Chinwag Psych was a one day conference that covers psychology, neuroscience and big data for business and marketing. The event gave me a chance to not only flex my brain muscles for a day but also check out a new part of London having only been working in the city for a couple of weeks.

Using my trusty London City Mapper App (a must for any tourist or newbie Londoner) I set off towards Chancery Lane. As good as the app was at getting me to the right area I still managed to walk around in circles trying to find the building, but I did so with a determined look upon my face that said I know exactly where I’m going and I meant to walk up and down the same street twice.

After finally finding the right building I navigated my way to the all important row of seats near the power points, crucial for any prolific tweeters or bloggers in the audience. I was looking forward to being a member of the audience. Sitting back and listening, I enjoyed not dealing with the pressure of being the speaker.

Chingwag impressively fit 15 speaker sessions into the one-day conference, so I had my laptop out ready for the inevitable information overload.

The conference was split into four sections: approach, optimize, predict & behave. Rather than trying to summarise every single speaker I’m going to highlight some of the key takeaways from each of the sessions including links to some of the really useful slideshares.

-        Natalie Nahai spoke about the art of persuasion to selling more online and had a handy hint for how to get around the fact that The British don’t like tooting their own horn “Greying out the overt sales message on your website is a way to keep the copy there but make it less brash!”

-        Craig Sullivan boldly told us to shut up and listen. Listen some more. Ask good questions. Repeat. He had everyone engaged and snapping photos of his slides where he taught us how to practically apply psychological insights, customer feedback, behavioural and analytics testing to split testing. Nothing I write will do his talk justice so all I will say is his slideshare is a goldmine of information that you should definitely have a look at.

-        Stephen Haggard & David Stillwell spoke about their research that was picked up by news publications around the world  that argued they can predict future behavior and determine your sexuality, political leanings and intelligence just based on your facebook likes. It was fair to say that everyone in the crowd was enthralled but also a little on edge and double-checking their facebook security settings!

-        Cat Jones from Unruly Media spoke about the science of sharing videos online. She raised some interesting points such as the fact that you can’t predict sharing, the average share rate of a video is only 4%, 2013 will see the rise of the prankvert due to no major events to jump on the back of in 2013 & that 25% of all shares happen in the first three days.

-        Daniel Bennett & Marina Clement from Ogilvy Change, the behavioral science practice of Ogilvy, finished the day off with their case study on how they significantly increased subscriptions to The Times. This case study successfully applied many of the techniques that were spoken about during the day. They used four nudges of psychological pricing, choice overload, superiority bias and setting defaults to provide a return of £1:£257.

I left the event feeling more exhausted and brain dead then I usually do when I am the one up on stage. So much to absorb in a short space of time, luckily I could look back at the hashtag for the event and the slideshares from the presenters to go back over it all. My biggest takeaway was that there are lots of ways that we can optimize our websites and blogs that will help engage, persuade & sell. Optimising requires constant analysis and given the amount of data that we now have available, there is no excuse to not be listening to our audience and constantly tweaking our sites to get the best from them.

All of the presentations from throughout the day can be found here.

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About our Ambassador // This article was contributed by Community Ambassador Damon Klotz. Damon splits his time between being an intrepreneur by day at Ramsay Health Care, where he heads up Digital Strategy. He also cofounded a men’s mental health campaign, Soften The Fck Up, and blogs about the application of digital tools in business and the start up world.

This week Eliza interviews self-proclaimed king of all trades and Yelp’s Senior London Community Manager, Alex Shebar. Follow Alex on Twitter via @alexshebar.

Alex Shebar

You’re currently working as Yelp’s Senior London Community Manager. What part of your job requires the most creativity?

You’re going to scoff at me when I say this but it’s keeping London from not being boring. What? London? Boring? Never? Yes! It can be, when you go to the same restaurant or the same bar or the same event week in and week out. There’s so much to do in this city that a lot of times, people start to take it for granted. They begin to go to where they already know over and over. I throw a ton of events that show off amazing hidden gems, new food, crafted cocktails and things people have never seen before. I’m showing off new spots to my entire community, even to those who have lived here all their life. Finding ways to get people out of a rut and routine, that’s what requires more creativity.

Gary Swart

You started at oDesk in 2005 as CEO, what changes have you seen in the company since then?

Well we have definitely grown quite a bit! If you think about the evolution of a startup in terms of three phases—the jungle, the dirt road and the highway—we’ve gone from overtaking the competition in 2009 while in our ‘jungle’ phase, to now approaching the ‘highway’ and being larger than all of our next six competitors combined. A large part of that growth was the decision in 2006 to refine our pricing strategy, a decision which top Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital called “aggressive strategic thinking” that launched us to market leadership.

We’ve experienced eight times growth in hours worked on the oDesk platform since only 2009, so our company has expanded significantly to keep up with that demand. We are now at approximately 130 full-time employees in our Silicon Valley headquarters, plus another 250 full-time-equivalent freelancers from the oDesk network who come to work for us every day from around the world. And as we fully reach the ‘highway’ and continue to grow, I expect our ranks to continue expanding so we can keep up.

You came in to help the founders, Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis, scale and build the company. Are they still involved to date?

Absolutely; Odysseas is currently our Chief Technology Officer and Stratis is our Vice President of Development. They truly embody the oDesk vision, as the company was born out of their desire to work together. In 2003, Odysseas’ Silicon Valley startup was in need of a world-class engineer with a specific skill set. He thought his friend Stratis in Greece would be a great fit, but Odysseas’ team was hesitant to hire someone halfway around the world. To bridge the distance, the two developed technology to manage their work together online. They realized the potential of their technology, and oDesk was born. They continue to not only work together—with Odysseas in California and Stratis still in Athens—but also to help shape the vision for oDesk.

 How does oDesk differ from other marketplaces?

oDesk differs from other kinds of marketplaces—such as online shopping or even online dating—primarily because it’s about more than just finding the right product or service (or date); we also care about what happens after the match. So whereas other marketplaces are essentially cut out of the picture after the product is sold or the relationship has sparked, oDesk stays in the picture throughout the lifecycle of the working relationship.

Our value, therefore, lies in creating long-term relationships, and then giving users the tools to make those relationships successful.

This has required building a much more robust platform that supports these continued relationships, from making the match and managing the professional, to submitting the final deliverable and facilitating payment. Trust and transparency have been especially critical to building a vibrant community that fosters these long-term relationships, as the people working together typically never meet in person and often are hundreds or thousands of miles away. To create this trust and transparency, our freelancer profiles offer rich information such as each professional’s work history, ratings and reviews, education and portfolio. We also offer a guarantee to businesses that an hour paid is an hour worked, as well as a guarantee to freelancers that an hour worked is an hour paid.

How do you think the workforce is changing and how can businesses keep up?

I think both businesses and workers are realizing that the traditional work model—the 9-to-5 in the same office, staffed with full-time employees who work there for a year or more—is not only outdated, but unnecessary. Thanks to advancements in technology, especially in collaboration and communication technologies, it’s no longer necessary to have everyone in the same office, working the same hours. Businesses are now embracing the fact that they can hire the best people for each role, regardless of where they are located, and that they can build flexible teams of experts that scale up and down in response to demand. Workers, meanwhile, are enjoying the freedom and flexibility to live and work wherever they like, to choose their own schedule, and to pick projects based on what they’re passionate about, not what they’re assigned.

As flexible work models become more and more mainstream, businesses that do not consider them will be left struggling to compete. So I really encourage businesses to have an open mind about what their workforce looks like.

Can people hire specialised talent via oDesk? What about roles that need to be in the know about company happenings (like social media managers)?

Definitely. In fact, specialized talent is often the best use case for oDesk. Online work has done to the job market what ecommerce did for retail—it enabled the long-tail of specialization to thrive. For example, a brick-and-mortar business probably wouldn’t be able to survive selling only pickles, but a homemade pickle business with an online presence can do extremely well because its customer base is global. In the same way, professionals who work online can be much more highly specialized—in a certain niche programming language, for example, or in branding for eBooks—because they have a much wider client base to serve. As oDesk has grown, we’ve seen specialized skills grow extremely quickly; we’ve even seen bioinformatics and theoretical physicists hired recently!

For roles that need to be highly informed on company happenings, we recommend a well thought-out onboarding process that gets the freelancer up to speed on how the company works, who and what they can use as a resource, how their performance will be measured, etc. We find that often freelancers become long-term team members, so it helps to train and include them in a similar way as you would with an in-person hire. Even on-site employees can feel like outsiders when communication isn’t effective, so it’s every manager’s responsibility to keep all their team members informed and involved—regardless of level, location, etc. For example, we have a policy at oDesk that when remote team members join meetings (which happens in almost every meeting), they have priority speaking privileges.

How could a non-technical person go about building a prototype for an idea using oDesk?

I would advise them to hire a project manager.

These professionals specialize in recruiting and managing online freelancers, and there are many who specialize further in serving as a liaison between technical talent and non-technical clients. Thanks in part to use cases like this one, the ‘project management’ category of work has exploded on oDesk—it’s currently our second fastest-growing skill on oDesk, with a two-year compound annual growth rate of 149% in dollars billed.

Do you get many companies developing good relationships with freelancers and then hire them directly?

While it’s definitely very common for clients to develop strong, long-term relationships with freelancers on oDesk, we actually find that both clients and freelancers usually prefer to keep the relationship on oDesk. That’s because we provide tools to manage and pay freelancers easily—which means businesses don’t have to worry about the paperwork or regulations of hiring remote workers, and freelancers don’t have to worry about submitting invoices or justifying their hours.

In fact, we frequently see businesses build entire distributed teams on oDesk, sometimes of more than 100 people. These teams function much more effectively by remaining on oDesk because the site helps them manage and pay these global teams, which would be extremely difficult without oDesk’s management technology or global payment platform. For example, with payment specifically, businesses would have a very challenging time paying workers all over the world in different currencies, with different regulations for international money transfer, etc.—whereas on oDesk, they have one simple credit card payment each week to pay their entire team. 

Without visibility, how can companies ensure freelancers are making good use of their time?

That’s exactly why oDesk has seen such rapid growth, because it addresses that pain point. oDesk is all about online visibility—providing the ability to “manage by walking around” and have an ongoing dialogue to collaborate and course-correct as work progresses. The main feature supporting this visibility is the Work Diary, which provides screenshots of work.

You’re officially launching in Australia in 2013 – what activities are on the cards?

 We are still in the information-gathering phase, but we are really looking forward to sharing details as soon as possible. One of the things we’ve already learned is that Australians are savvier than most in their use of online workers, so we see enormous potential for Australia. The market is already the second-largest on oDesk for the amount of work being hired for, and when we adjusted on a per-capita basis, we realized Australia is actually the largest market on oDesk. Australian businesses hired $32M of work on oDesk last year, which was twice as large as what the U.S. billed on a per-capita basis.

Have you visited before? What do you love about the place? Have you noticed many differences between the US and there?

I hadn’t visited before and now that I’ve been, I can’t believe it took me so long! What don’t I love? The first thing I did when I got off the plane was walk up and down the hills of Sydney, through all the vibrant neighborhoods.

It was a great way to get a sense of the place, and in many aspects there are a lot of similarities to the San Francisco Bay Area that I call home. I have to say though that the food in Australia might be better (at risk of offending Bay Area foodies), and that the tech scene is certainly equally vibrant. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the culture though was the laughter!

You just announced results of a survey on the future of work, focusing on independent and entrepreneurial professionals. What results did you find most enlightening?

We’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be “an entrepreneur”. It used to be that an entrepreneur started a company, period. Today, being an entrepreneur is more than that. It’s a mindset that people aspire to, and that many see as critical to career success. Technical innovation (especially the Internet) is making more business resources broadly available, essentially democratizing entrepreneurship. People are using shared or on-demand resources now that they wouldn’t have the purchasing power to access otherwise. We went into this study with the hypothesis that the definiton of what it means to be an entrepreneur has itself changed, but we were shocked to see how resoundingly the professionals we surveyed agreed — 90% classified “being an entrepreneur” as a mindset (versus someone who starts a company).

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About our Curator // Kate Kendall is the founder and CEO of The Fetch, a community where professionals can discover and share what’s happening in their city. Before this, Kate led product, content and digital at magazine companies, handled outreach for new startups and organised too many communities and events to mention. Follow her on Twitter at @katekendall.

This post was sponsored by Key Person of Influence: book in to the Australian KPI 8-hour Brand Accelerator soon.

Over the past few years the biggest buzz word for people in business or those seeking financial freedom is “passive income”.

As the name suggests, its an idea that you can earn income that you don’t have to work for.

In my experience it is also the most damaging “wealth creation” idea I’ve ever come across. It sucks the life out of people and causes them to do dreadful things that waste their time, money and energy.

I view the idea as a modern day “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow and I believe it’s just as mythical.

Let me explain:

The idea of passive income by definition means you are trying to make money from something that you don’t want to be doing – I see people who fundamentally aren’t interested in property, going out buying property because they think it will be “set and forget”. I see people who loath technology, setting up websites because they think their dull, average, uninspired creation will replace their wage. I see people who have never taken an interest in large publicly traded companies suddenly fixating on price charts so they won’t have to worry about money some day. There is a deep fundimental flaw in this logic.

The idea of passive income stimulates the most primitive part of the brain – the reptilian limbic system of the brain is a sucker for “easy wins”. It’s the part of the brain that controls fear, fight and flight. It believes we live in a scarce world with an imminent drought around the corner. Passive income appeals to the parts of the brain that think lotto is a good idea because it feels emotionally rewarding despite being a logical disaster. This primitive part of your mind isn’t built for complex thinking, it can’t figure out that spending 1000 hours and $5000 setting up a $87.60 per month surplus is hardly time well spent. It just wants the emotional payoff of never having to worry about money some day. The worst thing is that when the limbic system is in control, the creative parts of the brain that do generate lots of opportunity can’t function.

It’s NOT passive – what most people come to discover is that a property portfolio is hardly passive, nor is a website, or an MLM downline. All of these, so-called “passive-income” vehicles require maintenance and upkeep. Tenants cause dramas, websites consistently need updating and downlines require constant encouragement.

I don’t see examples of it working – when was the last time you were on holiday and you bumped into the couple who proudly declared that they were traveling non-stop thanks to their passive income? Theoretically, every beach in the tropics should now be over-run with people who can’t even remember how they make their money.

So what does work? What is the alternative that does produce results? What has been the secret to wealth since the dawn of time?

Building your Empire.

Building an empire is the failsafe way to wealth, power, influence and fulfillment.

Building an empire requires you to commit fully to something that you will never turn your back on. It requires you to take a stand for something, to have a vision, to enroll others in your world-view and to keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

When you build an empire, there will be things that happen within it that happen without you being in the room – sales get made, rent comes in, fees are paid, royalties are collected – however it isn’t “passive”. You can never turn your back on your empire, it will always be something that you are building and protecting.

It will be the source of joy, frustration, passion, fury, boredom and exhilaration. It will be an extension of your authentic self, a piece of living art in the world that is never quite finished.

All the examples who get pointed out as beneficiaries of “passive income” are actually empire builders. Richard Branson doesn’t have passive income, he has the Virgin Empire. Donald Trump didn’t create a big “passive income” machine, he built a property empire. Warren Buffet goes into his offices at Berkshire Hathaway each day and builds his empire, he doesn’t sit back thinking about how great it is to have his “passive income” sorted.

The quest for passive income brings out the juvenile desire to shirk financial responsibilities. It’s a desire to get money sorted once and for all so I can get on with life and of course that never happens.

The quest for building an empire requires you to run head-on at the challenges of money, business and work in the knowledge that it will be like this until the very end. The empire builder must chose to play an inspiring game, because the game will never quite be over as long at they have air in their lungs.

It might sound pedantic, it might sound like a slight of words however there is a chasm between the inspired person who goes out to build their empire each day and the sad group of people who are delaying life while they get their “passive income” strategy in place.

The quest for passive income ends in disappointment, building an empire is an inspired journey that brings you closer to the work you were born to do.

Learn More:

To learn more about what it means to build your empire and become a Key Person of Influence, book in to the KPI 8-hour Brand Accelerator on the 5 steps to build your brand and raise your profile in your industry. (Also check The Fetch in Australia for dates.)

A complimentary copy of Daniel Priestley’s best selling book ‘Become a Key Person of Influence’ is included with every ticket so to find out more and book your tickets, click here.

Chris is well regarded for founding and growing StartupDigest (a popular newsletter covering the tech startup ecosystem) from 0 to 300,000 subscribers and selling it to Startup Weekend. He is now onto his second company called GroupTie – a platform for Group Relationship Management (GRM). He started the site after he found it difficult to scale membership management of the volunteer curators at StartupDigest. GroupTie’s customers already include the Thiel Foundation, Microsoft, Fast Compay, Singularity University and others.

I first met Chris in 2010 when I was a fresh-faced Bay Area transplant. Over coffee at Coupa Café in Palo Alto, we got chatting about newsletters and it’s been great to see him champion the #emailmafia renaissance. He completely gets this space and is an incredible community builder.

His motto is: “Life’s too short to not do awesome things” and this picture riding a llama pretty much sums that up. (This was the image sent through as his ‘headshot’!) Welcome Chris! We look forward to your insights.

We’ll be announcing more advisors soon. Interested in behind the scenes at The Fetch? Follow us on AngelList here -> https://angel.co/the-fetch

Rena

Last year you founded the Makeshift Society, a coworking space located in the beautiful Hayes Valley. What goes into the day-to-day of running a coworking space ?

There are far more details when managing a coworking space than you’d think! Besides making sure the place is clean and stocked with supplies, you also need to make sure the social and emotional needs of people are met. Even if most folks are on their laptops, they are here because they are craving a certain level of interaction and connection with others. Monitoring the space is important, as the vibe differs every single day.

Besides this, there is the usual administrative support, and lots of blogging and social media, which is our marketing strategy right now. Word of mouth and familiarizing potential members with Makeshift through images of the space and current members has worked wonders.

Calling the Makeshift Society “a clubhouse for creatives” calls upon vestiges of childhood creativity while also eliciting the notion of exclusivity. What inspired you to describe the Makeshift Society this way?  

From the get-go, we wanted to emphasize play. Play is such an important component of creativity, as is permission to act. Creating a place where members feel like they have ownership to experiment, talk to people and get feedback is what we’re all about.

We figure that people already know how to work! We just try to make them feel comfortable enough to make mistakes. They might *not* make mistakes but they won’t know until they try.

As far as exclusivity goes, we aren’t, actually; we don’t maintain a waiting list and we don’t “curate” the membership mix. However, people who believe in and embrace our mission tend to get what we’re all about very quickly. We’ve been lucky that the Society membership largely self-selects and yet is still quite diverse. Our main difference from other coworking spaces is that the activities are geared toward freelancers. This is partly because we are a small space with all flex seating which works better for freelancers rather than teams, and partly because those are the people I’ve worked with in the past, so I understand their needs the best.

Rena at Makeshift Society

You founded Rare Device in New York City in 2005.  What lessons from that experience would you share with aspiring business owners? 

That was a great time to open a store, and NYC is just the place to get great exposure and learn fast. I would just say that if you have a great idea, just do it. I mitigated risk by taking on an extremely small space and giving myself a deadline to “make it”. Slow and steady growth is also not a bad thing to aspire to, especially if you are new to the business.

For a seasoned veteran, you can take on more risk, but if you are entering a field that you have no experience in, you don’t need to shoot for the moon – you need to learn the ropes. When you feel comfortable with that, *then* you can go big.

When you opened the San Francisco location in 2007 did you notice any drastic differences between starting a business on the West Coast vs. the East Coast? 

The main thing I learned is that it’s harder to get traditional press outside of New York. However, blogs and social media have started to become much more of a factor for successful retail, and that definitely helps level the playing field. I also learned that New York is far more trend-driven and less price point conscious, and that California was even more story-driven and concerned about the provenance of a product – but that also reflects the shift in values overall over the years. The recession really threw a wrench into the works but the recovery seems to be moving retail along nicely again.

Rena at Rare Device

Word in the Twitter-sphere is that you’re looking to open a Makeshift Society in Brooklyn. What influenced that decision?   

Demand and momentum. I think the time is right to bring our kind of coworking to Brooklyn, which is just so creative and has a great work ethic as well. It also makes sense because of real estate. Most people are in tiny apartments and can’t afford studio space or office space, and yet trying to meet and network at bars or similar places is loud and unsatisfying. The people I’ve talked to want a low-pressure environment where you can work or have a conversation or take a class. There are a lot of people who fly back and forth between SF and NYC, also, and expanding the network and having reciprocal membership will be awesome. We’re actively pursuing a space right now, and need to start fundraising. So far everyone I’ve spoken to has been very positive about the idea.

What was the last thing that inspired you on the streets of San Francisco? 

Let’s see. I have a fondness for survey marks.  You’ll find them sprinkled throughout my Instagram feed; I can’t stop myself from photographing them. I like that they are a secret language in plain sight. They offer clues about major, impactful things happening to our streets and sidewalks, but most people don’t even see them anymore. The online world is important but I am obviously a proponent of the built, offline world as well :)

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About our Curator // Eliza Dropkin is the Content & Community Coordinator of The Fetch, a community where professionals can discover and share what’s happening in their city. She recently graduated from college and relocated to the Best Coast. Follow her on Twitter at @elizadropkin &  @TheFetchSF. 

We’re taught from a very young age that there are certain major life events that will have significant importance and deliver at least a modicum of respect. Being born (though you aren’t quite aware of that one), graduating from college, getting married, having children, buying a house, turning 50, etc. These are the Events with a capital ‘E’.

What no one really tells you, however, is the way the other kind of events will impact your life. These events will present the opportunity for learning, fun, and personal growth. Occasionally they will offer you a few hours of complete anonymity, and with it the extraordinary chance to be whoever you want.

When you scan The Fetch each week, deciding which events you’d like to attend, you never know how they will go. You could meet a new friend, make a new connection that leads to a new job, or find the perfect person with whom to start a company. We know this is true because we have experienced it first hand, and we’d like to share our stories with you (first Eliza and then Kate will in a follow-up post). Hopefully these will encourage you to take a chance on something new. Feel free to leave your own stories in the comment section, we’d love to hear them!

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Eliza’s Experience

The events I have attended in the last year have had a greater impact on my life than I ever could have anticipated. While working as a marketing intern for Lovely last summer, I organized a mini-guerrilla marketing party in Dolores Park. We entitled the party “A Lovely Day In The Park,” and luckily for me, Kate was in attendance.

Two weeks later I had the opportunity to go to one of the monthly Community Manager Breakfasts at SoundCloud. As a verifiable tech newbie, I didn’t know what to expect. I’d only been working for a few weeks and I wasn’t entirely sure what the role of a community manager was. Not only did a conversation contributor (Kate) give me the full scoop of the CM role, I also became friends with Jane, the SoundCloud CM, and had my first pupusa at Balompies (nearby the SC office).

Delicious.

This past fall I became involved with Yelp. It’s a funny story actually. I was studying abroad in London and made the audacious decision to spend a good chunk of October’s living budget on a plane ticket to surprise my boyfriend in California at a later date.  I lived off of a few pounds a day supplemented by a lot of quinoa and Hare Krishna for a week before I received a thrilling email inviting me to become a member of the London Yelp Elite. I accepted the invitation and RSVP’d yes to the next Elite event. When the day came I was almost too nervous to go, but emboldened by my +1, memories of images of wild Yelp Elite parties from Ligaya Tichy’s TED talk, and a growing hatred of quinoa, I hopped on the tube and went.

Easily one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

My first Yelp event was followed by dozens more, taking me all over London to places I would have never otherwise gone. I made terrific Yelp friends (shout out to the London Yelp CM Alex Shebar), ate delicious things and drank delicious cocktails for free. (If there was ever a time for a #winning, this would be it).

If there is one nugget of wisdom you can take away from this blog post I hope it is the following truth: the only thing holding you back is yourself. Everyone is intimidated by the thought of conversing with a group of random strangers, but the truth of the matter is people (generally) don’t bite! If you pick an event of interest to you, the chances are you’ll meet some cool people. Plus you’ll already have something to talk about :)

Good luck, and happy networking!

Eliza

Jules Turner I Performance and Photography I Monster Beauty touches a sensibility

Pecha Kucha Auckland #35

The delightfully named Pecha Kucha, has been fascinating creative folk in Aotearoa for the last six years. Pecha Kucha is a semi-regular event designed to bring together creatives across a number of disciplines to speak about their practice. The format is fantastic, fresh and energetic, with anywhere from eight to fourteen speakers, presenting 20 slides and speaking on each for only 20 seconds.

Originating in Tokyo the first Pecha Kucha was held in 2003 but now adds to the creative architecture of 643 cities around the world. Luka Hinse is the curator of the events here in Auckland and first came across Pecha Kucha when he was working as a designer in Tokyo.

Tuesday’s event held at the Biz Dojo on K Road introduced the audience to eleven speakers; ranging from performance artists, a body builder, designers, architects, digital strategists, writers, and even an historian. Check www.pechakucha.co.nz for details of all the speakers from the night.

Sonia Pivac was one of my highlights. The founder of Deaf Radio she gave us a crash course in NZ Sign Language. Sonia may be deaf but I would definitely rate her as one of the strongest speakers there. It was a wonderful touch to have all speakers syncro-translated for the hearing impaired.

Edward Bennett, the K Rd historian also captivated all with his speech titled ‘Unbuilt Auckland’. Who knew at one stage Auckland was proposed to have two Town Halls or a giant statue of Christ on Bastion Point? You can learn more about the history of K Road on his free Heritage Walks. K Road also kindly sponsors the event when in its locale.

I would highly recommend this event in the future. At a cost of $10 it’s a small price to pay for the inspiration guaranteed to flow hearing such a variety of passionate speakers.

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About our Ambassador // This article was contributed by Community Ambassador Deirdre Dawson. While she is currently working on the startup, Rentaholic, her background includes steering Disruptv gallery as the business manager of the multi faceted creative company  which specialised in large scale murals, graphic design, event management and graffiti workshops. 

Photo credit: Guy Ryan

As the driving force behind PledgeMe, New Zealand’s crowdfunding platform for creative projects, Anna Guenther is one of Wellington’s golden girls. Passionate about building resilient creative communities – online and offline – she’s found herself as somewhat of a beacon of hope for creatives at that awkward junction where art meets financial reality.

Since their inception in 2011, PledgeMe has helped to raise over one million dollars in pledges – recently celebrating this success with three consecutive parties on one street in Wellington, complete with puppets re-enacting Pulp Fiction, fairy bread and a complimentary walking-bus to ferry guests.

Anna joined me to chat about all things crowdfunding, the end of bootstrapping and her potential career as a rock-star.

Congratulations on reaching a major milestone of raising $1,000,000 in pledges. What is the next big goal on the horizon? 

One billion dollars? But, no, honestly – we’re aiming for one hundred million in the first five years. So, one million is great – but now we need to multiply that by a hundred!

Photo credit: Tess Brosnan

You’ve recently jumped ship to work on PledgeMe full-time.  How big a decision was this and what were the major considerations for you and the business before taking this step?

It was a massive decision, but one a long time coming. I’ve had some really smart people telling me that you can’t be half committed…. and, that’s right.

If you’re in start up world there really comes a time when you just have to jump.

For us, it was realising that there really was a huge market in New Zealand – hitting the one-million-dollar mark proved this to us – and that it was time to focus.

How does PledgeMe set itself apart from similar models such as Kickstarter and the new local addition to the scene, Boosted?

We see ourselves as a local version of the mighty Kickstarter. Having a New Zealand focus means that we’re not just an online platform, but also an offline community. People see that what they’re giving is making a difference locally -and that’s important.

We also see the rewards side of what we do as enabling creatives to be entrepreneurial. It’s a new model, not reinventing the patron model of old, and we think that’s pretty powerful.

It’s insider tips time! What are your top three nuggets of advice for prospective crowdfunding campaigns?

I think the three golden nuggets would be:

- Pitch your project (and you) well. People need to see you in it, and understand why the funds are going to help make it happen.

- Have a video. Really. Videos make you at least 117% more likely to get funded.

- Rewards are rewarding. People don’t want begging, they want value. So show them what you’ll give in return – and make it a mix of physical and experiential.

What does the future of crowdfunding look like in New Zealand?

I think crowdfunding is the next BIG thing. It’s a tool to give the crowd the power to decide what’s cool and what isn’t, what deserves to be funded to happen (and what doesn’t). The power of distributed decision-making is so 2013.

Photo credit: Kane Feaver & Bek Coogan

At PledgeMe’s ‘Thanks-a-Million’ celebration, you partook in some impressive crowd surfing! Are you a closet rock-star? Or is there another creative outlet up your sleeve?

More like a reluctant rock-star! I thought I was a bit of a fashionista back in the day, but now I’m just a massive supporter of the creative critters out there trying to do their thing. I’m really just a geeky fan of everyone!

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About our Ambassador // Katherine Field is one helluva busy lady. In between holding down the fort as the Community Manager at the BizDojo, she is also back at university and helping to coordinate Startup Weekend Wellington. Find her on twitter as @kathfromwelly

• Australian Institute of Management, presenting the Outstanding Women Breakfast Series. Enjoy a delicious breakfast and hear modern day crusader Moira Kelly’s inspiring story. 17 May, RACV City Club. Booking essential.
• bwired, presenting a (free!) Google Analytics and Adwords seminar in Prahran, VIC on May 8. Key focus is maximising return on your investment. Presented by Head of Services and Google Adwords Professional Jason Healey. Bring your questions! Register here.
• Dvize Creative. Go from novice to awesome with Melbourne’s best WordPress training courses. Whatever level you’re starting from, we will show you how to wrangle control of your WordPress site. Earlybird special available until May 3rd.
• ExactTarget, bringing the 2013 ExactTarget CONNECT Global Tour to Sydney on May 15.
• Loves Data, presenting the Google Analytics User Conference in Sydney on June 19, and Melbourne on June 21.
• Victorian ICT for Women Network and the annual gala dinner on May 9 in Melbourne.
• Pause Fest Perth. Curiosity ignites progress.
• Web Directions and Web Directions Code.
• Key Person of Influence’s Entrepreneur Brand Accelerator in Melbourne on June 1.
• AccessibilityOz’s Accessibility Week in Melbourne and Canberra.
• SouthSouthWest.

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