From the Editor

By Matt Cooney, October 16, 2006 @ 1 am

“It was totally seat-of-the-pants stuff,”says Trade Me development manager Rowan Simpson, recalling the auction website’s early days. Seven years on, Trade Me is now at the hub of an emerging Internet boom in Wellington, and looks set to be joined by another creative IT hothouse. As Idealog went to press we had just heard the news that Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Microsoft are to open a game development studio in the capital. Wingnut Interactive will create a new type of video game, Jackson told the BBC: “Technology is at a point where we can blend a lot of film storytelling with interactive entertainment.”

We often hear that the video game industry now makes more money than Hollywood (although I suspect the movie moguls simply have better accountants). But developing modern games is hard: Wingnut Interactive is going to need some seriously smart people, skilled in the black arts of 3D visualisation, physics modelling, software optimisation, and so on, not to mention the artists and scriptwriters to bring a make-believe world to life. Wingnut Interactive, just like Weta before it, will draw top-flight talent from around the world and, like Trade Me, give rare opportunities to clever New Zealanders.

There is a common theme running through this issue, as creative Kiwis work together and learn from each other. Yet there’s still much to do. In New Zealand, venture capitalists say there’s a shortage of ideas; inventors and entrepreneurs say there’s a shortage of venture capital. We have an astonishing number of small companies but few of them have a mindset to take on the world. We’re content to praise the heroes of the moment like Jackson and Sam Morgan without asking where the next big thing is coming from. We don’t readily recognise the contributions of the next tier down, like the television and Internet entrepreneurs featured in this issue. We still work alone too often and don’t build networks. And, as recently-returned Kiwi Nathan Torkington points out on page 63, we’re not educating our children in some skills the creative economy demands.

Still plenty of work to do, then—and Idealog wants to be part of the solution. This issue is our sixth and marks our first year in publication. In that time we’ve recorded our first circulation audit (New Zealand net circ is 12,221, not far off the National Business Review); charted our vision of a creative economy that includes fields as diverse as architecture, advertising and agriculture; published the work of some of our country’s best photographers, writers and industry experts; and introduced our readers to a string of creative Kiwis who often haven’t had the respect and attention they deserve.

In our second year we will build on these achievements. Idealog is more than a magazine; we want to create connections throughout the creative economy. We’ll be holding events, expanding our website and blogging activities, working on the  traditional Kiwi problems of distance, scarce funding and limited ambition. We want to know how we can help inspire your creativity and improve your commercial prospects. Silicon Valley, as Simpson and Torkington point out, developed around the buzz of a few key companies. That’s the inspirational economy we want to build in New Zealand.