The NZSA has a fantastic, unwritten history of its members helping each other to succeed. It all starts at our monthly events, with members sharing their stories with each other. While the evenings are a lot of fun, the real value comes from being engaged and participating as a member. By helping and supporting each other, many businesses over the years have benefitted enormously from their membership in the NZSA.

To build on this over the last year, the NZSA has expanded its presence and participation in the broader tech community. This has created opportunities for the Executive Committee and association members to build their networks, get discounts on industry events, and participate in various initiatives that are making a difference in NZ. The Executive Committee in particular has had a number of exciting opportunities, including invitations to judge business competitions, collaborating with the Angel investment community, and working with ATEED/Immigration on their recruitment drive to Developer Week in California.

In June we will be electing the Executive Committee for the coming year. We are exploring a number of new initiatives, and if you are interested in playing an active role in the NZSA, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Roger Ford
President, NZSA

Auckland - tech’s best kept secret
Auckland NZ at Developer Week 2017, San Francisco 13 - 15 February.

ATEED led an Auckland, NZ collective at the recent Developer Week Conference and Festival 2017 in San Francisco, promoting Auckland as ‘tech’s best kept secret’ to attract skilled software professionals to live and work in Auckland.

A variety of business and industry partners showcased the Auckland tech sector and career opportunities on the ground at Developer Week including Vista Group, Xero, Industry Connect, together with Immigration NZ who provided visa support and advice. Vacancies within NZSA member companies were promoted, along with GridAKL, the AR/VR Garage and Techweek.

There was strong interest in AKL NZ as an emerging tech hub from the 1,500 who registered for Hiring Mixer. Approximately half of all candidates had first time thoughts around New Zealand. A number of active leads were generated for all companies attending the event, and businesses are now following up with prospective candidates.

ATEED has also developed some useful tools for members looking to recruit offshore:
Talent Attraction Resource Kit
Smart Move PDF

Pam Ford from ATEED representing NZSA at Developer Week 2017.

Keep a lookout on Twitter, LinkedIn and in your inbox for announcements regarding the next NZSA dinner on the 9th of May, to make sure you don’t miss out on tickets. Save the date in your diary and we look forward to seeing you there on the night.

Hold the date for An Angel at My Table – our annual event An Angel at My Table is scheduled for Tuesday 8 August and last year’s event was sold out. This event is one of the NZSA’s most popular, so put the date in your diary now. A call for entries will go out in early June, with entries due in early July.

Recent Events

Peter and Will soon realised that they had cracked the formula to increasing cinema attendance. This experience highlighted the need to empower exhibitors to understand and engage with movie goers via technology that was made specifically with their industry in mind.

Today, Movio is the global leader in marketing data analytics and campaign management software working with leading cinema exhibitors, film distributors and studios. Movio’s mission is to revolutionise the way the film industry interacts with viewers, increase box office revenue and improve the quality of content produced.

Thanks Will for sharing the Movio story and lessons learnt from growing a global cloud-based analytics and data platform for the movie industry.

It must work as the company is now over $1bn in revenue and has had a CAGR of over 11.5 percent for over the last decade.

Brett posed the question as to whether our organisation is optimised for a world that no longer exists. A good question and one that Datacom had considered. An important component of the answer is culture, which trumps strategy and tactics. Brett persuasively suggested that business leaders must act more like orienteers rather than having a 10 year master plan which is out of date as soon as it’s written.

LatiPay is the only compliant solution that provides customers access to the five main Chinese e-wallets WeChat, Alipay, JDPay, BaiduPay, Tenpay and nineteen main Chinese Banks. Latipay charge no fee to merchants because LatiPay’s strategy has been to sacrifice margin in order to quickly achieve scale.

Leigh and his small team have been focussing on gaining recognition and credibility in the Chinese market by securing awards in Australia and the States alongside developing partnership arrangements with Australian and Chinese banks.

Securing Singaporean venture capital funding has also been a priority since LatiPay’s inception. Leigh described the road to securing venture capital funding as being similar to travelling on an airport travelator – you get carried along and once you get on, you can’t get off, you just have to keep on going to your destination.

Thanks to these members who brought guests to these events:
Richard McLean, Roger Ford, Gavin Lennox and Jane Smallfield.

We’re delighted to welcome these new company members.

Axis Direct - specialist Xero developers. For more information visit www.axisdirect.nz

Engage Solutions - Engage evolved from a specialist HR practice to meet the growing desire for organisations to take control of their recruitment efforts, rather than rely on traditional recruitment agencies. Find out more at www.engageonline.co.nz

Workbench International - Project Management Software designed around a modern, mobile first framework. For more information visit www.workbenchcentral.com 

Jazz Software Ltd - formed in early 2013 to manage the development of MANASYS, they were later approached for an IBM version of MANASYS. Although Jazz draws on the proud legacy of MANASYS, it is a completely new product with new and improved features. Visit www.jazzsoftware.co.nz for more information.

QuasarScan Limited - Quasar Scan is a complete cardholder data scanning solution that can help organisations in their PCI DSS compliance efforts. Visit www.quasarscan.org for more information.

And a warm welcome to our new individual members:
Amandeep Kaur, Xiang Yu and Alex Ossyanina

Tech Week to be biggest ever tech event in New Zealand

Techweek’17 will be the biggest week New Zealand has ever seen or experienced in technology. From May 6 to 14 Techweek will help the push by NZTech for New Zealand to become a digital nation and to demonstrate our tech pedigree to the world. More than 100 events catering to a wide variety of audiences including schools, non-tech people, tech-heads, start-up founders, international and local investors, business leaders and political figures are planned.

Details of Techweek’17 events which will take place all over the country here.

Expert predictions for software developments in 2017 from IT Brief.
What is in store for the software community for 2107?
IT Brief received expert comment from Burke Holland, director of Developer Relations at Progress, to gain some expert insights into what we have got ahead.

• Continued growth of JavaScript and the rise of TypeScript
• Visual design tools will make a comeback
• The rise of the throwaway apps
• Web components are still a long way off

Read more detail on these predictions here.

HGM - Globalisation of personal information - your rights, your choice
Leveraging our personal information is core to Facebook and countless other social media sites. But where exactly is our personal information stored and what can it be used for? Read more

IBM - Detecting Cancer Early
Kiwis and Aussies love the outdoors, especially in the summer sunshine, but with that comes the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. With melanoma, the most life-threatening, early diagnosis is critical to improving survival rates. The work being done with IBM Research to improve the identification of melanoma could help saves the lives of over 3,500 people each year across Australia and New Zealand. Read more

Ubiquity - Explaining Marketing Automation
A three-part series uncovering and explaining marketing automation and how it is changing the way businesses interact with their clients. The provider, the client and the agency are all examined. Read more

UKTI – Policy paper released UK Digital Strategy
The Government of the United Kingdom launches its UK Digital Strategy, making the UK the world's best place to grow a digital business and helping every British business become a digital business. Find out more.