Bill Bennett
Blue-sky thinking: Air NZ’s push to become the world’s leading digital airline
Had a whistle-stop tour through some of the innovations coming out of Air New Zealand as the carrier sets out its ambitious technology plans.
Deloitte Top 200 Awards: Diversity and Inclusion Leadership
Researching, interviewing and writing this story on New Zealand’s Deloitte Top 200 Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Award was fascinating. The nation’s best companies are doing a lot more than paying lip service to diversity and inclusion and, as a result, get better business results.
Here’s a story I wrote for yesterday’s NZ Herald:
Deloitte Top 200: Young Executive of the Year: Kate O’Brien - Air New Zealand
It is a truth universally acknowledged that ever house interior I seen on Zoom or in a casual photo taken for social media is way, way tidier than my house.
Or are they pasted in backgrounds?
I’m still in two minds about Mastodon and Twitter.
Mastodon has some friendly banter, but is distinctly third rate when it comes to ideas or sources for news stories.
While Twitter could never have been described as reliable, it is now even less so.
My weekly NZ telecommunications newsletter is out:
“The government has released Lifting Connectivity in Aotearoa, a paper that sets out its connectivity vision for the next ten years.”
If you’ve had it with Twitter and don’t warm to Mastodon, Micro.blog could be the answer. I like its vibe, but there are precious few other New Zealanders on the service. Which, I guess, may even be an attraction for some Kiwis.
Infrastructure: How Spark is moving NZ forward with 5G and fibre rollouts
Published in the NZ Herald.
Linkedin madness
Six years ago I quit using Linkedin and closed my account. I explain why in a blogpost.
My work as a journalist means I sometimes need to use Linkedin to research job titles and work histories. For a while I could do this without having an account. Linkedin now insists on an account before letting me see people’s profiles.
So I did what any sensible person would do. I made up a fake account using an annoymous email address and connect using a secure private browser.
For my fake profile, I used the most humble job title I could think of. And a seriously humble experience list. There are no connections. I list no qualifications.
Even this fake account gets the occssional connection request. But it’s the jobs that are “recommended for you” that crack me up. One of them that came up to day, was quite literally, for a rocket scientist. Or, at least, a scientific role at Rocket Lab in Auckland.
[www.theguardian.com](www.theguardian.com/football/…
World Cup 2022: England, Wales and others back down over armband row – live
This makes Qatar look worse, makes FIFA look weak and cowardly.
You know how on Star Trek, there are matter transporter machines that can “beam me up Scotty”?
How many gigabits a second do you think they’d need to use?
When the news broke about lowering the NZ voting age to 16, my immediate, knee-jerk reaction was: “that’s not wise”. Then while I was mentally sorting through the reasons why I thought it might not be wise, I realised they all apply equally to voters at any age.
I moved from England to New Zealand in 1987 with my wife. At first it was going to be a temporary stay overseas, but within months we were hooked and had started a family.
People sometimes ask if I ever get homesick.
The answer is, not really. If I’m homesick for anything it would be for life as a child in the Home Counties during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Farewell WordPress
It’s time to move on from WordPress. Because I’m not a developer, I now find the PHP code incomprehensible. Back in the day I could at least follow what was going on and fix errors even if I could never write a line of new code. It has become too complex.
But the real issue is Gutenberg. To use a cliche, it’s not so much that I’ve left WordPress, more that the old WordPress I knew has left me.
I’m going to keep the .com account, but let my managed hosting account die when it comes up for renewal. I’ll use this site for my personal blogging and have moved billbennett.co.nz to Ghost, which has some marvellous newsletter features.
It’s strange that this planned move is taking place just as everyone is bailing out from Twitter, but it may not be a co-incidence. I feel both are at some kind of turning point.
Some people have already left Twitter. Others are watching and waiting. I’m not jumping yet, but I am preparing an escape route with billbennett.micro.blog, Mastodon NZ. and there is always billbennett.co.nz.
Now you know where to look if you can’t find me here.
As a useful rule of thumb, any film that has “Christmas” or “Love” in the title is not worth watching.
Any objections?
Impressed at how many people on social media are experts on Brazilian politics. I could be the only person willing to admit that I know next to nothing.
For the last four years we bought tons of chocolates in case kids came to the house on Halloween. No-one came. This year we haven’t bought anything… what’s the betting it will be busy tonight?
Congratulations to the Pīwauwau New Zealand’s bird of the year for 2022. Such a pretty bird.
I voted for the Albatross.
Got up extra early on a wet Monday morning because there’s a heavy workload this week. Clicked yet when MacOS told me there’s an upgrade and… it took forever to download even on my fibre connection. Must have hit the server at a demand peak. Now my early morning energy has gone.