Our Future of Accounting Roadshow kicks off next week. We’re holding seminars for accountants and bookkeepers to share our view on global technology and business trends. Plus, we’ll be detailing our partnership with Acclipse, explaining how we’ll be offering an integrated client accounting and practice management solution.

The response to the roadshow has been overwhelming (see location change below). It’s completely booked out to maximum capacity in most locations. However, there are a few seats left at our Dunedin event, so register now.

If you wanted to attend but we didn’t have an event in your area, please send us an email and let us know.

IMPORTANT LOCATION CHANGE:

The Wellington event will happen at the same date & time Tuesday 25 November from 4-6pm, but due to overwhelming demand it will now be hosted at the following location:

Museum of Wellington City and Sea
Von Kohorn Room (The Historic Board Room)
Queens Wharf
View map

Next Wednesday I’m doing my final workshop of 2008 on Rapid Prototyping in Flash (no experience with Flash necessary). In addition to the hands-on work, I also show a lot of different prototypes that I’ve built over the years, including several from the very early days of Xero and a few new ones. As I’ve said in the past, rapid prototyping is essential to how we do things at Xero.

The next workshop is happening Wednesday 26 November in Wellington. Here’s a brief summary of the what the workshop provides:

• Hands-on lessons for building prototypes in Flash (no experience in Flash necessary)
• Insights into the process of design iterations
• Insights into working with developers, investors and other stakeholders
• Receive a video tutorial plus design templates with a library of design elements

I’ve been doing these workshops for the past few months and there’s always a great mix of designers, developers and biz dev people attending. Be sure to register ASAP, because it sells out every time and registration is limited to 10 people to make sure everyone has quality hands-on time.

Congratulations to TNVZ 7 for the production of the TVNZ Debate on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Policy and Issues which was broadcast the other night. Not only was it a great debate but it was also a showcase of convergence (one of the buzz words of the night) with the broadcast going out to both TVNZ 7 viewers and also to a live audience on the web (www.debate.net.nz).

The main players were of course the politicians, of which all the main parties took part: David Cunliffe from Labour, Maurice Williamson from National, Metiria Turei from the Greens and Rodney Hide from ACT. There was a txt-in poll of who’s ICT policies people liked the most: ACT won the poll but I wouldn’t take that as a read on the election: the fact that they didn’t show up with a spokesperson on ICT policy says a lot and Rodney Hide did a great job of distilling ICT policy down to generic policy talking points (like investment and property rights). I admit I was impressed with the way he handled himself but was out of his depth in a lot of the conversation. Metiria Turei was pushing a fairly innocuous Greens policy – but at least they have a policy and some of her concerns around the digital divide (bringing ICT to the masses) and accessibility (particularly for the disabled) were really on the button. Obviously the big players were Labour and National: Labour trying to push their existing policies and National trying to push an agenda built mostly around their broadband strategy – more on that in a minute.

Some of the issues, such as copyright, privacy and cyber security were great to talk about and I thought everyone handled them well – it’s important that there is policy and enforcement criteria of cyber crime however it’s also important to understand that the internet is just not able to be regulated beyond that – the technology is too fast moving. It was disappointing that the digital divide debate happened after the TV audience turned off (the last hour of the debate was webcast only) - some of Labour’s initiatives have been really beneficial to the wider community and I hope the next government sticks with similar policies. Topics such as convergence and open source were also briefly discussed but didn’t really go anywhere – I would have liked some discussion around how TVNZ could play a role in driving convergence but I don’t think it’s a hot-button issue for voters.

Probably the key issue that was raised was broadband proliferation. This is a very important issue for an organisation like Xero – our distribution model is the internet and so broadband uptake globally is vital. While the other parties talked around the issue Maurice Williamson was able to get National’s policy right front and center. The basics of it are delivering FTTH (Fibre-to-the-Home) through the capital funding of infrastructure (1.5 billion of tax payers money with private capital investment on top of that), aiming to target 75% of all NZ homes in the first 5 years. FTTH is about building capacity into the basic infrastructure of the country (turning broadband infrastructure into a utility) – as opposed to having a mixture of wireless, cable and copper wire for internet use, the aim is to install high capacity fixed line broadband to every home and business in the country, with competition happening at a services level (as opposed to just on speed and data caps). It’s a bold plan but even though FTTH is great (and the concept looks good on billboards) I’m worried that not enough attention is being paid to how important this infrastructure is to our standing in a global market. It’s not about consumer uptake – it doesn’t matter if you see stealth cat on YouTube at 2mbps, 20mbps or 200mbps. The key here is for business: we need to be stimulating ICT growth and innovation – it’s the cornerstone of our knowledge economy. In fact, if refrigeration was the killer app for electricity, growing the knowledge economy and enabling businesses to reach a global market is the killer app for broadband. (Right at the end there was a brief mention of the southern cross cable – it’s all well and good having high capacity internal infrastructure but if you’ve still got one point of failure to the rest of the world then there’s almost no point. No matter who wins the election I hope this gets addressed immediately.)

In the end it was a fun debate and great to be in the audience and look behind the curtain at these kinds of things. I’m definitely not declaring a winner – in the end I’d probably say both Labour and National took even honours (but Maurice Williamson wins for quote of the night: “I’d rather be a rich prick than a prize prick” - I’ll let you look that one up for context :-))

Congrats again to TVNZ 7 – looking forward to the next one.

You can watch the debate here (best viewed with broadband ;-))

Xero is taking part next week in the Wellington Chamber of Commerce Business Expo to be held in the Town Hall Tuesday 23 September from 10-5pm.

For anyone that’s in Wellington next Tuesday and wants to see the capital’s business movers and shakers peddling their wares, simply email registrations@wellingtonchamber.co.nz. Attendence is free, but you must register either prior to the expo or on the day.

The seminar series will take place from 11 till 4, and covers topics such as: ‘How to improve cashflow’, ‘Difficult conversations at work’ and how to ‘Create interactive business websites’.

For more information read here.

One of our affiliates, Pennys Worth Ltd based in Auckland will be running a series of training courses for Xero customers starting with a practical, hands-on course covering the basics.

The 3-hour session uses your own Xero trial company, which means all the tasks and examples done while on the course will stay on your system, so you can access them for the following 14 days to remind and refresh you on how you have put in the information. Pennys Worth will also issue copies of handout material to take away with you.

The course will cover the following, plus more:

• Basic bookkeeping principles
• Invoicing
• Paying suppliers
• Expense claims
• Basic reporting
• Bank feeds
• Using ‘Help’
• GST returrns

The course cost is $199 + GST. The dates are: Thurs 16 October – Auckland or Tues 11 November – Auckland

Please register your interest as soon as possible, so we can reserve a space for you.

Contact Pennys Worth by email: penny@clear.net.nz or info@pennysworth.co.nz

Or phone Penny 021 983 297 or Julie 021 0221 8961

Please register if you’re interested in attending.

I’ll be over in Sydney in September running my rapid prototyping workshop as part of the Oz-IA conference. For people in the online business, the full conference program features a fantastic line up of topics and people covering design and usability issues. The other workshops look pretty choice, too.

As I’ve mentioned before, in my workshop I show several prototypes from the very early days of Xero and a few more recent ones. Rapid prototyping in Flash is essential to how we do things at Xero.

What?
Oz-IA design conference and workshops

When?
18-21 September

Where?
Sydney, Australia

How much does it cost?
That depends what you sign up for, but lucky for you I’ve been given a promo code PF0601 to get you a big fat discount.

See you there?

This year Tech Ed NZ 2008 takes place in Auckland from 1-3 September. This is the big event for nearly everyone interested or involved with IT in New Zealand.

Before Tech Ed however, a few of our dev boys are participating in Auckland Code Camp happening Sunday 31 August, 9am - 6pm. This is being put on by the .NET User Group, thanks in part to our own Senior Developer Kirk Jackson, who is one of the organisers. It’s entirely free, thanks to sponsors like Datacom and Intergen, so tell all your coder friends to go for the free lunch, some giveaways and good times.

One of the speakers this year is another Xero, software developer Owen Evans. Owen will be presenting on a new framework for creating web based applications that Microsoft has been hard at work on, called the ASP.NET MVC framework. Owen will discuss what it is, why a new framework is necessary, all the benefits and why you should be paying close attention to it.

Here’s another upcoming event to be hosted in Wellington for the non-profit sector. Wellington ICT is hosting Engage your Community at Massey University - Wellington campus on 4 September.

This is a key opportunity for community groups to make the most of ICT and to discover resources that will help their individual, important causes.

There are a number of people involved with this event that Xero has worked with. Key speakers include: Miraz Jordan, Pamela Minnett from YMedia, David Barrow (New Zealand Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations), Russell Brown and our own Rod Drury will speak about concerns and issues that need to be addressed when embracing the online world.

This is an introductory level conference, so if it sounds like something you or someone you know would be interested in just jump online and register here.

We commonly get asked if there are any hands-on training courses that provide best-practice guidance on using Xero.

We’ve been working hard to certify several training organisations so they can offer high quality courses. Maria Mullane and the team at Aspire Solutions have just become our first certified Xero Trainers. They’re offering public training courses over the next few months, starting in August. Below is the schedule, along with pricing and contact details.

Training at Xero offices in Wellington (view map)

August 5

Training at Aspire Solutions in Paraparaumu (view map)

August 27
September 11 & 30
October 9 & 30
November 11 & 20
December 10

The cost is $299 per person for a half day (4 hour) training session.

To find out more details or to register please contact Maria or Helen at Aspire on 0800 696 248 or email info@aspiresolutions.co.nz