A very good year

Most people will be finishing work for the year today or tomorrow, so this is as good a time as any for a personal year in review.

At year’s end, one instinctively thinks the year has gone by really quickly, but when I look back I’m amazed how much has happened this year, and in fact stuff I did in early 2006 seems like it happened years ago.

It has been, for me personally, a very good year. Lots and lots of highlights and few regrets. The year started for me in -30C in Canada and will end on a hopefully very hot beach in Golden Bay in ten days time. Highlights have been:

1) Canada. I had a great start to the year with a fun New Year Eve’s party in Canada, and all that time spent outdoors in -30C temperatures and feet of snow was made worthwhile with my mate defeating a Cabinet Minister to win his seat. Was a terrifiic experience.

2) Friends. So few of my friends live in Wellington now, it can be hard to catch up, but really pleased that I have had time to go to Taupo, Hamilton, Auckland, London etc and catch up with mates.

3) ICANN. Hosting the ICANN meeting in Wellington was a huge challenge with 700 delegates from 90+ countries, but it went superbly well. On top of chairing the organising committee I had the fun job of being the MC in the bar every night running quiz nights, insulting Australians etc. The feedback from participants was that we put on a great conference. As part of the original bid committee in 2004, it was nice to have got it all behind us.

4) Port Douglas. The perfect way to spend winter in NZ is to escape it for a bit. The week or so in Port Douglas was lovely. Great weather, great activities, great hotel and great companionship.

5) Reagan & Thatcher. Politically it doesn’t get better than going to the Reagan Ranch in July and then meeting Mrs Thatcher in November. Both incredibly rare events. But equally good was the time with friends before and after the events. The Las Vegas holiday afterwards was first class. Only downside of these international political events is my constant falling for people who live 10,000+ kms away.

6) Curia. It has been a real year of growth for my polling company. The diversity of work we do has expanded, as has the diversity of clients. Now got a good mixture of clients both domestically and internationally, and domestically they range from political to lobby and industry groups to outright commercial. Going to need to do a big hiring binge early 2007.

7) Media. The year started with me on TV One talking about telco issues from Taupo and this week also on TV One talking about digital copyright. But not just on Internet issues. I’ve been on radio as a defender of Southpark, a commentator on Agenda and The Panel and of course in NBR as a favourite target 🙂 I no longer keep count but guess 15 or so TV spots, several dozen radio and scores of print. Just as importantly I don’t think I screwed up majorly on any by saying something incredibly stupid or wrong!

8) Kiwiblog. Huge relief to find a new host for the blog (thanks Inspire Net) and to have some of the performance issues resolved. The ever increasing readership continues to startle me, and the positive feedback from many media and MPs on it helps keep the motivation going. The blog profile has also led to numerous speaking engagements at rotary clubs etc, and also an increasing amount of consulting work with corporates etc on their online communications programme. Plus there is work in progress on enhanced advertising revenues from the blog, and also a couple of other things I can’t yet reveal. Most of all I still enjoy doing it.

9) Family. Having a niece is very cool. You get to do the fun stuff. She is now three.

10) Legislation. I’ve had fairly major engagement with three bills this year, and minor engagement with a fourth, All have gone the way I wanted it, and I enjoy greatly being able to influence policy and laws, without actually having to put up with the crap which comes with standing for Parliament. As part of the InternetNZ team (and it is very much a team) I’ve appeared at select committees on the anti-spam bill and the telecommunication amendment bill. In both cases the select committee recommendations were incredibly close to what we were asking for, and significant changes from the draft bill. Also had great fun with the Keepit18 campaign which also proved somewhat influential.

So looking back on the year, there has been a hell of a lot of activity, so really my resolutions for 2007 will probably just be to have as much fun as in 2006, which again has been a very good year indeed!