It was the first full day mixed with keynotes and breakout sessions, and I found myself wondering at the start how smoothly things would run. Why? I suppose it’s because last year I was so involved with the Dunedin conference so I guess it’s only natural that you do start to compare. On the whole I think it went very well. The keynotes were interesting, the vendors engaging and the breakouts (when you finally figured [...]

It’s been a turbulent year for our family with respect to pets. We started 2011 with two cats and a dog and now we’re down to just a single cat. Chester Chester was only six weeks old when we bought him from a breeder in South Auckland. We drove up from our house in the central North Island to see the litter, choose him and bring him home. He came with purebred paperwork but also on the [...]

Like many others I watched the last shuttle mission with a mixture of interest, disbelief, curiosity and sadness. “All good things must come to an end” goes the saying and over the last couple of weeks it became the NASA space shuttles turn to fall into that category. I’m fine with the idea of retiring an older technology and I’m even relatively at peace with the notion of private industry championing the space industries technological [...]

People often ask me about my job and what I get up to in the role so I thought this would be a good example of what I do. This week it’s Maori Language Week in New Zealand – here’s some of what I have been up to online supporting this event and helping to promote it. The week prior I built a new topic finder resource on the Dunedin Public Libraries website based on [...]