012 |
27 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
I am and always have been a huge fan of children’s books. I’ve always loved looking at the shelves of these colourful, interesting books in stores and libraries and flipping through the beautiful illustrations and the wonderfully simple and funny stories. The idea of digitalising these books has never appealed to me at all. It feels like something really special is lost in this process. There is nothing like a parent and child flicking through the pages of their favourite book together and the wear and tear that goes along with that. The act of a parent reading a story to a child is also so important and cannot be replaced through digitalising a voiceover onto a digital book. However, lately I have been looking deeper into digital books and discovered that there is a lot more to them than I originally thought. It is not just a matter of making a static PDF. It is really about creating an extension of the book: becoming interactive and enhancing the child’s reading experience.
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27 – Aug – 2012 |
22 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Image by Nikita Brown
If you ask my good friend and fellow entrepreneur, Jack Yan, what he does, he has difficulty giving a straight answer – perhaps because he does so many things. Jack will tell you that his answer depends upon the audience.
“If it’s a marketing audience, I say I’m a brand consultant and a think-tank Director. If it’s people in Graphic Design, I tell them I designed typefaces. To others I say I’m a Magazine Publisher. But then I do work in Academia, I’ve authored and co-authored books, I work as a Business Mentor, I ran for Mayor in 2010, and I serve on a few boards, but that’s the New Zealand story! Four million people and you do everything!”
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22 – Aug – 2012 |
19 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting piece in the New Yorker on Steve Jobs[1]. In the article he calls him a “tweaker”, explaining that Steve was the sort of person who excelled at refining the great inventions of his time. Is tweaking innovation? Was Steve an innovator?
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19 – Aug – 2012 |
16 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Everyone goes through low periods. And when you’re trying to start a business, the highs and lows can be particularly pronounced. There is obviously more risk in starting up, more doubt and fear. When you’re trying to strike out into the universe and taking all the responsibility for your venture, it can be scary. Lows are likely inevitable.
A good first step (related to me by Mary Lemmer, one of the Entrepreneur-in-Residence applicants for this year) is to ask oneself the question, what is this low trying to teach me? You feel this way for a reason. Identify it. Learn from it. Sometimes you will just have to ride a low through – perhaps it’s not immediately obvious what the problem is or how to fix it. This is possibly the most frustrating aspect of the low, but there are still mechanisms for dealing with it.
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16 – Aug – 2012 |
13 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Louis Brown
t was already going to be a tight squeeze to meet Louis at our planned rendezvous time of 3 P.M, and when he texted me around noon asking to move it to 2 P.M I cringed, but agreed. There is something honest and delicate in his nature that one simply can’t refuse. I was ten minutes late. It was a rainy Wednesday afternoon and we met, at Louis’ suggestion, in the Good Earth Café by the University.
Nothing in his boyish demeanour or casual appearance intimates that Louis Brown, 28, is the founder and CEO of independent community development agency, Social Innovation. Alongside the University of Christchurch’s student army, Social Innovation helped organize and mobilize over 26,000 volunteers over six weeks in Christchurch’s February 22, 2011 earthquake. Several thousands of the people that most of NZ watched volunteering their time and energy on TV every night over that tragic period were brought together, unified and organized, by Louis Brown’s Social Innovation.
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13 – Aug – 2012 |
12 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Slowly but surely the due date for your ANZ business plans is coming up (7th of September) – so this is a short spiel about some of things you might like to consider whilst working on this document. Any executable plan has well-defined goals. It is clear, concise, and achievable and alerts one to the risks involved. It is written in crisp language and it is internally consistent, meaning that all planned actions work together in a coherent manner to achieve the goals you want to achieve.
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12 – Aug – 2012 |
09 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
This is Helen Keller – otherwise known to me as the woman I did my very first book report on way back in second grade. I say “I”, but I really mean “my mother and I”. My mother ordered me her biography from the Scholastic books catalogue and read it with me over and over again, helping me to write in perfect print on the lined pages of my report and painstakingly drawing the illustrations which I would colour in. I was very proud of that book report, something that my mother and I worked on together. I remain so to this day.
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09 – Aug – 2012 |
06 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
There are many reasons why you might want to start a company. People talk a lot about “push and pull” factors. Push factors being anything that forces you to start up (like being fired from a previous job) and pull factors (like the desire to earn more than you are currently being paid). I want to talk about two primary pull factors of entrepreneurship; the desire to do your own thing and the desire to make as much money as possible.
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06 – Aug – 2012 |
03 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
So where were we… right, okay so you have an idea for a business, a burning little nucleus of uncertain fate smoldering away in the back of your mind. Only, it’s fate is certain if you do nothing about it, CERTAIN DEATH; and certain regret, and the “woulda, shoulda, couldas” that inevitably come months, years later when you see that very same idea being taken to the bank by some smarmy prick who “stole your idea.”
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03 – Aug – 2012 |
02 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
If following your bliss was easy, everyone would be doing it. At least that is what I keep telling myself while I try to follow mine. For me this includes writing Sci-Fi/Fantasy, going back to University to study German and bass guitar, and last but not least, starting Throw Like a Girl. None of these endeavours is a sure-fire way of making me enough money to support myself, let alone making a fortune, but I am pursuing them anyway. Why? Because life is short and by taking the different path, you could find yourself doing things you never imagined.
How did I decide to finally go for it? A few years ago, I almost drowned. So cliché. There I was, in my wetsuit with my boogie board, swept far out by a riptide, my lead tangled under my leg, being pummelled by big wave after big wave. The first thought that came to my head (after *Ohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrap* and after I quit screaming for help when I realized everyone was too far away) was, “Nooooo! I am not ending like this! I haven’t done anything yet!”
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02 – Aug – 2012 |
01 Aug
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Last week we had the official launch of the 63 Clyde St space and also introduced the new Entrepreneurs in Residence. The house was packed and it was great to have a sense of the different individuals and institutions that surround this program.
I talked about my conversation with Logan Elliot of Highly Flammable earlier that morning, who emphasized the importance of opening your idea up to the world and talking to as many people as possible as well as “bringing people together and creating an environment.”
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01 – Aug – 2012 |
30 Jul
Posted by jessie.e.mckay
What is design? Having just completed a design degree and now working as a designer, this is a question I get a lot. I am constantly attempting to explain to people what it is that I actually do and was being taught for the last four years. Often the immediate assumption is that I mean fashion design, or ‘posters and stuff’. One of my favourite parts of design is graphic design, so I do in fact have a lot to do with ‘posters and stuff’. But what people are often unaware of is that design has a lot more depth to it than just ‘prettifying’ things.
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30 – Jul – 2012 |
27 Jul
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
I slid my seat all the way forward and hunched over the steering wheel screaming wildly at Carlos to throw himself onto the dashboard, “THE FRONT WHEELS ARE LIFTING OFF THE FUCKING ROAD! I CAN’T STEER CARLOS! GET FORWARD, GET FORWARD! The $200,000 uninsured sail that was bricked up in the back of my 1989 Hilux had slid too far back over the rear axle on the Auckland’s North Western motorway and we’d begun to swerve wildly from lane to lane, sending cars screeching out of the way and slamming on their brakes in a slew of burning rubber and expletives. We somehow made it to the bus-lane and crawled slowly along back roads the rest of the way to Superior Sail Wash with poor Carlos acting as a human counterbalance, hanging onto the bonnet for dear life. But so what? This was business.
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27 – Jul – 2012 |
25 Jul
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
When you have an idea that you are enthusiastic about, the most natural thing is to want share it with other people. Once you do that, you get a better idea of whether any of these people might also be excited by it. And, if they are, perhaps they want to help you with it. One of the most important components of starting a business is to have the right team behind you. You can’t do it alone. You can try, but it will be a lot of work and, frankly, being able to bounce ideas and plans off of another person who is like-minded enough but who also have their own unique perspective on things is, in my view, invaluable to the long-term sustainability of your project.
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25 – Jul – 2012 |
20 Jul
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
A couple of years ago, a movie critic named Rodger Ebert wrote an article about why he thought that games could never be art. It sparked outrage from the gaming community, orders of magnitude larger than what he expected. As a result, he ended up conceding that games could in fact, be art.
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20 – Jul – 2012 |
19 Jul
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
It was 3am and I had to be in the city for my ‘real job’ in three hours and thirty minutes. I gulped back the last of my cold coffee and pulled the homemade respirator over my face. The filters were long dead but I figured it was better than nothing. My arms shook as I lifted the 30-liter drum of isopropanol up onto the makeshift workbench and began to siphon the clear liquid off into the pressure sprayer which was already half filled with dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride. As I strapped the pressure sprayer to my back my knees buckled briefly from the fumes as I looked down the 50 meter luff of the spectra-carbon super-yacht sail I had to saturate in the mold killing solution before daylight. I pushed play on my Sony Beat-Master tape deck and Bad Moon Rising began booming through the dilapidated West Auckland warehouse as I cranked the pressure sprayer up to max, pulled my protective goggles down and with a flick of my gloved hand, let the poison fly.
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19 – Jul – 2012 |
17 Jul
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
The genesis of a Throw Like a Girl did not simply come about at 3am one September night in 2011. When forced to think about it while answering questions for the first press interview I’ve ever done about TLG, I concluded that it really began when I was nine years old.
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17 – Jul – 2012 |
17 Jul
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
So we had a list of the top 40 in the blog last semester but some people felt they’d like to get a bit more of an insight into the ideas, rather than just the name of the start-up in question.
What I love about any one of these ideas is that a sentence about the start-up, or even just the name of it, can sound incredibly simple, banal even. But once you start explicating them – the values, the underlying motivations, the need that is being met – any start-up becomes immediately more fascinating. Especially once you meet the person or people behind it.
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17 – Jul – 2012 |
16 Jul
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
I think a lot of us experience this anxiety surrounding the end of our University careers and what we should become. All these titles – ‘designer’, ‘banker’, ‘director’, ‘writer’, ‘artist’, ‘entrepreneur’. I’m beginning to wonder whether we’re approaching it in the wrong way. We’re thinking in boxes. University shouldn’t just endow you with some meaningless badge – a degree and a label. It should be about giving you skills. Whether that’s through your degree/s, your extra-curriculars or the jobs you acquire along the way. Once you leave maybe finding an ‘occupation’ isn’t the point, rather it’s looking for opportunities which fit with the abilities you’ve developed. So long as these prospects involve a vision, passion, change, and doing what you love, the title and even the exact area are kind of irrelevant. It’s a more open and adaptable approach in this dynamic, ever-changing world we live in.
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16 – Jul – 2012 |
06 Jun
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
An AMAZE awards event in the beautiful and historic OCTA building last week. Mojaz were schmanging, the art work by Jon Thom was beautiful, some great speeches, our lovely sponsors and of course, the entrants for Audacious. I’ll stress again – you guys are what make Audacious. This program is nothing without your motivation and passion, and that’s really what it’s all about. So if you’re not in this list, don’t fret. We’re not exactly sure what Audacious is going to look like next semester, but we’re sure that anyone wanting to start up will be able to be a part of it. Our space is your space, our resources your resources and there’ll also be a load of rad events next semester to connect you with others and facilitate motivation, advice-giving and skills-transferring. So let’s get on it!
Finally, in no particular order, the top 40…
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06 – Jun – 2012 |
23 May
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
“THE EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIAL GROWTH IMPERATIVE”
I wrote about the difference between ‘sustainability’ and ‘thriving’ in a previous blog post. Now, this transition to thriving involves an additional challenge to what Stefan Collini writes has now become a self-evident and indisputable truth in our society; economic growth. Collini writes,
“Since perhaps the 1970s, certainly the 1980s, official discourse has become increasingly colonised by an economistic idiom, which is derived not strictly from economic theory proper, but rather from the language of management schools, business consultants and financial journalism… society has been subject to a deliberate campaign, initiated in free-market think tanks in the 1960s and 1970s and pushed strongly by business leaders and right-wing commentators ever since, to elevate the status of business and commerce and to make ‘contributing to economic growth’ the overriding goal of a whole swathe of social, cultural and intellectual activities which had previously been understood and valued in other terms.”[1]
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23 – May – 2012 |
20 May
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Found this whilst re-igniting my long dormant Calvin & Hobbes childhood obsession. It’s still gold.
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20 – May – 2012 |
19 May
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Such is the phrase whispered by the Bokonists in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, “whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.” I quite like this articulation.
Yet of course, most of us do not conceptualise the word ‘busy’ as connoting mystery, complexity, the convoluted rhythms of our lives. ‘Busy’ is… chaotic, frantic, harried, full. It’s pejorative. And it’s typically our 21st century response to the question, ‘how are you?’
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19 – May – 2012 |
17 May
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
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17 – May – 2012 |
15 May
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Yeah, we look like dorks, but the ODT actually did some pretty fine reporting on Audacious for 2012. Read on!
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15 – May – 2012 |
08 May
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
People don’t typically conceive of starting up as a craft or Art. Writing, yes. Design, yup. Fine Arts, of course. But starting a business is in the realms of dry, dull management. And true, starting up does involve some grind work. Like just about anything. But it also provides you with an autonomy you often can’t get through being an employee, as well as eventually allowing you to reap the benefits of the enterprise without having to work at all (assuming your business reaches that stage). Both of which can be extremely conducive to providing you with the time/resources to focus on your craft/Art.
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08 – May – 2012 |
07 May
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
So Andrew Wallace spoke for us at The Church last week about getting creative. Here’s some commentary.
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07 – May – 2012 |
01 May
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
At the Audacious business competition launch on Tuesday, everyone agreed – Dunedin needs more businesses if we want to keep young, talented graduates from flying off to brighter prospects in Wellington, Auckland, or overseas. The University of Otago is aware of the problem, and has thrown its weight behind the Centre for Innovation, as well as Dunedin’s three contrasting (but not competing) business incubators, each of which has a unique way of fostering new businesses. Critic attended the Audacious launch and shared a wasabi vodka shot with Dunedin’s entrepreneurial hotshots.
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01 – May – 2012 |
30 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
At the launch event we featured a number of speakers who are heavy on sales. Scott Cardwell (pictured above) naturally placed a lot of emphasis on this in his role as the Marketing Manager for Language Perfect. So too, Julian Van Mellearts and Sheryl McPhearson essentially sell products in their wasabi vodka spirit and clothing boutique, respectively. There is ostensibly a lot of ‘flashiness’ and marketing inherent in these start-ups which begs the question, is there a place for longer-term start-ups in Audacious?
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30 – Apr – 2012 |
29 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
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29 – Apr – 2012 |
25 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
So we had our kick-off on Tuesday night! Here’s some commentary…
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25 – Apr – 2012 |
23 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
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23 – Apr – 2012 |
22 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
Paul Graham writes on Y Combinator about “how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are.” When you hit a big idea, or in fact try to achieve anything of substance whatsoever, the elements of fear and doubt can be overwhelming. We can have these big visions for ourselves – but will we be able to follow through? So too, the bigger the vision, the more impossible it feels. We have the tendency to get lost in our own heads, in our fear of failure and loss of reputation.
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22 – Apr – 2012 |
21 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
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21 – Apr – 2012 |
19 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
There’s something that’s always appealed to me about Karl Largerfeld. He’s a workaholic, going so far as to practice the Uberman sleep schedule (something to which I’ve always aspired but never quite gotten around to… watch this space). He’s obsessed with creativity and learning, he wants to know everything. And he’s intelligent and immensely successful. When I listen to him speak I get the sense of an individual on the edge of existence; the razor sharp point of imagination and experience.
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19 – Apr – 2012 |
16 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
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16 – Apr – 2012 |
16 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
There are a lot of words associated with starting up. But a lot of them aren’t good words. ‘Entrepreneurship’, for example, is a word I dislike. Its associations have been pretty self-evident i.e. white, business suit-wearing, psychotic, risk-prone male, in it for the money, willing to pillage the environment and negligent at best as to who is effected in the process. To a lesser extent we also connect the word with the kind of overly simplistic albeit inspirational rhetoric of Steve Jobs et al; ‘you can change the world, too’ (sub-text: so long as you use child-labour and authoritarian tactics to get there).
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16 – Apr – 2012 |
15 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
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15 – Apr – 2012 |
14 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
ON SUSTAINABILITY (UGH)
I know. You don’t want to hear the word ‘sustainability’ ever again. But bear with me. Let’s start with an ostensibly basic question, what does the word actually mean? And, by implication, how are we to conceive of the environment? It has, of course, been a topic of much conversation in recent years. Think the scare tactics of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, The Age of Stupid and even Earth. Though these films may relate the positive aspects or opportunities inherent in our current environmental crisis, more often than not these are an add-on. They come at the end of the production, as if the producers didn’t know the simple psychological fact that it’s what you begin with that really sticks with the viewer. And this kind of pessimistic beginning only serves to exacerbate the individual’s sense of disempowerment. But even aside from this tactical blunder, the films fail in varying degrees to relate the possibility and opportunity inherent in our modern-day environmental ‘catastrophes’. The problem is we’re still conceptualizing sustainability as involving hardship and sacrifice when it could in fact lead to a greater increase in our quality of life.
The most basic definition of sustainability is that we use our resources in such a way that they’ll be able to continue to provide for future generations. But the term has, however, become overused and co-opted to the extent that it is now essentially meaningless. When a company like BP (read: Gulf of Mexico oil spill) is able to call themselves ‘sustainable’ you know the show is over.
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14 – Apr – 2012 |
13 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
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13 – Apr – 2012 |
09 Apr
Posted by kari.petroschmidt
What is Audacious? Well, I’ll start by giving you the pared back, simplified version. It’s essentially a competition which aims to facilitate Otago students starting businesses. We begin with round one in semester one, where students are to develop an idea and submit this to a judging panel. Those students selected to enter the second round will receive $500, and the ultimate winner may receive up to $25,000 to start their business.
Now, there have been a few changes in Audacious this year. So before I go on to discuss what Audacious could be in 2012, we’d like to pay tribute to an inspired individual. David Quinn left the program earlier this year, having become involved in the middle of 2011. His energy and passion inspired many of us to have a greater vision for ourselves, to get a taste for some kind of freedom and possibility. It was that spark when we were exhausted, that helping hand when we most desperately needed it. We won’t forget you and the lessons you taught us. They’ll be carried into the future. This is to you David.
So what is Audacious really about? What could it be about?
We spend a lot of our time existing within socially prescribed modes of thinking. What is the status quo? What are the expectations? How do we fit into the social meme? For me, Audacious has been about thinking outside these constructs. Which, I can assure you, is a process and probably a lifelong journey. But let’s start with education.
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09 – Apr – 2012 |