Just returned from 2 days at Morgo up in the beautiful Bay of Islands of New Zealand. It is invitation only, and the deal is that everything that is said there is considered confidential. This means that you get some unbelievable frank and honest presentations and insights into other people’s businesses. It is very refreshing when so many events are just full presentations that are really thinly veiled sales pitches.

The other reason I love Morgo is that you get a chance to spend some time with some really great people. I first met Sam Morgan in 2001, and hasn’t really changed at all since becoming a gazzillionaire. I met Rowan Simpson who was at TradeMe and is now at Xero with Rod Drury. I think these guys and others in the industry in Wellington have done a great job of developing a community of people who can work together on launching different online businesses, and I anticipate many, many more will follow. Mike Cannon-Brookes has co-founded and built, Atlassian, Australia’s largest software exporter in just 5 years…oh and he’s only 27. The Ryan brothers who have eurekster and SLI Systems. Then there are the enterprise software and technology guys selling into the US market like Ian McCrae from Orion Health, and Selwyn Pellett from Endace, the first New Zealand company to list on the AIM share market in the UK.

So it was quite daunting to have to run a workshop on Internet Marketing with an audience of extremely experienced entrepreneurs. Luckily I had some help from Andy Lark. Thanks to Andy and everyone who came along, and I hope you got some value from it. If you would like a copy of either of the presentations, please let me know.

Thanks to Jenny and all the other organisers for inviting me again and for putting on such a great event. It was a great honour to have a chance to present at such an amazing event.

More posts about Morgo:

Morgo 2007 - Thoughts on the way home
Mike from Atlassian
Morgo - going global from NZ

Technorati Tags: morgo

Just returned from 2 days at Morgo up in the beautiful Bay of Islands of New Zealand. It is invitation only, and the deal is that everything that is said there is considered confidential. This means that you get some unbelievable frank and honest presentations and insights into other people’s businesses. It is very refreshing when so many events are just full presentations that are really thinly veiled sales pitches.

The other reason I love Morgo is that you get a chance to spend some time with some really great people. I first met Sam Morgan in 2001, and hasn’t really changed at all since becoming a gazzillionaire. I met Rowan Simpson who was at TradeMe and is now at Xero with Rod Drury. I think these guys and others in the industry in Wellington have done a great job of developing a community of people who can work together on launching different online businesses, and I anticipate many, many more will follow. Mike Cannon-Brookes has co-founded and built, Atlassian, Australia’s largest software exporter in just 5 years…oh and he’s only 27. The Ryan brothers who have eurekster and SLI Systems. Then there are the enterprise software and technology guys selling into the US market like Ian McCrae from Orion Health, and Selwyn Pellett from Endace, the first New Zealand company to list on the AIM share market in the UK.

So it was quite daunting to have to run a workshop on Internet Marketing with an audience of extremely experienced entrepreneurs. Luckily I had some help from Andy Lark. Thanks to Andy and everyone who came along, and I hope you got some value from it. If you would like a copy of either of the presentations, please let me know.

Thanks to Jenny and all the other organisers for inviting me again and for putting on such a great event. It was a great honour to have a chance to present at such an amazing event.

More posts about Morgo:

Morgo 2007 - Thoughts on the way home
Mike from Atlassian
Morgo - going global from NZ

Technorati Tags: morgo

Yellow Pages in New Zealand is now just Yellow. They have recently relaunched their entire online offering.

To help you use their new search engine they have put together a handy online tutorial to give you step by step instructions.

It is very similar to the one Google had to explain to you how to use their search engine…..hold on a minute, I don’t think Google ever needed an interactive tutorial on how to use Google. This could be an issue Yellow, you have fundamentally missed what makes a good search engine from both a consumer and a business perspective:

1. You know how to use it instinctively.
2. Most of the time you find what you are looking for straight away.
3. You can buy advertising simply and easily online.

As my colleague Joel found out recently spending money as an advertiser is remarkably difficult for some reason?

Whilst there is no denying that Yellow is a substantial and long overdue enhancement of the previous offering, I can’t see why they didn’t prioritise using AJAX and actually getting the data right. I tried searching for “Sports Shoes” in “Auckland” and got Berton Automotive Ltd, an automotive repair shop, in my top 10 search results. They don’t sell shoes, sports or otherwise. Let’s try “Running Shoes” instead. One company in the biggest city in New Zealand that sell sports shoes apparently. Okay.

I did see that they had bought banner space on YouTube, which is quite a clever media buy. I have to say though, the idea of advertising a search engine is also fundamentally an issue. Ask.com is everywhere in the US at the moment and it will be very interesting to see if they can make any in roads at despite a seemingly huge advertising budget.

I found this in a whiskey distillery in Scotland. I think it is from the Victorian era. Hilarious!

With respect to Rod Drury, who I consider an extremely intelligent person, but he doesn’t get this social networking site. His post “Just say no to Facebook” suggests that because we are all busy people and don’t have time for our existing friends why would we want to join a website that is focused on meeting new people.

The latest research out of the US on reason for use of social networks is quite fascinating:

• 91% of respondents use social networking sites to stay in touch with friends they see.

• 72% of respondents use them to make plans with their friends.

Make new friends is way down the list of reasons.

When I was in the US last month a number of people said to me that their friends just didn’t respond to email or even text messaging. The only way they could stay in touch with them and make plans to meet was via MySpace or Facebook. When the first person told me this, I was astounded, then I started to think about my own email behaviour. I get up to 100 email messages per day almost all business related. I sometimes takes days to respond to a personal email. Facebook is a single interface where you can go and manage your social relationships quickly and efficiently. It’s CRM for your personal life! Facebook is the personal equivalent of Salesforce.com.

For me, most of my friends live in the UK and I’m there only every 3 months or so, and I find Facebook incredibly useful to stay in touch. I have to say that MySpace never really did it for me, but then I am fussy and have an aversion to websites that aren’t aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Rupert, you’re a gazzillionaire, get some decent designers to overhaul MySpace.

By the way, Facebook is growing at 4 times the rate of MySpace at the moment. I really hope News Corp didn’t buy the next Friendster.

Technorati Tags: facebook