New Zealanders in Global Headlines July 31

New Zealanders featuring in this week's survey of global media including BusinessWeek, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Scotsman.com, Toronto Star, Photonics, New York magazine and TimesSquare.com include:

• Govt investing NZ$628m in nanotechnology, primary sector focus
• Anna Paquin nom’d for Emmy for Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
• Sand Dancer about Peter Donnelly warms Tribeca Film Fest (px)
• NZ “one of the top foodie destinations in the world" - Telegraph
• Te Awamutu company teams with German U to promote manuka honey products to heal wounds, treat stomach and skin problems
• Andrea Hewitt wins first World Cup triathlon title at Kitzbuhel Austria
• NZ filmmakers serving clients from Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan
• Zinny: ABs World Cup task “difficult but doable" - good chemistry
• Neuroscientist Kerry Spackman tunes minds at Team McLaren
• Otago U taps secret to queen bees' dominance: aversive learning
• Scott Dixon wins third straight IndyCar Series victory in Lexington
• US economist Tyler Cowen ranks fish& chips with barbecue in Texas
• NZ-born BBC character actor Gordon Gostelow dies, London (82)

For full stories see http://www.nzedge.com/media, a 5,000-story storehouse of international activities by New Zealanders 2000-07.

Denis O'Reilly Blog #17: Looking through a kaleidescope

Angela Davis, 1974

“It must be a beautiful feeling to fly halfway around the world, touch down in a seemingly contented society, and discover a body of people who have been enacting your disobedient thinking for over 30 years.”

Blog #17 of Denis O’Reilly’s series Nga Kupu Aroha, from the flipside of the edge; “Looking through a kaleidoscope” (4,750 words):

• The meaning of Maori tangi; tangi for Mick the Aussie biker in Wellington, and Rangi Tareha at Waiohiki Marae after a 500-strong funeral in Redfern Sydney; the Hamuera Morehu Silver Band
• Arthur Young’s The Reflexive Universe and his explanation of the seven stages of evolution (Theory of Process)
• Edge-dwelling and the brink of disobedience
• The visit by Angela Davis (“the candle of social resistance”) to New Zealand with a radical agenda: the process of decarceration and introduction of restorative justice; her influence on the Polynesian Panthers in Auckland, capital of Nesia
• Definitions of “organised crime” in New Zealand; distinctions between venial and mortal sin; discontinuity of the 1980s economic reforms resulting in a 3:1 Maori/Pakeha unemployment rate; moral panic and the perspicaciousness of policy makers in regard to the criminal justice system
• “Can we reverse the trend and steer those people who are caught up in crime back to legitimate pursuits?”
• Time magazine’s cover story “New Zealand: A Culture of Violence” and Zeppelins sighted in Southland
• A good reason to get upset – the grand denial of potential; imprisonment becoming the standard expectation of our underclass, our lumpenproletariat, our nga mokai; Law & Order Select Committee submissions by Principal Youth Judge Andrew Beecroft and Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro
• “Could we agree on having a decarcerated nation within which the indigenous people are proportionally the least imprisoned population segment?’; tut-tutting at Australia
• “Police dragnets can criminalize whole communities and land large numbers of non-violent children in jail and don’t reduce gang involvement or gang violence…Once jailed these children will inevitably become hardened criminals and spend the rest of their lives in and out of prison…The emphasis needs to be on changing children’s behavior by getting them involved in community and school-based programs that essentially keep them out of gangs.” New York Times, 19 July 2007, “The Wrong Approach to Gangs”
• Celebration of life for daughter Kaylene; prayerful and profound intervention of a tohunga; respect and admiration for an ICU doc
• Maatariki – planted shallots, garlic, onions and chives and now time to dig in mustard so it can enrich the soil for Maori spuds: Tuteakuri, Moemoe and Perepuru
• A week ahead of politics and difficult engagements dissuading people from one path and persuading them to take another.

Posted. Raumati South

New Zealanders in Global Headlines July 24

New Zealanders featuring in this week's survey of global media including the BBC, New York Times, LA Times, The Guardian, International Herald Tribune, Forbes, rugbyheaven.com, motorsport.com, include:

• Glass artist Luke Jacomb to solo at New Orleans Museum of Art (px)
• Time on Earth from “wondrous pure-pop band” Crowded House
• Lloyd Jones wins Commonwealth Prize for Mister Pip–“extraordinary”
• Aucklander Glenn Jones wins US Threadless t-shirt design contest
• Steve Williams continues eight year partnership with Tiger Woods
• Auckland artist Mark Olsen creates two cars for Le Mans Enduro
• Soprano Marie-Adele McArthur graces Opera America's home page
• NZ dairy, oil, Kiwisaver, NZX get thumbs up from US banker Beuchler
• Anne Gilman, "a rebel from New Zealand", dies, London (75)
• Warkworth Yamaha MX rider Hamish Dobbyn (15) wins Oz series
• Waitangi Treaty Grounds, Napier Deco, up for World Heritage sites
• NZ rowers win four gold at rowing world championships Lucerne
• Artist Lisa Fergusson shows in Chelsea and luxury Manhattan condo
• Jonah Lomu back to physical peak, dreams of return to oval ball

For full stories see http://www.nzedge.com/media, a 5,000-story storehouse of international activities by New Zealanders 2000-07.

Thousands of All Black stories after the weekend's formidable Bledisloe Cup win and naming of the Rugby World Cup side are at Google News. For adrenalin, the Silver Ferns match against Australia that followed Saturday's ruby test was hard to beat.

Better people make better All Blacks

By Kevin Roberts. The countdown to the September Rugby World Cup is well underway. But still, there’s lots of issues out there in the world of rugby, and many commentators believe New Zealand has the best two teams in the competition - the All Blacks A side and their B team! The Northern Hemisphere are of course waiting for them to choke, as we have done four times before. This time I believe they will be disappointed.

While it is true South Africa, Australia and Ireland will become competitive and push the All Blacks to the max, I think this time the AB’s will be ready for them. And the reason they’ll be ready is Graham Henry, an All Blacks coach who has taken a different view on player development. Rugby has only been professional for a decade, and it was only three or four years ago that we saw players coming through the system who had done nothing except play rugby. And it was a pretty boring way to spend your life – gym in the morning, gym in the afternoon, naps all day and that’s pretty much it. The result was mental stimulation and personal growth at a minimum and underdeveloped personalities ill equipped to cope with public expectations and pressure. Men expected to become leaders because they wear the black jersey, but incapable of boiling an egg for themselves.

In August 2004, Graham began a process of change that has proved the most significant in the history of the All Blacks. Prior to becoming a professional coach in 1996, Graham was a very successful school teacher in New Zealand, and one of the most admired principals in the nation. He opened up his All Blacks campaign with a belief that “better people make better All Blacks". His focus was on good balanced lifestyles that included interests away from rugby and learning every day. Simultaneously, the management team made a concerted effort to stamp out the drinking culture that’s been endemic to the All Blacks for many years.

Empowerment is all the rage in my world, and is now all the rage with the All Blacks. The players have been set up into specific leadership groups that they run themselves. It is these groups that provide feedback to management. We lost the Rugby World Cup in the Semi-Final at Twickenham because a) France played sublimely, b) the ball bounced for them, and c) our leaders were the coaches on the benches, not the players on the field.

Now we have an eleven-man leadership group in the All Blacks with each player/leader taking responsibility for a bunch of six other All Blacks on and off the field. To do this job they are empowered to construct their own parameters, their own culture, their own ethics and their own punishment systems.

In my business we believe in unleashing and inspiring our people, not in command and control. Now the All Blacks are thriving under the same system. If there is an unsung hero of the squad, it is Gilbert Enoka. Gilbert is a sports psychologist who has helped identify with the players what it means today to be an All Black, with all the history and all that expectation. The new Haka was first performed twelve months into this program and reflected what this new team of All Blacks felt the Haka and the All Black jersey meant to them.

Graham and his management have maximized the potential of this All Blacks team on the rugby field and have given us our best chance of success. They also help make the NZRU job much easier because this new approach is obviously of much greater appeal to sponsors.

Gregor Paul, on the NZ Herald’s website, wrote a great summary of Graham’s initiatives, which I think are both groundbreakers for rugby, and offer a great stimulus for business everywhere.Empowering the players – what they do:

• Set the alcohol limit for any given night.


• Help determine protocols for dealing with media, sponsors, fans.


• Assess management’s performance and provide feedback about training sessions and game plans.


• Recommend punishments for those who break protocol.

Building better people:

• Richie McCaw has gained his pilot’s license.


• Anton Oliver is heading a lobby group opposing the construction of a wind farm in Central Otago.


• Nick Evans is a qualified physiotherapist.


• Conrad Smith has completed a law degree and worked for a legal firm last year while he recuperated from a broken leg.


• Dan Carter has opened fashion retail outlets.


• Byron Kelleher launched a plastic pallet business.

Sport learning from Business; Business learning from Sport. A virtuous circle.

Kevin Roberts is co-founder of nzedge.com. Photograph: Carisbrook (Sweeney)

New Zealanders and Global Headlines July 14

New Zealanders featuring in this week's survey of global media including The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, LA Times, Boston Globe, SFGate, The New Yorker, National Public Radio and motorsport.com include:

• Corporal Willy Apiata awarded Victoria Cross for Afghan action
• Multi-platinum Fat Freddys “island-time ambience” at Glastonbury
• Canterbury U's Blue Fern is 99th in world's top 500 super-computers
• NZ tennis #1 Marina Erakovic wins career first doubles title in Italy
• Alyn Ware activates Parliamentary Nuclear Disarmament Network
• Firefox developer/software engineer Ben Goodger now Googling (px)
• Taika Waititi's oddball comedy Eagle vs Shark has US debut
• Sydney’s Bruce Elder files 91 passionate posts on Trampabout NZ
• Jonathan King's gory horror-comedy “The Birds with sheep”
• Govind Armstrong conjures hip LA eatery Table 8 on Melrose
• AgResearch works to reduce gas emissions from NZ farm animals
• Artist Mark Olsen to customize car in 2007 Le Mans Enduro serie

For full stories see http://www.nzedge.com/media, a 5,000-story storehouse of international activities by New Zealanders 2000-07.

New Zealanders and Global Headlines July 9

New Zealanders featuring in this week's survey of global media including The Times, New York Times, The Lancet, USA Today, ESPN, Guardian, Taipei Times, Ars Technica, Wine Spectator and Cheshire Online include:

• Matthew During's pioneering gene therapy work for Parkinson's (px)
• Leslie Woods: fighter pilot, mathematician, physicist and “strikingly individual New Zealander”, b Reporoa; d Woodhead England (84)
• Álinghi have 5-2 edge on Team NZ in America’s Cup, Valencia
• Tom Eslinger (Saatchi) chairs Cyber Awards Jury at Cannes Festival
• Ian Fletcher appointed head of the UK Intellectual Property Office
• NZ nature, jewelers Mitchell & Elsbury. inspire bespoke collection
• NZ Winegrowers Inc maps out sustainability equations and programs
• NZ advertising agencies win at Cannes Festival with big ideas
• Summit Entertainment COO Bob Hayward helms studio from LA
• Software architect Nigel Keam heads radical Microsoft Surface tech
• Flight of the Conchords soar, stumble way through US HBO series
• Bevan Doherty wins 4th Triathlon World Cup at Edmonton Canada
• “Watch in wonder”: The Times visits Abel Tasman National Park

For full stories see www.nzedge.com/media, a 5,000-story storehouse of international activities by New Zealanders 2000-07.

nzedge.com archive: Arthur Lydiard: Hero

Photo: Mark Doolittle

Arthur Lydiard was born 90 years ago on July 6. He invented jogging, the simple method of long, even-pace running at a strong speed (lsd or long slow distance) to build up physical fitness by gradually increasing strength and endurance. Millions of men and women worldwide run as part of their everyday health and fitness regime. Nicolas Sarkozy was pictured in today’s paper doing such a thing.

Born at Mt Eden Auckland in 1917, educated at Mt Albert Grammar, and Owairaka Club runner, Arthur Lydiard trained New Zealand’s greatest track athletes, and helped propel New Zealand to the top of world middle-distance running. On a hot September day in Rome in 1960, within the space of one hour, Peter Snell took Gold in the 800 metres and Murray Halberg won Gold in the 5000 metres. There have been many great moments in New Zealand sport, but that effort is arguably New Zealand’s finest. The two athletes were instantly stars on the global stage and Lydiard became the world’s most respected athletics coach. His methods were new, original and unorthodox - and had run straight into the prevailing wall of suffocating officialdom. In order to get to the Rome Olympics a public appeal was launched to send Lydiard as an "independently travelling unofficial coach.”

After Rome the New Zealand administrators could no longer ignore him and for the next few years he continued to take New Zealand athletes to the top of world running. Peter Snell was his most famous pupil and was the dominant force in world middle distance running in the early 1960s. His success at the Rome Olympics was followed two years later when he ran an incredible 3 minutes 54.4 seconds mile on a grass track in Wanganui. One week later he broke the world records for the 800 metres and the 800 yards. Also in 1962 he broke the world record for the indoor 880 and 1000 yards; he comfortably won the mile and the 880 yards at the 1962 Empire Games in Perth.

At the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo – where Lydiard had achieved ‘official’ status and was the coach of the New Zealand athletics team - Snell broke his own Olympic record for the 800 metres and won the 1500 metres. He finished off 1964, and his career on the track, by breaking his own mile world record with a time of 3 minute 54.1 seconds. Three events, three Golds.

Arthur died in 2004 at the age of 87 after giving a lecture in Texas on athletics. He had his feet up and was watching television in his hotel room. Sport has the ability to provide a nation with thrilling moments, from which we can extrapolate national characteristics. When you come from the edge, you experience being ignored, ostracized and embattled, until, maybe, the grit, guts and genius of your idea busts through. Arthur Lydiard achieved this transformational moment.

There is a lot to write about the 32rd America’s Cup in Valencia, of which I have been enthralled at 3am. Arthur, I speculate, would have been too. Cheers to his wife, Joelyne.

Links: excellent wikipedia page on Arthur Lydiard - "blunt, forthright and counter-intuitive" - and a comprehensive introduction to the "Lydiard System."

The photograph above is from a lecture to 400 runners in Boulder Colorado on his last lecture tour. "A man from the audience asked, “What about pain? What do you tell your athletes about dealing with pain?” Arthur Lydiard immediately and confidently replied, “My athletes don’t have pain. They enjoy running.”

Photo caption: "A towering backdrop bearing images of Snell, Halberg, Viren, and other running giants coached by Lydiard bore the powerful, commanding likeness of Citizen Kane’s portrait. The living monument carried himself cautiously at 87 years of age. He nonetheless commanded reverence and respect."

Top 10 for New Zealand

nzedge.com is commencing a series of “Top 10s” from New Zealanders who will offer their ideas, forecasts, strategies and projections for New Zealand 2007-2010 and beyond.

Initiating the series is John Williams, former owner of the Marton company PEC (New Zealand) Ltd, which was internationally respected as the world's first organization to design and market microprocessor-based petrol pumps and service station POS terminals. John is a passionate advocate for an inclusive export-based vision for New Zealand. John has presented his vision and strategy to all senior politicians over the past decade.

We will invite all readers of this blog to create their own Top 10 for New Zealand and send them to us brian@nzedge.com

John William's Top 10 Strategies for New Zealand (see full text):

1. Maximise growth in the sectors where we currently produce world-class products and/or services. The growth sectors, which have already chosen themselves by their success in export are: Tourism, Dairying, Food & Beverage, Information Technology/ Communications/Software, Education, Bio-technology and Niche Sectors (which would include Film, SuperYachts and Forestry).

2. Ensure that at least 25,000 New Zealanders (net) return annually to settle in New Zealand and play a vital role in growing an export-led sustainable growth economy.

3. Increase exports by making New Zealand organizations aware that if they are successfully marketing their products in this country they must be world-class and therefore have significant export potential; and by introducing support programmes to assist organizations to maximise their exports

4. Introduce the “Kiwi Can” programme to all Primary and Intermediate schools to reverse the continuous drop in values that has occurred in the past 50 years.

5. Re-create the University of New Zealand to compete with the much larger and significantly better resourced US, European and Asian universities.

6. Market New Zealand as “Innovative New Zealand” to increase exports. New Zealanders are among the most entrepreneurial and innovative people in the world.

7. Ensure that the contribution to economic growth from the Maori and Pacific Island ethnic groups (50% of New Zealand’s population by 2050) is significantly and continuously increased.

8. Demonstrate the amazing innovation of New Zealanders by creating a newzealandinnovation.com website, which would detail all our world-class products, services, and ideas.

9. Establish a “Centre of Excellence” for Innovation and Entrepreneurship whose role would be to provide world-class product development, marketing and intellectual property protection advice.

10. Create and widely publicise a “Vision” for New Zealand: “To ensure New Zealand’s future as one of the world’s most socially cohesive, prosperous, and innovative countries, which is sustained by a dynamic, wealth creating, export economy.”

For the full text of John's Top 10, see http://www.nzedge.com/features/john_williams_top10.html

Risk Rd, by Ohinerau St, Greenlane, Auckland. Photo: Sweeney

Sunday Picture #7: Recent Travels #2

From top:

Raumati South, Kapiti

Barringer Meteor Crater, Arizona

Hagley Park, Christchurch

Roxy Paine sculpture, NYC

Raumati South, Kapiti

Click on each image to enlarge.

Photo: Sweeney