It's a Rodfest out there…
by Ben Pujji
The 90′s gave us some gems (as I recall), not least of which was the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, based on a variation of the concept of the small world phenomenon (thanks Wikipedia). The theory behind the game was basically that everyone in the world can be connected by a very small chain of acquaintances.
Well 13 years on, I reckon it’s tme to revist this, only this time locally. My theory is that everyone in New Zealand can be connected to Rod Drury, through no more two acquaintances.
If the name of local Wellington hero Rod Drury rings a bell, it’s possibly because we are in the middle of a Rodfest.
I first encountered Rod by proxy, a legendary designer from my second-life defected to said Rod in the middle of 06. I must admit, the tiny sliver of information I gleaned about the project at the time sure did sound intriguing (what a killer opportunity – I’d have gone too – go Gray) and it was only a matter of time before our corridors were alive with whispers like “… he’s gonna be the next David Heinemeier Hansson … except he’s already loaded…”
Almost overnight it seemed like everyone I met was talking about This Rod Guy – actually, a whole raft of people seemed to come out of the woodwork who felt it was important to mention publicly (with one of those one-up-man-ship looks) that they, actually, had known about him for a while – didn’t I? Didn’t I remember him from such and such or so and so. Well, no, I didn’t. And so it began.
Not to be out-done I decided to become something of a Rod Authority, I sharpened my Mighty Mouse and headed for Google. I read about:
- His amazing: “… archiving software … specifically to help customers track down porn.” (Here) hehe – ok my edits
- Playing Polo on a Segway against Woz (Here)
- Some of his earlier exploits (Here)
After a while I discovered Rod’s Blog and duly (not Drury) subscribed to the feed. Since then I’ve been kept updated by the ultimate authority.
All very nice, but hardly what I’d call a Rodfest.
The Rodfest started to set in, in my opinion, late last year.
- TradeMe had long sold, (Rod’s involvement was more talked about than ever, Sam still hadn’t replaced his aging Icebreaker top, Gareth had tripped on his conscience and offloaded his scratchings, and had clearly poached an ex-TradeMe designer, and was earning a good sideline income etc)
- Aftermail or Quest Archive Manager 3.0 as it had become, was out of his hair,
- Xero was digging down (though at the time still called “Accounting 2.0″, we’ll put that down to a lapse in excellence)
- and of unbeknownst to many of us, many others in the Drury Net were hatching 2.0, SaaS ventures
When someone coined the term Silicon Welly I knew the Rodfest was official. Despite the appallingly humiliating brand, many of the SW collaborators (all with interesting propositions), turned out to be members of the Drury inner-circle.
When Rod and Xero co. started to get their recent mentions on TV, and Vincent slammed out a winner in Idealog – the Rodfest reached epidemic proportions.
Despite this trend, it wasn’t until Webstock Mini that Rodfest was indisputable – every talk was Rod’d. It was then I knew I had to write about it. I vote we change the name to RodStock.
Now everyone knows Rod, somehow. Just last week an old lady dropped her purse of coins in front of me on the street. After I explained how Xero would surely soon create a consumer offering, and her mobility scooter could likely get a feed from the Xerosumer API, and that then she’d be able to have the 2.0 virtual cash experience she’d always dreamed of, she scoffed and told me Drury was too busy rarking up the New Zealand Telo industry, helping Wellington City Councillors do their job, talking to small groups of budding business-people or fashionable NZ players at Anti-conferences, or blogging about it, to consider her SaaS needs, let alone design an interaction that would be up to her high standards. Of course I told her she was nuts, and had possibly lost her marbles when the purse got dropped. Then I left her to get back to picking up her coins.
OK, enough malarky.
I’ll be honest – I am inspired by the Drury success. I probably wouldn’t buy a WWRD bracelet concept based on the popular WWJD concept, to be fair, but I do read his blog, watch the papers, lose colleagues to him, have friends working closely with him, really admire his attitude, his success, his car, and so on.
All this does raise an interesting thought though – with all the … dare I say it … ‘hype’ around Wellington’s booming web innovators: Who really has the goods – and who is just along for the ride? Xero clearly rules, but what about the myriad of seemingly pointless web-apps that are cropping up in this town. Not to pick on one in particular, but what about PlanHQ – that is very unusual (simple app, but that doesn’t really simplify anything). What will become of these others? Can’t blame them for trying though – and besides, what do I know? (very little, for those of you less familiar, big mouth though…)
Oh, and back to the whole Kevin Bacon thing – I seriously think just about everyone in New Zealand must know him through one or two of the people they know. And besides, it’s Rodfest, no-one will know if you don’t, make that shit up – they’ll believe anything if you say Rod liked it.
Rock on Rod – keep it up. Love your work.
[update] This post now has comments enabled – thanks Dony for the heads up…
Comments
Hard to justify a comment here Ben, but I\’m just the sort of person who\’ll give anyone a break, and it does seem like you\’ve got some genuine positive energy here, just maybe a little misdirected. Your article seems to centre on the fact that you want to be more connected to the hi-tech community in Wellington/NZ (which is great!) but then you seem stuck on the idea that the whole industry is naively expecting to ride on the coat tails of Rod for it to magically happen only to fall on their face, which is not only inaccurate, but runs very counter to your desire to be more connected. Support 1st, be constructive in your criticism 2nd and then see if things change as a result, I really think you\’ll find it a lot more satisfying than sitting on the fence churping from a distance.
Silicon Welly, some like the name some don\’t, I\’m open to whatever works, just thought I\’d do something, which is Always better than nothing, is yet another thing thats taken hours and hours of my time to create, and money from my self funded business, and if you\’ve got a way to improve it, a better name, anything constructive, you can just click that little link their and give me a mail, maybe you\’ll find out a little about whats happening in Silicon Welly and why its perhaps not simply an unsustainable love of Rod driving it all.
Theres a real industry here made of years of experience and investment from many people, Rod\’s at the top of the pile after his recent success following years of other accomplishments, and his role in the community is what it is, he\’s making a difference, and is backing people who perhaps like himself some years ago, were on their way somewhere but not quite there yet and needed support. Rod\’s about picking the winners before they win, this is what we need a lot more of instead of people just getting on the bandwagon once they have already won.
I\’m not sure what sort of response you\’ve got from this post, but my 1 recommendation to you is if you want to connect with people like Rod and the others in his network, perhaps you\’ll stay away from attacking others and focus on You. What you can do to assist. I, like every other entrepreneur around the scene have spent years and 10\’s of thousands of dollars making ground, building experience and businesses, failing, doing everything it takes to get further down the path to success, like someone liek Rod already is, and are always open to people who also want to be part of the way forward.
Ben, I remember writing the initial comment I posted here and while theres a few things in there i wanted to say, In the end it was too heated as it caught me at a bad time, was always supposed to be positive,
cheers,
tim.
I was just doing a cleanup of my blog and deleted 327 spam comments, nestled nicely in the middle were these gems. Thanks for your views Tim – perhaps you took me a bit too seriously (understandable since though we work less than a kilometere or so away I have yet to attend a SW event). I must add, you seem to be making particularly good progress of late – how about a \’where I\’m at\’ post for the as-yet-un-converted? Cheers