ISAMBARD

I’ve travelled around the world on business throughout my career.  At my old company Deltec, we had over 30 different nationalities and even more ethnicities. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from establishing relationships with people from other cultures, it’s this; we have far more in common than we have differences.  People love their families and their home; they want their children to do well (while sharing amused bewilderment about teenagers); they want safe, vibrant communities and honest, effective government (everyone complains about the bureaucracy); and they value fair, reliable business partnerships.  Any differences can usually be managed with good manners and tolerance. On business trips, we often had dinner with new customers and business partners.  If it was an all-male social evening (in those days it usually was), I’d tell an old joke, “What are the magic two words for a happy marriage? ‘Yes, dear.’”  Everywhere, in China, the USA, France, ...

To mark The Year of Engineering , here's  Sydney Padua's envisioning of my personal engineering hero, the one and only Isambard Kingdom Brunel: If you haven't already read it, check out Sydney Padua's comic novel  The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage , featuring the founders of computing and other Victorian engineering heroes in all kinds of bonkers derring-do. ( T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.  are available from Zazzle). The UK Government has designated 2018 as  The Year of Engineering , and launched a campaign to promote  engineering in all its forms  as a career.  I still think of myself as a systems engineer; the skills I learnt have been invaluable and widely applicable throughout  my career  as an executive and director.

© Sydney Padua Today is Ada Lovelace Day.  Ada, Lady Lovelace , is widely recognised as the world's first computer programmer.  Born in 1815, Ada was the daughter of Lord Byron, the poet, who abandoned Ada and her mother just after Ada was born. Probably in reaction to Byron's "poetic madness", Ada's mother insisted Ada be taught "rational" subjects, and she received tutoring from some of the finest intellects in Britain. She was, by many accounts, a mathematical whizz. Ada became a friend and collaborator of Charles Babbage , and she devised the programs for his Analytical Engine.  Although Babbage's machines were never built, recent experiments have shown they would have worked, and he is regarded as the inventor of the first programmable general computer; hence Ada's honorific as the first computer programmer.  She described herself as an " analyst (and metaphysician) ". When I first started in IT, the gender ratio was much ...

On 10 September 2013, I was part of Fairfax Media's Great Debate . David Slack , Phil Veal and I put the affirmative case and argued (somewhat tongue in cheek) that New Zealand should face 3 uncomfortable truths - we're overcautious, inexperienced and mean.  Selwyn Pellet t, Davey Hughes and Greg Cross put the negative case.  Here's my pitch (without the bad jokes about the opposition): Ladies and gentlemen; ten years ago, the NZ government commissioned a series of industry task-force reports for ICT, design, food & beverage, etc,. They all said essentially the same thing: the biggest challenges facing New Zealand businesses aren’t exchange rates, investment capital, innovation, tariff barriers, infrastructure, or government regulation; no, the top issues are the skills and capabilities of our owners, managers and workers. Ten years on, nothing’s changed; last week’s Global Competitiveness Report said the same thing: many New Zealand businesses lack skills and ...

Spotted by John Fowler .