Lance Wiggs

2012 Update: Cadimage Group

I’m the independent director at Cadimage, who sell a range of architectural and technical software in New Zealand and Australia, and who develop and sell tools for Archicad.

2012 was an excellent year for Cadimage, fuelled by strong demand for Archicad, which dominates the New Zealand market. We saw sales from the South Island and Christchurch drive the first half of the year and Auckland kicking in strongly in the second half. This speaks to the amount of work for Architects, underpinned by the Christchurch rebuild and Auckland economy. It’s a pleasing leading indicator for construction in general.

Cadimage had just completed merging with our South Island distributor early last year, and early this year we announced the acquisition of Encina, a UK developer of architectural tools and consultancy. We’ve formed Cadimage UK, and will add the Encina tools to our own suite, improve our tools with the Encina framework and be able to develop much more quickly in the future.

The group also markets Solibri, a tool that quality checks BIM models. BIM models themselves are Building Information Models, which combine all of the digital files into one virtual building.

Cadimage and Archicad support OpenBIM, a non vendor specific file format. Another product we market, BIMx, allows engineers and architects to present the BIM model to clients with a fly through presentation.

Solid Edge is an engineering mechanical design tool, while sister product FeMap performs finite element analysis on the designed parts. That’s engineering speak for calculating all of the forces inside a model under stress to see when and how it breaks.

The sale and product support processes are where Cadimage excels, and we put a lot of energy into making sure that our very smart and technical end users are well trained and well supported. The sales process is personal, and it seems that each customer is known well.

I’m proud to be associated with Campbell Yule, Tracey, Andrew and the team at Cadimage. The company is going places, and we expect 2013 to be a year of continued growth, and we do have another card to play soon.

2012 Update: PLTech and the ARDA Engine

I’ve been working with Lee Ter Wal Design to assist Kerri McMaster and PLTech with the launch and commercialisation of the ARDAEngine. ARDA takes the output from the biometric sensors that athletes wear, such as heart rate monitors, watches and iPhones, and applies very intelligent interpretation and analysis in real time. It’s been built on the back of years of experience from elite coach Jon Ackland (he’s worked with Team NZ, the All Blacks and top endurance athletes), who wanted to automate the time and effort he spent pouring over detailed charts and data. He succeeded, and the ARDA engine brings elite coach-level feedback to all athletes, and does so in real time, rather than after the fact in a lab.

There are a huge range of fitness biometrics products, with the best and most popular from the likes of Garmin, Nike, Adidas, Strava, Runkeeper, MapMyFitness and gym equipment manufacturers. These all and others that use sensor data to produce beautiful charts, but struggle to provide meaningful coaching feedback during training. The classic example quoted to us is when an athlete starts running up a hill, their heart rate will naturally rise as they do more work and the heart-rate zone monitor will alarm, telling the athlete to slow down, perhaps to a walk. That’s not how hill training works, as that extra effort is a requirement. The existing applications likely don’t even know you are on a hill, and it turns out that it’s a hard problem to integrate biometric, elevation, meteorological and historical data. PL Tech have done so, and have patents on the way the ARDA Engine works to do this.

To put it into a box, we see that there is a large gap in the market:

The ARDA Engine can fill the gap, and in conjunction with existing and forthcoming products will deliver a huge step change in the field.

In use it changes everything, giving coaching and analysis based on your training plan (if you have one), previous records, current activity and the environment. I can’t describe too many of the capabilities, but it does give advice specific to the person exercising, and will adapt as you, your goals and the conditions change.

We see three main segments for core ARDA Engine, and as well we have the ability to get data from cameras and transform it into instant insights for coaches and TV producers.

The first segment is the software-only players such as Runkeeper and MapMyFitness that use smartphones and perhaps heart rate monitors to capture data. Smart phones have an increasing array of sensors, and smart companies are using these to creep into the space formerly occupied by specialist technology providers like Garmin. These companies are usually venture-backed and expanding quickly, perhaps searching for the right business model. The ARDA Engine will provide them with a premium product that allows them to deliver genuine benefits to their customers, and capture revenue in return.

The second segment is hardware technology driven players, such as Garmin, Polar, Timex and Suunto, and also the gym equipment manufacturers. Garmin are the clear leader in this space. These companies are the best at providing accurate data, and provide access to that data on the web. However the players in the first segment are charging towards this space, and devices like the iPhone, while bulky, are far more accessible and easy to use than dedicated watches and so forth. We see that the ARDAEngine technology will help these firms differentiate their products from others in this and other segments through maintaining a technology gap.

That gap is increasingly hard to maintain, as while the biometric fitness and quantified self market has been growing strongly for the entire industry, it’s a technological war that requires a constant stream of new product releases. The giant in the space is Garmin, and their revenue and income by segment chart speaks to the importance of the fitness segment for them, as a major contributor to growth that is offsetting the decline in their marine segment.

In this second segment all the companies have everything to gain, and to lose, and the ones that can get and stay ahead will reap billions in enterprise value. We believe that the ARDAEngine will provide that advantage.

The third segment is full service apparel, footwear and equipment providers, including Nike, Adidas and Asics, and led for now by Nike. These players have the websites and much of the technology of the previous segments, but can also use biometric technology as a way to lift sales of shoes and apparel. They started by partnering (Adidas with Polar) and by keeping it simple, as with the Nike+. The Nike+ story is well known in the industry, with, for example, page 5 of this slideshow showing Nike’s US shoe market share lifting from 47% to 57% in a year, and to 61% thereafter. The original Nike+ product was fairly low tech, but elegantly simple, and it opened up an entirely new market. Nike and Adidas are steadily improving their technology, and have always had the lead in usability. Nike in particular are increasing the pace of change, and give the Nike+ range a very high profile on their website and retail stores. The have a range of products including the Fuelband, apps, integration with the iPod Nano and a new basketball product. Adidas has the MiCoach range, but while impressive they are currently somewhat buried on their websites and in retail stores.

One magic part of ARDAEngine is that new customers can simply start running, with no setup required, and the coaching will begin. For these firms we see that the ARDAEngine will allow them to maintain the simple and elegant user experiences while delivering genuine benefit to their customers. This will open up new markets and expand sales for their biometric as well as clothing and shoe products. We also see that just as the technology players in the second segment are being squeezed from the smart-phone software players, they must also be very nervous at the prospect of these third segment industry giants taking over their space.

So there it is.

We are a long way down the track with PLTech and potential partners, sharing the experience of using the ARDA engine with a wide range of firms, many of them mentioned above. The reactions to test-runs (a run where the tester wears our device) have been overwhelmingly positive, with amazement the most common response.

We also get confidence from attempts from some companies over the years to replicate the technology themselves – and failing. From where the industry is today, the ARDAEngine technology is perhaps the Arther C Clarke definition of magic. We see that we will help partners hold that advantage for a few years, through IP protection and further development, and we want to partner with firms that are able to bring it to global market quickly.

I can’t say too much more as we are running a process.

Why Dell is being taken private again

Dell used to set the standard for computers and ecommerce, but has fallen on such hard times that the founder is taking it private again. I’m not going to comment on the products, but while they have come back a little, just have a go at the buying experience, which is woeful.

Home Page: Yes, flash is a roadblock and there is no call to action.

The Small Business page. We have to select what sort of buyer you are from the homepage, but I’ve never sat comfortably in any of the boxes.

I have no idea what any of these products are, nor did I really believe that large boxes were still being sold.

The Home Laptops page, compete with a popover. This page is much improved, with filtering to help you find the right size, speed and so forth. There is still too much going on though:

A page in the middle of the buy process for a laptop: Hard to describe how uncompelling this is, when I just want to buy a shiny computer.

The Review My Summary (whatever that means) page: The person with the headset is floating gently down the page, while the page itself cannot help trying to foist even more stuff on me.

Overall Dell has complicated the buying experience, adding a series of items over the years that probably looked like they each added revenue, but collectively subtracted from the overall propensity to buy. They need to start again, shoot for a simple unified experience, perhaps of a much simpler product line.

Apple shows how it should be done: Simple design, simple naming convention, one marketplace and no distractions:

Is your buying process a delight? Have you removed every single unnecessary step and item?

2012 Update: Define Instruments

2012 saw me involved in a wide range of activities – which has always been a personal target. However I did experience one serious clash of priorities in September and October, and client work suffered, but otherwise this is how I like it. Here’s the first in a series of posts updating progress.

I worked with (or am invested in) a wide range of companies, from a person with an idea and early stage start-ups, through to well funded start-ups, growing SMEs, established companies and large corporations. I keep finding common lessons, and also learnings that can be taken back and forth across the range of companies.

Highlights

Define Instruments, who design and manufacture process control products and do electronic contract manufacturing, had a strong year. We expanded the factory by 50%, got most of the way through the ISO9001 process, got control of the inventory and finances through a new system. The team consolidated the rebranding done at the end of 2011, and overall the company has grown up a lot in the last three years. We have a number of enduring client relationships and we have some nice developments in the pipeline for us and them. We paid a decent amount of payroll, GST and income tax this year, rewarding the government for earlier technology development funding.

During the year we launched a range of Transmitters that convert outputs from sensors to a range of industry standard inputs and the Zen16 monitoring and control station. Early sales of these are really pleasing, and we are expanding our global distributor network, with South Africa the first major market outside of Australasia, and eyes on the UK and China markets as well.

Aside from our own products, Define helps design and manufacture control systems for NZ and Australian companies, most of who are producing high technology equipment for the export market. We also have a full service contract manufacturing, sometimes including design, often including procurement and always with ISO 9001 standards. If you’d like to know more about any of this then get in touch with rolla@defineinstruments.com.

2012 Update: MyTours

MyTours is a web application what lets tourist authorities, museums and others create city walks and museum tours for iPhone, Windows and Android. We’ve been in business since 2009, and have helped our customers build over 50 different applications, with more in the pipeline.

From the start myTours was a company where founder Glen Barnes and the cofounders have put in time rather than money. We’ve seen steady organic growth and now have a small but reasonable bank balance. We see our biggest constraint to growth is the amount of time spent on sales and marketing.

So we have just made our first hire, welcoming Lee on board 4 days ago in a sales and marketing role. We are all looking forward to seeing what impact Lee will have, but are confident that he will unleash a steady and growing stream of clients.

So while 2012 was a fairly steady year, it did deliver us enough money to make this next step, I anticipate that the 2013 story will be much more fulfilling.

If you’d like to create some mobile phone apps from your existing or new contact, then check us out, and get in touch.

Thanks for the marvelous posting! Now find some positive work.

There is a particular hell reserved for people who hire people to place blog spam. It’s not a deep hell, like that reserved for the text scammers who preyed on love-struck kids, nor is it the especially fiery hell reserved for the people who believe that pistols and automatic weapons have a place in cities and homes. But hell it is, and for three reasons.

The first is for their persistence. Despite excellent spam filters, these comments manage to become published, briefly enough, but in a way that requires me to delete many of them manually as I see them arrive. For all the editing of the words to slip past the spam filters, it’s obvious from the email addresses and URLs that the comments are from spammers. The worst thing is that I am sure that some of these comments have permanently slipped through to this blog, and I can’t muster the energy to go back and remove the disease.

The second reason is for their abuse of the English language. A few examples

I will always bookmark your blog and will come back later in life
Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam responses?
I want to encourage you to ultimately continue your great posts, have a nice holiday weekend!

And the final reason is for the deceptiveness of the comments, which generally try to make the blogger feel like someone out there cares and request a reply. That means the blogger ends up is engaging with a spammer, and who knows where that can end. Examples:

We absolutely love your blog and..
I enjoy what you guys tend to be up too…
Great site you have here but…
I’m definitely enjoying the information…
Fantastic post but…
I love reading through your blog and look forward to all your posts! Carry on the outstanding work!….

Do you ever run into any internet browser compatibility problems?
Howdy would you mind letting me know which hosting company you’re using?
Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back to your website?
Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with the same subjects?

Beneath the fold is the complete list, pasted by one of the poor sods who go around blogs to spam them. It’s entertaining seeing them all at once, and yet saddening as well.

I’ve always imagined that people posting these comments, when they are not scripts, are sitting in tightly packed internet cafes in relatively poor areas of town in relatively poor areas of the world. Someone pays them a little to post their pre-written drivel on as many blogs as they can using semi-automation. If you are someone in that situation reading this then Hi.

Instead of blog spamming, why not…..?

Please, as you post your spam comments for your paymaster, remember that you are being destructive towards the creativity of others, which is a chilling effect on the eternal war against entropy. So here are five starter ideas for you (and your boss) to also earn money, but to do so in a more positive way:

Sign up to Mechanical Turk or similar and do some (positive) work that has been requested
Offer your services as a personal assistant, designer or developer on one or more of the any sites out there. Make sure you can do (or learn how to do along the way) what you say you can.
Create a blog of your own, and blog anonymously about the blog spammer game. Parlay that into an ebook on how to avoid attracting the attention of spammers, and how to play them when you do. Charge for the eBook
Write an ebook on how to get by in your town or country, showing foreigners how to behave like locals and the best places to see the non-touristy stuff. Sell it online for a few dollars per copy. Non touristy stuff could be internet cafes full of people like yourself, safe walks in poor neighbourhoods and so on.
Market your services as a guide to your local area through a well designed professional website and the promise of a personalised tour. Charge up front if you can, and meet them at their hotel or the airport. Get a driver along, and charge a lot more than the locals do, but promise and deliver an honest, hassle-free and genuine local experience that only an insider like yourself can deliver. Offer a range of tour types, including one for geeks, one for people who want to volunteer and so on.

(The complete list of blog spam is below. Please don’t click if your tolerance is low)

Continue reading “Thanks for the marvelous posting! Now find some positive work.”

Tim Berners-Lee speaks: what can we do in NZ?

Tim Berners-Lee presented this evening in Wellington to an InternetNZ sponsored event, supported (and thank-you) by the Department of Internal Affairs (the NZ Government CIO), Chorus, Catalyst IT and Google.

Sir Tim made the point that just as the US government reaches beyond their borders, so too can we, and we can lobby offshore, change laws here to show and spread the benchmark.

His key points, as I saw them, and suggestions from me for NZ action.

1: Keep standards open – which means free, unencumbered by licensing requirements and created in a process that anyone can participate in. ISO standards cost money, which means that they are less likely to be adopted. Web standards move much more quickly and spread through the world extraordinarily quickly.
LW Suggestion: Move from ISO to Open standards for everything. Fund the domestic and international ISO organisations so that no standards cost money.

2: Open source software has a similar effect of accelerating development and propagation of a technology. It is free, and the source code available to review and extend. It was a critical feature of the rapid spread of browsers through the world. It made testing and adoption by individuals, corporates and governments very simple.
LW suggestion: Mandate that all software developed using NZ Government finds would be open sourced, so that other projects can build on the original code

3: Open access is allowing free access to scientific peer reviewed articles, currently locked up behind expensive paywalls (and cumbersome systems) with only the largest educational institutions and their communities able to obtain access. Removing the paywall and making these freely available dramatically increases the speed of innovation and knowledge propagation. The paywalls are particularly galling when the research papers were originally funded by Government money.
LW suggestion: NZ could mandate that all government funded research ever conducted here should be made available for free, including source data. Place it in a central database with access through both browser and API.

4: Open Government, covered in open data.

5: The new open web platform is HTML5, which is designed for dynamic experiences rather than static pages. HTML5 replaces components of Flash, for example, which is a locked proprietary system that causes poor browser experiences. Using HTML ensures that the content is “on the web”, and inherently searchable and shareable, whereas closed Apps or Flash is closed. TBL sees a digital divide between those people who can program and devices that can be programme, and those people and devices that cannot. He sees that devices should be able to be programmed, and should be opened as this accelerates innovation. He accepts that locked down systems have advantages such as less viruses.
LW suggestion: Mandate that all phones must be sold unlocked, and that removing DRM and formal shifting is acceptable for personal use.

6: Open Data, an area that TBL speaks about a lot, starting in 2009 with a year of talking about putting data online. This applies not just to governments, but also to private businesses. The UK leapt into this, and NZ has as well. TBL understood that all of our mapping data was available, and while much is the local council data is locked away behind prohibitive pain and dollars.
Releasing data unleashes innovation and increases transparency of and accountability for the Government. The key is to release the data only, filtering only for top secret concerns, and to allow others to use it as they will.
LW suggestion: Mandate that councils all release their mapping data for free, and quickly. It’s currently a market locked up by QV and Terralink, and the costs are prohibitively expensive for other websites. Wellington City Council has released theirs, and watchmystreet.co.nz is the result – wouldn’t it be great to extend this beyond Wellington?

7: Open internet and web. We pay to connect to the internet, and we should all be able to communicate. It should be non discriminating, an allow innovation. Its ok to shape traffic for traffic management, but do so in a fair way, and certainly never to advantage one site over the other. “If Governments get control over the internet then they destroy it”. TBL is strongly against spying, and blocking, accepting that some extreme activity should be monitored, but only with discarding data from non affected people and other strict controls.
LW suggestion: Codify this.

Selling your house the third way with 200 Square

Selling houses is painful – and while some folks really enjoy the challenge and do so privately, almost everyone uses a traditional real estate agent.

And gets ripped off. Not that Real Estate agents are crooks, but the industry is ripe for a shake up. The fees are extortionate for the work involved. They insist on expensive advertisements in print, while the traffic to Trade Me Property and RealEstate.co.nz indicates that the action is happening elsewhere.

Enter 200 Square, and enter in savings. Not many people think too hard about the current fees, which average about $20,000 for NZ, but are a lot higher for more expensive houses (e.g. a $1m house would be about $31,000). That fee still needs to be earned and paid by you, and chances are it isn’t going to be in a sweet one-off deal like the agent just made.

200Square fits in the gap between the expense (and sometimes the incompetence) of traditional real estate agents, and the pain and uncertainty of private sales. Sellers and buyers get the advantage of the recently upgraded real estate industry protections and the marketing and negotiation experience of agents. However they avoid the pain of dealing with old-school agents and paying their poor ways of selling and high industry standard fees. 200 Square is a web-first real estate agent, and uses the internet and SaaS software tools to increase the effectiveness of sales while lowering costs.

I’ve just invested and have joined the board, joining co-founders Grant and Nik Wakelin.

It’s a surprising industry for me to join, as I am not a fan of real estate investment. But I’m very happy to be part of a team aiming to disrupt a sleepy business. It will be a long journey, as real estate agents are untrusted, a profession ranked last on this 2011 Readers Digest survey, and climbing to 6th-last in 2012. Let’s not get too deep into why agents are not trusted, as virtually anybody who has bought a house, and most who have sold, have sorry stories to tell.

My own observations are that many agents add very little, or even subtract, from the sales process, whereas there are a handful in each city who are great. Those agents who are great have to support the not so great ones, and all agents come with a very high cost way of doing business, and need to demand high fees from sellers. The traditional industry has to support offices in prime locations, retain sales staff with flash cars and time to drive around, and blows seller money on newspapers and glossy brochures for marketing. Those print advertisements are an order or two of magnitude more expensive than the internet ads, and while the pictures are pretty and the rhetoric amusing, any serious buyer is checking out one or both of Trade Me and Realestate.co.nz. Those print ads are also about the agency rather than the property – quite different to how it works online.

200 Square is deliberately focusing on improving the parts of the sales process that matter – the valuation (using geeky techniques along with the professional individual touch), the sales material and the negotiation and close – generally over the phone and email. We (I can say that now) are progressively automating the bits that can be automated, and the business is designed to have inherently lower operating costs.

But the best thing about 200 Square is that they sell houses – 75 of them so far, about $30 million worth, and with very low pain and fees. There are a growing number of very happy sellers who are spreading the word to their neighbours and friends, fueling our organic growth. We are also doing deals with larger sellers of houses and winning business from traditional agents. The prices help – a quarter or less of those traditional agents, and so do the results.

So that’s it. If you are selling your house, then save $12-25,000+ by using 200 Square. I’m looking forward to many years of increasing sales and a shift in how the industry operates in response.

Lower tolerance

People working unsafely. People denying that anthropogenic climate change exists or is even a problem. Copyright owners who refuse to sell their wares here and then complain when they are pirated. Teacher unions who refuse to consider measurement and paying for performance.

We have too many firms who are content with systematically exposing workers to fatal risks. When we walk past a building site and observe unsafe acts, should we just walk on by, or should we do something?

Kim Dotcom is getting a pass because the MPAA companies are complaining and sending lawyers, rather than doing something about the root cause. Should we give them any airtime until we can buy content, here in NZ and globally, for reasonable prices and a reasonable length of time after initial release?

We are blessed with a great education system, but is rejecting out of hand any suggested way to manager and improve performance which is taken and adapted from business acceptable? What if it is backed by research?

Tens of thousands of scientists agree there is no debate – should we focus on solving the climate change problems and implications, or continue to debate with the handful who are (often sponsored) deniers? Should we open the debate on Darwin, like it seems parts of the USA have?

Enough. Let’s be less tolerant when the facts and cause deserve it. We don’t have time to be otherwise.

Let’s take photos and report unsafe work practices, fight industries who use lawyers and history rather than reinvention and innovation to protect their turf, and steadfastly steamroll people who cannot accept science consensus or help from outside.

And if you have a cat, an increasing number of people will look at you very strangely if you intend to get another.

Update:
The reverse is true. We should embrace organisations and individuals that are genuinely attempting to change. When the MPAA gets it right, when educators are fighting to improve and when people are curious about what to do rather than denying the science, then we should welcome to discourse and interaction.

Fatally unsafe at speed

Nice picture huh. all those men in orange putting on quite the frenzied display as they erected a stage for the Laneways festival in Wynard Quarter, Auckland yesterday.

You might want to click to zoom in on this next one, as the picture is large and the text small. The text in red refers to the major unsafe acts that this single picture reveals.

To summarise, while all of the workers were wearing high visibility clothing, and everybody working at heights wore a harness, most of the harnesses were not actually being used. The worst, and it’s hard to get worse than working at heights withut a safety restraint, were the two gentlemen cantilevered out over the front of the structure. One of them is holding himself on with just his legs, while using both hands to work levering a piece of metal. At least there is nobody underneath him if he falls, so only one fatality would result.

I stood and watched for a few minutes, and was frankly shocked. It all seemed like an elaborate game, conducted with very high energy and yet with no regard for human lives. At any large Australian plant any staff or contrator on site who walked past this theatre would immediately stop the work and it would not resume for quite some time, if at all. At plant’s I’ve worked in these folks would be sent home immediately, and lengthy investigations would ensue to ensure these acts never happened again.

I’ve stopped work on a few occasions myself, and have even done so on a handful of times when I observed fatal risks. At almost all the plants where I did this the underlying problem was fixed and the work was redesigned or the person re-trained (or removed) to be able to be performed safely. Nobody likes to be responsible for killing people, or to allow for it to happen in front of you, or to be the GM to have to front up to the widow and family, and front up they would.

I’ve circled the workers who I feel, in just this photo, are exposed to fatal risk.

I count eight out of the 14 workers on the structure, from this photo. I think that is some sort of sick record for me. Those other workers don’t get off responsibility either, as every person visible is responsible if one of their unsecured mates plunges to his death. It’s not ok to work with people who put themselves at risk, and it is certainly not ok to put yourself at risk in front of your peers and, especially, juniors.

What is going on?

There are four underlying issues. The staff are not living the safety value, the organisation is not safety driven and there is no demand from their customer nor the regulator for safe acts.

The Unsafe Staff

It’s clear from above that the staff are not concerned about safety, beyond quietly clipping-in in response to some guy taking photos (that’s what a few did). Safety appears to be a secondary consideration at best, with the speed and perhaps quality of the work coming first.

The Unsafe Organisation

It appears that their organisation, Camelspace, also does not prioritise safety. None of the senior staff have an explicit safety role:

While that isn’t necessarily condemning evidence, a search of their website returns just 10 links to the word ‘Safety’, and none of them are on any of the front pages and none in a compelling way. ‘Safety’ is, for example, referenced in a 2010 Quality Statement, which also brags “its record is impeccable with zero Lost Time Accidents (LTA).” I wouldn’t brag. When I see unsafe behaviour like that combined with a zero injury rate, it is often a sign of underreporting, and sadly often an early indicator of a fatality. I’d hate for a fatality to be the trigger for the introduction of a safety culture into Camelspace, but that’s often what happens in other businesses.

The Unsafe Customer

The purchaser of Camelspaces services, Laneways Festival I guess is also at fault, as is the owner of the property, which is perhaps Auckland Waterfront (I do not know). They have not, clearly, insisted on a safety-first approach, and been willing to help enforce it.

I am not at all certain, but this pair of individuals are the foreman (identified to me by a worker) and perhaps a client representative. A safety conscious client representative does not walk onto a site in jandals, just as a safety conscious foreman would wear high viz and a helmet, and never stand near people working at heights.

Another problem was that I was inside a barrier of cones (not a barrier for people, just cars) when I took this picture. There is no way that any of us should have been where we were standing without PPE, induction and agreement of the supervisor. (PPE is protective personal equipment).

The client, not the scaffolding company, is liable for, well, everything. This from the standard terms of trade:

LIMITATION OF THE SUPPLIER’S LIABILITY

68.) The Client shall accept full responsibility for and shall indemnify the Supplier against all claims for injury to persons and/or damage to property caused by, or in connection with or arising out of, the use, erection, dismantling, storage or transportation of Equipment (be that performed by the Client or its nominees or by the Supplier) however arising including the negligence of third parties and against all costs and charges in connection with such claims whether arising under statute or common law.

The Unsafe Regulator

I’m not sure what is going in, but recent reports have made it clear that in New Zealand our safety regulations are soft compared to Australia and other jurisdictions. Even those regulations are often well underneath what the larger firms require. For all I know what I observed may well be legal and deemed safe here, but if not, then it was also clear that the risk of a regulator observing and reacting negatively and with force was essentially zero.

That’s not good enough. And let’s place the majority of the remedial effort here not on the staff, nor the scaffolding company and nor the customer, but on the absence of an effective program for national workplace safety culture. An effective program means education and coaching, but it also means an effective enforcement program with some very sharp teeth for egregious breaches. It clearly does not exist or if so it is so limited in scope as to be meaningless. About 100 people die each year from workplace incidents, about a third as many as on the road. Wake up New Zealand.

Health and Safety seems tobe part of MBIE, so perhaps Stephen Joyce can be the one to effect the change. It’s a smart thing to do for business regardless, as companies with decent safety processes are invariably much better run as well.

What to do

On site I had a chat to the foreman. He was very receptive, which is great considering I was just a punter watching. We talked about high viz, working at heights and about harnesses. It’s good to focus on the key risks. His response was that every worker was trained and had a harness if working at heights. He also said that Camelspace had the responsibility for the safety of the build.

For me the workers were otherwise very competent, and well trained on safety, as working from heights and using harnesses is not for the naive. But training and experience is no substitute for thinking about safety before you do any work. So as a worker, clipping a harness onto a safe point may take a few seconds, and is frankly a pain, but please accept that it is a necessary condition of doing the job and returning home to your family and mates safely.

For the suppliers, I suspect that it was just chance that this one particular supplier was the one I saw, please factor the extra time and energy doing the job safety takes into every contract. If you are being beaten on price, then sell yourselves on the safety-first approach, and make sure customers are aware of the cowboys out there. Perhaps contact your peers and start a safety-first mandate (not a pricing cartel mind you) across the industry, so that you are all competing on the same level. For larger jobs like this, the executives should insist on a safety officer on site, and make sure that one of the top two or three roles in the company is safety, that safety is the first topic of every meeting and that anyone can and should stop unsafe work. I need to say more then you need to learn more.

For customers, it’s your role to insist on a safety first approach, understanding what that means by working with the best, and being prepared to pay for it. Use someone on your side who knows this stuff, and if it’s part of your business to build lots of things, then have someone in the senior team or board who knows it as well. Specifically, if you are event organisers, then the person responsible for safety should have overview of the erection and dismantling processes.

For the New Zealand Government and other regulators. Please, Please Please. If you don’t understand what good is, then there are plenty of kiwis with Australian and South African mine and plant experience who do, so reach out to them. I’d be happy to help.

One last photo. That’s a scaffolding pole in middair there, but as this was bit later, there were a few more harnesses on.

Nobody is to blame for this, and a witch-hunt is not how we solve the underlying issues. Instead we need to systematically understand the root causes and work to fix them. So my apologies to the workers, the company and to their customers. But we have to start somewhere.

InternetNZ CE: Vikram, Jordan and you?

Vikram Kumar [his new blog] announced his departure from Internet NZ earlier this year. He leaves behind an impressive legacy, highlighted for me by three very successful NetHuis. Vikram pushed hard to get these off the ground, working through objections of some within Council, including me. The tipping point for me was when he changed the name to NetHui from Internet Governance Forum. I was initially wrong as of course the NetHui results and engagement from a much broader stakeholder group were superb.

Vikram and the internal team with external help delivered a series of papers, briefings and submissions on a wide range of topics, including copyright law, UFB, and even the economic impact of the internet. He helped understand the concerns of, and put the facts as well as views based on our policy principles to people within Government and across industry, and lifted the bar for InternetNZ as we seek an Open and Uncapturable Internet.

Today we’ve announced that Jordan Carter will step in temporarily as the acting CE, and we are searching for a permanent replacement. Jordan has done some excellent work for InternetNZ already, in a variety of roles, and comes in fully ready to continue the good works. He is, however, an elected member on the board of the Labour Party and was on the party list for the last two elections (though much too low for someone of his talents). He’ll put that work aside for now and be formally inactive while he focusses on InternetNZ. He’s not saying or thinking about what happens next, but I for one would really like to see him high on the list and in Parliament in the next election.

We need a new leader

We are now searching for a new Chief Executive to run Internet NZ. It’s a relatively small team, well funded with an annual budget of around $3 million, but ability to spend more if you can convince the council and if NZRS and DNCL continue their great work. Our objects are lofty, and sometimes the amount of work that is done is daunting, but it’s a great challenge for the right person to take up and extend Vikram’s legacy.

Speaking for myself, I’d like to see us copy and extend some of the .SE work, fighting for and supporting financially a goal of 100% internet access for New Zealanders and for visitors here. I’d like to see InternetNZ be the go-to place for all statistics and facts on the Internet here, leading by example, and supporting things like the excellent WikiNewZealand site to present data well. We should be holding ISPs and Chorus and Government to account for average speeds, data caps, mobile coverage and prices, all of which we need to work through to get that 100% access. We should be smartly finding ways to increase revenue through a series of fairly priced and compelling products so that we can spend more money on achieving the objects. Finally we should continue to lead by example of how to operate a top level domain in a fair and open way, and continue to keep the work of DNCL and NZRS separate, and support them as required.

But that’s me. There are other councillors as well, we all have different and overlapping perspectives and part of the CEs job is to capture all of that. It’s a well-functioning group though, I have a lot of respect for the experience and talent around the table.

Interested? Get in touch (lance@lancewiggs.com) to find out more or have a chat. I’m part of the search committee, and we intend to release job descriptions and so forth soon. In the meantime there is a wonderful networked infrastructure out there to help you find out more. To start with you can see our accounts, our work, the Council documents and of course a trail of publicity.

Pro bird or anti cat?

Gareth Morgan has creating a bit of a kerfuffle in New Zealand by going public with an education campaign about the dangers that cats place to our native birds. They are not alone in the destruction of habitat, eggs, chicks and adults, but cats are the only introduced predator that are kept as pets.

New Zealand was a bird paradise before waves of humans arrived from about 1000 years ago with our associated habitat destruction and pests. Our native birds had never developed predator defense mechanisms. That meant a trend towards being fat, drunk and flightless (rather like humanity right now). The plump Kereru, example above, feast on berries that ferment and make them tipsy, and when they fly it’s with plenty of distinctive wing flapping noise. They are amusingly vulnerable, and now largely protected from human harvesting.

I commend Gareth for going public with a campaign, and to see what he is trying to achieve I cannot recommend enough going to visit one or more of our accessible pest free sanctuaries which are either islands reached by ferry or enclosed within pest proof fences.

They are:

Tiri Tiri Matangi, which is a regular boat trip from Auckland and a great day out
Zelandia in Wellington, which is just before Karori and reasonably priced if you buy the annual passes
Kapiti Island, accessed by regular boat from Paraparaumu, which is 40 minutes North of Wellington. You can stay the night for the full experience, or just walk around and picnic.
The Sub Antarctic Islands – best accessible with Heritage Expeditions.
Muangatautari, near Hamilton is a pest free fenced enclosure which I have not visited yet

Gareth has deliberately put himself out there by starting this debate, and an estmated 1.4 million cas in NZ, that’s a lot of upset owners. Hopefully this will cause many of them to think twice before getting another cat. In the meantime I’m glad we are not yet reframing the debate into Pro-Bird and Anti-Bird factions, or so let’s not frame it as Pro-Cat or Anti-Cat either.

Between Electric bikes and motorbikes

I’m a motorcyclist and a cyclist, but between the two is a market that is going to transform the way we thing about each – electric bikes.

The traditional electric bike is bulky, clumsy and looks like something you would be embarrassed to see your bulky grandmother on.

Times have changed.

This Trek bike is really just an updated version of history – it’s a beefed up bicycle with electric bits added on. Useful but ugly.

I took the Pedago shown below for a test-ride. It’s beefy, heavy and has design features that make it and the rider look old and stodgy. However the utility is incredible. That motor makes cycling up hills ridiculously easy, so it would transform an excursion over a big hill from a workout to a pleasant stroll. It will also speed up any longer commuting journeys, so that you’d be more likely to leave the car or motorbike in the garage. I almost bought one on the spot, but I suppose it was lucky that we cycled there rather than took the car.

Offshore there are more of the same ilk, from the likes of Gepida, but also some new bikes which should make a lot more people reconsider electric cycling. This Bavarian Electric Touring Bicycle below has styling based on an old BMW R series motorcycle. It has a legally sized motor (under 300 Watts is an NZ requirement), carbon and aluminium bits and an impressively large 200 kilometre range. However the equally impressively large price of US$10,000 means that while I want one, I shall not be getting one. Imagine a version with decent panniers though, and then think about touring NZ.

Specialised have launched but not yet released this sport electric bike, the Specialised Turbo. Designed by their own engineers who are speed freaks to be the fastest legal electric bike, it brings new levels of design refinement to the category. I wouldn’t say it’s very practical, but a whole lot of fun on a longer commute on a dry day. If I make it to Europe this year one would certainly be on my shopping list. But the price was also prohibitively steep at €5,500 (let’s call it NZ$9,500). However give it time, and some competition, and that price will drop within reach of ordinary humans.

Across in the USA Optibike is doing similar design integration for the off-road bike sector. The bikes are fast, but at 1100W and 850W they are all too powerful to ride legally on the road in New Zealand, and that’s sad. If you have an offroad commute or want an easy way to exercise your downhill demons, then this (I’d take one) and the next bike are worth looking at.

The Stealth silent bomber s one of three bikes that a bunch of mad Australians are making. I’ve asked, but there is no word on New Zealand distribution. The bikes seem to have more motorcycle than bicycle DNA, and the design is not as refined as the US ones above. But the power, oh the power. The bikes are in 3000W and 4500W options, and the top speeds and suspension capabilities reflect that. Think of them as light enduro motorcycles, and wish that they were road legal and available here. I’d get one in a second if I lived near a bunch of dirt.

The rather unrefined looking design below is the Folding Lazerbike, listed at $2100 in New Zealand. It’s the importer’s favorite bike, and at 23Kg and with a 250W motor it is relatively light for an electric bike, but has legal power. The battery behind the seat design makes their standard bikes seem too long, but it seems to work for the folding model.

23 Kg is the limit for Air New Zealand domestic check-in, so one idea is to take the bike with 2 pannier bags. Take one pannier bag as carry on, put the battery into the other with more stuff and place the bike into a lightweight bike bag (carried on top of the rack.) The folded bike and panniers should be treated as ordinary luggage, and it would mean simple fuel efficient travel (aside from that flying bit). Aucklanders could take the bike on the bus on the long trip to and from the airport, and, Dunedin aside, be pretty set once they landed in the main centers. That commuting thing wouldn’t work for my last minute approach of course – far from it.

The A2B Metro below isn’t legal here, at 500W (750W peak) output. The range, 20 miles, seems short, and the maximum speed is also limited to 20mph, so it’s a bit silly that this sort of bike is not legal in New Zealand. That dual suspension isn’t really necessary in New Zealand metro situations, but in some US cities (like Washington DC) the road surfaces are shockingly maintained.

The Whisper bikes, available here, use a front drive approach, separating the pedalling from the drive. I would imagine that the temptation to forget about pedalling would take over for many. But electricbikes.co.nz also sell two kits to retrofit a front wheel drive system to your own bike. The Daahub in particular looks good, though even some pretty clever tweaking cannot remove the front wheel drive and tack-on nature of the solution. But there is an unused Surly bike in my collection that this could work well for.

Summary: Bikes for the rest of us

It’s still very early in the development cycle* for these. But already it’s clear to me that electric bikes will be revolutionary*, but that we also have a few problems to solve. (*sorry)

If you have decent hills or distance to traverse on your commute, then electric bikes transform exercising into an excursion, the equivalent of turning jogging into walking. This is particularly useful in Wellington and Auckland, where hills and distances play a big part in daily commutes. A great electric bike means that we would be far more likely to leave the car behind and take the bike, and taking the bike is an enjoyable thing to do.

The more practical bikes have capacity to carry plenty of things on panniers, including rain gear, a decent lock and work clothes and materials. The less practical ones are a great way to experience the outdoors, getting up and down hills with ease, and extending your playtime.

The battery life and range problems appear to be essentially solved. As battery density steadily rises and the bigger players start making in high volumes, we can expect to see prices drop and ranges increase further.

Meanwhile several new classes of vehicle are being introduced. There’s the electric mountain bike, the long range tourer (thats the $10,000 one), the electric racer, and the bicycle that is a motorbike. We can expect to see more vehicles in the range, as I suspect we are at the horseless carriage stage of development.

Sticking points

There are a few sticking points though. International laws are a mess of differences, and inadequate for the emerging future. In New Zealand we have a simple 300W limit, under which bikes are “not a motor vehicle”. But how do we cope with bikes of, say, 450W which are far closer to bicycles than motorbikes? Right now they are treated as mopeds, which are bikes with a maximum speed not exceeding 50 kph. Mopeds, however, need riders with heavy motorcycle helmets, and mirrors, a horn and brake lights. You have to have a car or motorcycle license to ride one, which is reasonable. They do not need a warrant of fitness, or to be registered, which is superb. But mopeds cannot use bike trails, which seems to push them into a very dangerous decision between high speed roads and slow speed bike lanes, on in particular is the one between Auckland’s North West motorway and parallel of the bike path.

So there is a gap in here between motorbikes and bicycles that we are not adequately addressing. For bikes that are designed to be or ridden at 20-35 kph, requiring a motorcycle helmet and other heavy paraphernalia, and forbidding the use of bike lanes means that they will never sell. That means more cars on the road.

And in general the requirement for helmets based on speed capability seems silly. Any of these bikes can exceed 50kph down a decent hill, as any half decent bicycle can. Should the elite groups of cyclists riding around Taupo be forced to wear motorcycle helmets then? That’s clearly absurd, but a middle ground is called for.

What I’d like

I’d like to see a nuanced system that accepts that a full motorcycle helmet is not necessary (or practical) on light bikes, where only electric bikes with certain more aggressive attributes are subject to the moped regulatory system. The learner motorcycle system was switched way from engine size limits to a more nuanced approach, and we can do the same for bikes I’d like to see intermediate helmet requirements, like ski or skater helmets for intermediate bikes.

I’d like to see a system where any electric bicycle bought into NZ can be easily adapted to legally ride on the road, under one of the three regimes.

And finally yet first, I’d like to see tens of thousands of these on the road using a network of separated bike lanes, and for all of those lanes to have speed limits, and some to have dual speed limits.

Next steps for New Zealand

Practically we cannot change everything at once. However here are three things we could do to speed the transition to electric:

1: Buy and use one – seriously. These are a lot of fun and will get you out of your car for errands and commutes that are much further away than you’d think. They are also serious fun.
How much fun would it be to sell your car, and buy two or three electric bikes, pocketing the difference? I’d live to walk downstairs and pick a bike each day – not that I commute.

2: Lobby to fix the laws for the gap in the middle, and if you are a politician, how about raising a private member’s bill? Be sure to add the electric bike effect to any cases for bike lane networks too.

3: Build your own. Between Sheppard Industries (Avanti) and Yike we have clearly demonstrated the capability to design an incredible range of electric vehicles for our terrain. Lets get going.

Lance Wiggs posted on your timeline

Facebook on facebook, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs.

Facebook for me is a destination for my Twitter feed, and I seldom login.

One result is that I get these strange emails from Facebook, that tell me to login to read my own feed.

It’s all very meta, and what’s more this post and the tweet that it auto-spawns will also get posted on Facebook, and I guess I will eventually get a reminder to read it. None of this makes me want to spend more time on Facebook.

Another preventable accident

Every accident is preventable, and when you are on two wheels you become acutely aware of that reality. While we all have responsibility for the safety of everyone around us, we are also responsible for our own safety.

Felix Marwick is ~~banged up~~ <update: alive, but hurt and in pain – see comments below> but thankfully otherwise ok after this incident at the base of Karori hill. He, like many cyclists now, records video while cycling. I highly recommend this.

Felix versus car, and the NBR article.

The accident is clearly the fault of the car driver, who moved off a Give Way intersection on to a main road, causing the impact with and injury to Felix.

Was it a preventable accident? Of course it was, as every accident is preventable.

Let’s dissect the events.

In this first frame Felix is coming off Karori Hill, and approaching several hazards. We can clearly see the two cars approaching the base of the ramp ahead. It’s a known hazard for any local, and has been the cause of accidents and near misses for years. Both cars are light SUVs, which means families, distracted drivers and people who are less likely to see you. I’d be drifting well right at this juncture.

In the frame below Felix has drifted to the right of his lane, to avoid the hazard of cars suddenly turning left into the road ahead. This is well done.

He is riding in a bus lane and thus far safer than the busier car lane. Bus drivers generally see cyclists and motorcyclists more than than car drivers, simply because they are more experienced and better drivers. Generally does not mean always however.

We can still see the cars waiting at the foot of the hill, and the driver of the car should see Felix. I’m not sure whether or not Felix was wearing hi-viz clothing, but this certainly increases the odds (not nearly to 100%) of being seen.

Felix is not drifting totally right into the car lane, likely concerned about being hit over by cars following from behind. However as he is near the 50km limit, he has the ability (and always has the right) to merge right without causing too much stress to the cars. I would generally time my run down the hill to do so each day.

The risk of cars turning left (or across from the right) into the side road on the left has now passed, but the next risk is traffic coming on or off the ramp, and it is approaching rapidly.

However things are getting tricky, as both cars on the ramp are hidden from view. I would be braking here and deciding on my options, or just veering right.

There are now three options – maintain speed and veer left or right, or slow down and make sure to attract the attention of the car driver. This is where Felix made the wrong call.

Let’s not be harsh on Felix – he made most of the right decisions, and certainly all of the legal ones. It’s also really easy to second guess afterwards, but we don’t know what else was going on around Felix, nor what other experiences he has had at the same intersection. I would imagine, for example, that he could have received considerable negative feedback and dangerous activity from drivers of cars when he previously merged into the car lane. This would cause him to pause before considering merging right.

Almost any other day the driver would have seen him in time, and stayed where they were. However as cyclists and motorcyclists we cannot be content with coping with near misses each day, which are defined as events which with worse luck turn into injury or fatality causing accidents. Unfortunately the state of the roads, the experience of drivers and the ever changing conditions all conspire to throw several potential near misses at two-wheelers every day. Auckland is a particularly dangerous place to ride, and the incidence of near misses is one reason that I have curtailed my cycling activity sharply.

Our collective job is to reduce near misses to zero. As riders that means keeping a much longer and wider horizon of vision and ‘what-if’ analysis than drivers. As drivers it means the same, and thinking about pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, and not just cars. As road transport engineers and councils it means finding and eliminating the key causes of near misses and accidents.

Indeed the real underlying cause of this accident is the road set-up, and we need to ask ourselves, how did we as a society allow Felix and the driver to end up impacting? What could we do to remove the risk entirely? How can we do so at reasonable cost in dollars and in commuting time?

The only complete answer is physical separation of the colliding vehicles. Cyclists should have access to a cycle lane that cars cannot cross into. Similarly drivers should never be placed in a situation where they have to take calculated risks to cross intersections.

In this next frame the options have dropped to two, and Felix should have taken action. I’ve been down this road a lot on two and four wheels, and have chosen both options more than once. I recall hair-raising rides as a teenager up the left hand side of the ramp, struggling to maintain traction in the corners, and also an evasive move where I went well into the opposite lane to avoid an oncoming car.

This is the moment of truth. Really there are no options as turning left will be very hard to pull off. Veering right is easier, but we don’t know what is there.

The sun is always an issue at this time, as Felix should have known. It’s a contributing factor. This moment is not a good memory for anyone.

At the awful moment of impact we can see that there was still a very late chance. If Felix had been further to the right, then he may have evaded, and would also have been more visible to the driver. If there was a car immediately behind Felix, and the colliding driver was timing their run to enter the opposite lane just as the car went by, then Felix would have been wiser to earlier drift in behind the following car and get cover that way.

But it was too late.

Watch the video again. What would you have done? Could you have prevented the accident? Felix made some very good decisions, but ‘some’ is not always sufficient.

I’m very happy that he is ok, and hope that he does not mind us using this as a case study. I write this in the spirit that every accident is fault free, and that every accident is preventable. We should be learning from each near miss, let alone accident, and seeking to obtain Zero Harm.

What should happen

I’ve said it before – we need to grant authority for the Transport Accident Investigation Commission to thoroughly investigate all road accidents, and not just other modes of transport. They have an impartial, blame-free approach and seek to understand how we can prevent similar accidents occurring in the future. They don’t have to investigate every accident, that’s too much, but a sample of their choice each year.

We also need to continue to advocate for proper cycling lanes, and not rest until we have complete physical separation of cars and bikes.

And finally we need to all take personal responsibility for our own safety as well as the safety of others. Take a defensive driving course as a start, but the best learning comes from a commitment to constantly learning while on the road. It’s dangerous out there, and we all need to take care. And plonk a video camera on your bicycle, record these incidents and blog them, as Felix has been doing. Over time this will help change attitudes towards cyclists and make it safer for everyone.