The ArtKlick Blog

Day One - Picked up my Escape Camper on Sunday, packed up all my gear and robot art related items and left for Picton at 11.30am on Monday morning. After a couple of brief stops on the way I was in Picton. On the way into Picton I had to pull over and check out a 12ft bear carved out of macrocarpa wood I saw outside a local sculptors house (regretting not taking a photo now!). After dropping off some Art Klick flyers and a business card and yarn with a local admirer of the bear I headed into town half an hour early for the ferry. After a coffee and something to eat it was time to line up, 3 hours of slightly bumpy sea crossing combined with a new Telecom T-Stick I was in Wellington. My friend Wade met me at the terminal and after a couple of minutes of tight and windy roads we were at his nice sea view pad - I like Wellington already!

Day Two - A meeting with Marketing Impact director Gary Klocek at 10.30am (thanks Rachel Ah Kit!). Gary is the director of the the second biggest direct marketing company in New Zealand with 120+ staff and he took the time to meet with me, the little guy! It quickly became obvious why Marketing Impact has grown from 8 staff to the 120+ they have now in the past 13 years under his management. The key factors he attributes to the company’s growth are a focus on quality products and service while consistently developing strong relationships with clients. By keeping their customers and staff happy they can then rely on word of mouth within the industry to gain more work and clients. Sounds simple but as Gary said, consistency and reliability beats hype and re branding every time.
After a tour of their office and letter packing rooms they had my 3,000 Art Klick flyers ready and it was time to grab a quick coffee with Wade then head to my meeting with Natasha Davey from Victora University School of Design.

The campus for the School of Architecture and Design is so cool (naturally) and Natasha thought Art Klick would be a great resource for their students to profile on. Being an artist herself she knows how hard it is to get your artwork out there and seen by the public. By placing no barriers or risk for the artists (free membership and listings) she thinks we have a great idea which will appeal to their many creative students. Sweet!

Side Note: I’m working on developing relationships with all New Zealand’s creative institutes by profiling them on the new ArtKlick.com blog (this one) when I get it redesigned into more of a community. So far I’ve met with CPIT, D&A, NatColl and UC Fine Arts and they are all really interested in working together to promote their students and institutes. I hope to run tee shirt and logo design competitions through the site as it grows, and potentially a magazine next year to profile the emerging artists and designers involved in our booming creative sector.

After being totally inspired by The School of Design I took up Tim Norton’s offer to check out the Silicon Welly office on Courtney Place…. Wow, talk about cool! Then he took an hour out to hang out with me! Talk about inspiring! Tim as been in the web development scene for the past 8 years with a very impressive list of achievements and is one of the major web entrepreneurs I look up to. Tim has been working on PlanHQ with investment and direction from Rod Drury and Rowan Simpson (two of the biggest names in the NZ IT scene).

PlanHQ is a business plan management service which helps teams set goals and achieve both their long and short term business plan. I have been using it for the past two weeks and love it. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to improve the efficiency of their company, and with the first month free you have nothing to loose!

Tim also said I could use the Silicon Welly/PlanHQ office as my base for the week I’m in Wellington which is amazing! So I hung out there for an hour to fire away some emails and organise meetings for tomorrow, except for a call from Tim for a “Gimmie 20” another initiative Tim is part of called The Naked Trainer which is a new online collaboraborative fitness idea to encounter people to get fit.

I could go on about all the other cool stuff going on in Silicon Welly, or you could just buy Unlimited Magazine which is bundled with Start-up mag - which is the cover story. Considering Outrageous Fortune is on, I’m going to go with the latter.

Peace