Canterbury Software Cluster held its annual Summit last week, and I managed to get along. There were acouple of speakers the same from last year, however as I had not made it last year, this held no problems for me.
There was a great line up of experienced individuals all openly providing insights into their up’s and down’s as they have fought the battles needed to grow a successful company here in New Zealand. There was a lot of conflicting opinions as various differing strategies were shared. I think this was important to note; in the sense that there really is no right or wrong way to growing a successful company here in New Zealand. There is always going to be different timing pressures and different growing pains for each individual company, as they seek potential partners or Venture Capital, and whether to look for that capital offshore such as from the USA, or from locally here in New Zealand.
If anyone missed the event, I would recommend joining the Cluster and going next year. It was valuable to be able to meet and network with Stuart Wilson from Modica Group, Michael Elwood-Smith from GOA and Melissa Clark-Reynolds; not to mention gain some great insights from Richard Clarke from polyMEDIA, Nick Gerritsen from CrispStart and John Blackham of XSOL. While we don’t have that many “heros” here in New Zealand to look towards for advice on growing Emerging Technology companies, these few people have done remarkably well within the short life span that is ‘New Zealand Digital Technology’.