I regularly attend the Asiana Cooking classes. This is in an effort to become somewhat of a domestic goddess and be able to cook without the aid of a can or jar. So far my attempts without the backup support of two highly trained professionals have proven that I will probably never master the art.

We have now developed quite a cool routine of:

• Purchasing cheap wine
• Watching the cooking demo
• Racing each other to see who can finish first
• Compare our variations on the recipe (burnt bits, raw bits, extra bits, hot bits etc)
• Eat and drink waaay too much
• Head to the Hawthorn Lounge to partake in some marshmallows by the fire and a NEW development is Car playing (I have proven to be quite the card shark last night)
• New development 2. Is leaving the Hawthorn Lounge with the intent on going home, but instead winding up at another bar

But that is beside the point. The point is actually that both cooking class and the Hawthorn Lounge are what Seth Godin would call Purple Cows.

I have always wanted to open a bar because I think they are kind of done wrong. There is never anything unique about them, which is why down Wellingtons main drag, they open up and shut down with such frightening regularity and generally you don’t even notice a new bar in the place of the old one. They are same same.

The Hawthorn Lounge Changes this. It’s like stepping back into the early 1900′s, the bar tenders wear cute waistcoats, they have a big open fire and like 4 leather couches and card tables. You grab a yummy cocktail and a pack (or three) of cards and make yourself at home… Then dash to the fire every few minutes to roast some more free marshmallows. It’s so soothing and cosy and hidden away. Despite the fact it is kind of out of the way, the place is always jam packed (but comfortably packed because they don’t add more seating so you kinda just have to leave when you arrive and it’s full).

Most people I know bemoan the fact the only thing to DO in winter is go to a bar and drink away the dismal weather sorrows. Cooking class provides a cool other option. For $35 you get your food prepared for you, dishes done and a place to learn something new (like for example, if you go to a restaurant with us that offers Roti now, you’ll here ‘Oh my goodness, they are charging for this, I KNOW how to MAKE IT’ in loud obnoxious voices). It’s kind of quirky and a cool activity (I got tickets for Brooke and Ben for their engagement present). They are so popular that the classes fill up about 5 minutes after they are posted.

It’s cool to see such innovation on mundane themes.

I have been talking to the owners of dollspace.com about potentially working together.

This has led to a mild breakdown on my side due to it suddenly hitting me that I am not only NOT a teenage girl, but I know NOTHING about them. We have kicked into serious market research mode and spent half of Emma’s birthday Pot luck dinner quizzing people about online doll creation, avatars, sparkles and slideshows. It’s, like MySpace, totally beyond me.

Last night, post lack-of-concentration tantrum and pre freedom (which led to me wandering a beach in bare feet at all hours of the night and now having no voice), I made an internet doll.

I think I kinda got it.

What I am beginning to understand about teenage girls (outside of this weird fascination with growing up waaay to quickly and then offsetting that with playing with dolls online), is that they are vastly different from anyone who is NOT a teenage girl.

Usability doesn’t matter so much.

I am sad to say my doll is nude because I literally didn’t know how to dress her. I didn’t understand the wizz bang widgets that kept popping out everywhere. She is lucky to have a nose because adding her face had me stumped for 10 minutes. I am wondering if teenage girls like the fact that they have to spend the first week on the site learning the site. It makes it exclusive.

Your content is NOT king. Theirs is.

Initially I was appalled at the content on some of the websites I looked at. But then I realised the people adding it were the teenage girls. This is a boy free zone, there is no one to impress, the website owners aren’t putting words in their mouths, they come up with it on their own. I believe that the freedom to ‘own’ the website and make it theirs is key to teenage girls. You just can’t control their space. Which is probably why the hideous layouts on MySpace are so popular. No corporation told those people what their site should look like.

Girls will be girls

Despite all the media messaging, social pressure and everything else that is telling girls to grow up quick, they wont. If they LIKE dolls and fashion, they will hunt down ways to get involved in them. This actually reassures me a lot. I also like how the doll websites have dolls of all sizes and colours, big noses, small noses, weird eyes, silly expressions and everything that people tell you you shouldn’t be. (Don’t use my doll as an example, I fell into the trap of wanting a petty one). Unlike work related applications, this stuff is there for fun.

It was the first time in my life I’ve signed up for a user account and faced the fact I am too old to have my date of birth recognised. It was the first time I have played with dolls for years. And despite my embarrassment at admitting this, it was actually quite a hoot. I suspect this will become the new office fad.

I used to love reading Creating Passionate Users but now am sure that it wasn’t actually Kathy Sierra writing it at all, but Giles Crisp from iPayroll.

I LOVE that it only takes me 5 minutes a week to do my payroll. It’s ingenious. It’s an application I love NOT to use – it’s brilliant because in order for it to be uber useful, I hardly have to even login.

I recommend them to all in sundry because I love the service.

But for now that’s beside the point because iPayroll has the edge on customer service.

Giles just arrived with 2 complimentary tickets to a business growth seminar AND (most importantly) a box of chocolates in thanks for me recommending the service. We we’re all a little surprised. Actually we we’re shocked.

We really didn’t feel like we deserved the chocolates (But 15 minutes later they are all gone anyway – it’s an office full of girls). There service is so good, you can’t help but talk about it.

But the fact that he took the time out of his day to not only come past, but BRING US GOODIES has taken me from enthusiastic customer to passionate customer.

In fact right now, while I’m eating a chocolate fudge, I am considering changing this entire blog to my love for iPayroll.

I just didn’t think companies that good existed. I hope they are making a fortune.

I hate public speaking, which may sound weird given that in private, you can’t stop me. Over the years I have come to realise that the ability to clearly articulate your ideas in front of an audience is a key to success… You can quite literally have a average idea that is presented well, and it will be worth a lot more than a great idea without the charismatic unveiling.

It kind of makes sense, but is unfortunate for those of us who go weak at the knees at the thought of getting up in front of an audience. If you can’t talk it up in front of an audience, you create your own glass ceiling.

If you can… You can successfully cover up a lot of your weaknesses and have a very strong impression on people.

At the very least, in the next year I will be talking at a wedding. This has prompted me to figure out how to not feel like my stomach has turned into a butterfly farm for the weeks leading up to the event (I do not want to sacrifice my time as chief bridesmaid!)

So what are good techniques? I know it’s simply a confidence thing and have heard that:

• Going to a professional public speaking course can change your life
• Force yourself to just do it and it will get easier
• Just imagine you’re talking to a couple of friends

But am wondering if anyone has experienced a breakthrough ever and how it happened?

Everyone who knows me knows that I have been waiting for my sister to get married for the last 10 years (pretty much). And so has my mother.

Now it is finally time, it is amazing at what experts we are and how many plans we have up our sleeves gleaned from watching other people do it. I’m seriously considering becoming a wedding planner so as not to get overly overexcited about Brooke’s big day…. And the more I think about it, the more I think there is a MASSIVE gap in the weddings market (Which is uber lucrative!)

So if you are a wedding venue, a wedding dress shop, a catering company, a cake company, in fact ANYONE who is about to make a fortune out of the happy couple, please take note of my top 3 tops:

Offer them a drink

When people arrive, offer them a drink of bubbly or sparkling grape juice. Not that I’m a huge drinker :) but this is a CELEBRATION people and I think you need to get into the wedding spirit from day one. Especially because it’s normally the bride and groom and close friends and family doing this. Make looking at your company an event in itself. If they choose you, they will pay you thousands, so give them a drink! (and maybe even a card). They WILL remember you and they want to know on their wedding you will be looking after them, so start as you mean to go on.

Be BRIMMING with ideas

There is an AWFUL lot of organising to do, especially if you want everything to be perfect and YOU are the expert so give the couple a break. If you are a wedding venue, SHOW them photos of different setups, different themes, cool little extras people have (like the champagne fountain). Otherwise, it gets a little overwhelming. And once again, you are there to look after the bride and groom. This is like their moment in ‘Pretty Woman’ where they go into the shop with masses of money and everyone falls head over heels to help them. Every girl I know wants just once to have that feeling and this is the time… And every groom I’ve ever known groans at the idea that the ring they just issued results in a year of organising for one event.

We have been to one wedding dress shop and each person has one assistant devoted to their wellbeing. Ours was so nice and fun and fantastic, we had a ball. I felt sorry for the other girl whos assistant was so not into it. The latter will probably result in a couple of thousand dollar LOSS for the company.

Be connected

Yes people want to organise the perfect wedding, but it’s often difficult to know which cars to hire and where to get the best wedding photographer… So if you sell dresses, maybe you should connect (really connect, not just hand out business cards) with photographers who have made your dresses look fabulous in photo albums for years after the event and show them to the bride… Same goes for the music, the cars, the cake and the flowers. Have some connections up your sleeve of other companies that compliment what you’re all about

My friend roped me into collecting for the Blind Association Guide Dog Puppy Appeal on Sunday. Aside from it being an awesome charity, the idea sparked my curiosity about how you can make it MORE likely for people to give their money to a cause that may never affect them.

The Situation

We were located outside a supermarket on the edge of the central city from 10am until lunchtime. Most people were pretty relaxed, a lot of parents and grandparents brought their kids along and most people were just popping in to grab one or two items for lunch (There was also a massive amount who DIDN’T use reusable bags).

When we stood their holding buckets and saying nothing, most people simply avoided eye contact and made their way past. This was not good enough for us who had replaced a small, seriously cute child and his dog, who were both trained posers and could melt even the hardest heart. The competitive spirit clicked in and we made it our mission to beat their total collection amount.

Tactic One: Get A Puppy

We figured if we were collecting for the training of guide dog puppies, it would be better if we actually HAD a puppy. This would help us in 2 ways:

• People like puppies and want to pat them. When they do, they will feel guilty about not giving us money, and will therefore pay up
• Puppies are what the money is for and what makes this charity different so should be played up as much as possible

So we scored ourselves a puppy off a nice man who was going into the supermarket and our collection rate rose.

Then a real life guide dog puppy walker arrived with her dog and things went crazy for a while.

Lesson 1: Cute things sell stuff.
lesson 1a: Play up to your point of difference.

Tactic two: Say Hello

i was dead against this and the first time Verity tried it she was ignored. The second time, I was halfway through laughing at her and looked up to notice her victim digging into his pockets.

It was simply incredible how people kind of figure if they can just get past you, they escape you… But as soon as they say hi, they become involved and feel awful for not donating.

We progressed this tactic forward to making jokes and friendly banter, because that’s the kind of people we are… And at several points, we had quite a large crowd of people giving. We never harrassed people or were anything but friendly, we never actively made people feel bad for not donating, but by being hilarious (as we are), we managed to find their weak spot.

My personal favorite was when a man walked out with a case full of wine and claimed he had no money, so I said ‘no worries, we’ll take a bottle of wine instead’. He laughed then 2 minutes later came running back with cash he’d found in his car.

Lesson 2 Engage people, create a personal connection.

Tactic three: Make noise

At one stage someone I know from work came by and we started chatting. By this stage, the dogs had departed but we had three people and I think our sheer numbers drew attention to us. Nicola was a tad concerned that she was being mistaken for a dog because our hit rate shot through the roof when she arrived, but since no one wanted to pat her, I have to conclude it was just because we made more impact.

I also wonder if maybe it’s that whole thing of when you get one person to buy, it makes other people more likely to buy and since no one knew that Nicola knew us, they may have mistaken her for being absurdly interested in the cause which made them more interested.

Lesson three The more the merrier

Tactic four: Giveaways

Nicola very nicely gave us both a box of Smarties. While Verity scoffed hers, I used mine to bribe small children who are as drawn to lollies as they are to puppies. Men were another key group who got excited about the Smarties. We are thinking next year we will make ‘Puppy Dogs’ and have a sausage sizzle like event with mini hot dogs (Hense the uber clever marketing line of ‘Puppy Dogs’).

Lesson four Unless you are under the age of 2, stickers aren’t that cool a giveaway.

Tactic five: Have fun

Verity and I tend to use any excuse for a gossip session, and 2 hours of collecting, meant two hours of talking. Because we had so much fun with it and get way over excited about puppies ourselves, I do believe that our enthusiasm caught on. I am sure of this because the girl who replaced us was gone 20 minutes after we left, which makes me think she was getting nothing.

I hate seeing dull collectors on the side of the road, I hate seeing those really pesky ones who surround you, but if someone looks like they are having a good time and giving is a positive thing that makes you feel good, not a negative thing that you just feel guilty about, you are more likely to do it.

lesson five Positive reinforcement is better than guilt tripping.

Does anyone else think that small New Zealand business are often too focused competing with each other for the ‘sprats’ to think about combining forces to go after the Big Fish? I’ve had several conversations recently about how we are too busy ‘protecting’ ourselves from each other in our little pond to think that there is a massive ocean out there and we’d need to band together to flourish in it.

Enough of the metaphor but I’ve had a few conversations recently on the topic and think we kind of need to think of ourselves as divisions of a much larger company ‘Brand NZ Technology’. Tim Copeland from Silverstripe was talking at one stage about informally grouping a bunch of similar minded, slightly different service providers together and start anything from discussing ideas to making a joint marketing push in international markets.

I think it’s a brilliant idea. We’re all, in our own way proving how competitive we are individually, I’d be keen to see what we could do together. Anyone else?

We’ve got tonnes of cool stuff on and more in the pipeline and are after someone who wants to join us part time to help with the overflow and allow us to keep working normal hours :)

This position is ideal for a student who is excited about working in the web, wants a flexible working environment and is happy to learn some new things. We will never throw you in the deep end but really like people who want to get stuck in.

We’re after (in order of priority):

• Someone who is interested in the web as a potential career. If you aren’t and are just waiting for a job, we probably wont fit
• Someone who has experience (and it doesn’t have to be paid experience) either made their own website or worked on other people’s websites. This means you can use photoshop or your tool of choice and have basic to medium level of HTML and CSS. (I know everyone undersells themselves on this so it’s good to see the evidence :))
• Someone who is self-motivated (doesn’t that sound kinda dumb?). What I mean is that we’re a small company and we think that everyone should take ownership of their work. So you will be given responsibility for a project. We will help out and be there to back you up, but you can take full control and run with it.
• Someone reliable and with time management skills. We like to get our work done on time always, but we don’t like a mad scramble at the end and we also like getting stuff done early.
• Someone who is friendly. The office is currently a very nice place to be and we want to keep it that way, we like to have drinks on Fridays, we have now established a monthly ‘office lunch’ afternoon and we sometimes go on random missions to get out of the office.

If you’re interested please send me an email with:

• Any experience you have or a CV if you like
• Links to websites you have made and websites you like
• A little bit about your interests and anything else you think we’ll find relevant

Feel free to pass this on, we’re happy for someone to start ASAP and between 10-20 hours a week and can be totally flexible around studying etc.

Well for me anyway.

Anyone who knows me and my ENGAGED sister, know that when we get sad, or something bad happens, or we feel like we need a treat, we go shopping.

I now have a huge collection of earrings because of this.

However, last weekend, I was watching a sad movie and couldn’t bring myself to hit the shops (I’m actually only half serious, before you all accuse me of being a consumer-driven generation-whatever-I-am-er), so I hit Amazon.

There were tonnes of books I’ve been meaning to buy and I did kind of want to experience Amazon shopping, so I bought up large.

I still haven’t received my order (which is fine, I’m like at the bottom of the world), but I was talking about it to Emma and she told me in future times of sadness, go to Goodbooksnz.com, which is an NZ based online book store with no delivery fees and ALL the profits go to Oxfam.

Charities doing it wrong

I had to laugh last week while walking down the street. Every day is the official day of another charity, and all they do is head to every street corner and stand there looking glum. Often they wear these massive bibs that exclaim ‘STREET DONATION DRIVE ’08′ or something then in very small letters the actual charity you are donating to.

You either peer at them closely to find out if you want to support their cause, or give up and walk past to avoid invading their personal space so you can read about what they do from their chest.

Other charities station 2 girls on opposite sites of the same footpath so you have to funnel through them to get past while the exclaim brightly ‘hello, how are you?’. Even though I walk past them every day and they still don’t recognise me so am therefore mildly offended, I am shocked and amazed at how people blatantly just ignore them, like they are lower than sewer rats.

Neither of these seem a very sustainable way to draw positive, sustained attention to your cause.

Oxfam does it right

Yes, I have received a chicken for christmas, and I know quite a few people who tucked into their christmas turkey knowing their present was a goat heading off to a family where food is not taken for granted. Such a simple idea, but so successful. We feel GOOD giving Oxfam money because we are giving someone a present.

And now this website for books. They have totally mastered the art of offering people value for money. And I know charity is all about the gift of giving, but if all you do is give and give and give and know that it doesn’t go towards anything that makes anything that will become sustainable, you just want to give up giving. But Oxfam are starting real life businesses that mean we can make every day choices about giving them money.

It just struck me as brilliant. So use it.

Today is Easter Monday in New Zealand, it is also two days before one of my good friends heads off overseas and a chance for the old girl crowd to have one final lunch together.

It was a beautiful day so we wanted to sit somewhere outside in the sun and chose our restaurant based on it’s nice big outside area. The trouble was, while the inside part was empty, all the tables outside were full.

So we asked if maybe they would move another table outside (there was pletny of room). The waiter looked at us like we were demanding prima donnas, and said ‘no sorry.’ So we said “ummm ok, we’ll try somewhere else then.” He shrugged and walked away.

I wonder what kind of half-full restaurant is so happy with their profits that they will turn away 7 people on a day that they charge and extra 15% holiday surcharge, simply to avoid moving a table.

Or maybe the waiter was so dis-enchanted with his boss, he simply didn’t care?

I would be a little worried if the staff I hired at the front end of a restaurant were so disinterested in making sales they lost me about $200 in business in the space of 30 seconds.