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A slice of the pie

Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.

A slice of the pie

With proposed healthcare reform currently shaking up the US, one Kiwi company intends to make the most of it.

Fifteen years ago Ian McCrae turned Orion Health into a global player by harnessing a new invention called the Internet. Today your doctor and local hospital almost certainly use Orion products, allowing them access to a single view of patients’ computerised records.

Now, McCrae wants to take advantage of Obama’s proposals for full digital health records for the whole of the US. “That’s a big pie,” says of Obama's billions. “All we need is one percent of that.”

Still a big goal, but design and usability, he reckons, is the key-that Orion software will be so easy and instinctive for healthcare people to use, they won't need instructions and won't need to learn anything new.

Easier said than done? Read about the inroads the company has already made into the US in the latest Idealog and on our website.

Record number of records

A pretty sad tale but a mind-boggling collection of vinyl. Paul Mawhinney bought his first record in the 50s, and was hooked. As his collection grew (and was nearly turfed out by his long-suffering wife when it crept over the 150,000 mark) so did Mawhinney’s realisation that vinyl was a dying art form that must be saved for future generations. The collection now boasts three million records, most unavailable anywhere else, and is valued at over US$50 million. It’s up for sale at a fraction of the price as Mawhinney struggles with ill-health but so far no one is biting … a fascinating look at a man trying to leave a legacy.

Harshing their mellow

A video of kids undertaking the marshmallow experiment, where they're handed one of the fluffy treats and given the option to eat it now—or wait 20 minutes and get to eat two. While there are some super-cute pained expressions here as the littlies desperately try to resist temptation (and who can’t relate to that?), there’s more to the experiment than just intolerable torture.

We want a pitcher

They say practice makes perfect. And if you're going to sell your hot idea, you're going to have to perfect your pitch. By practicing it. A lot.

And what better way than by entering your great idea in the The ICEHOUSE calls it a real-life Dragons Den, run in Auckland over three weeks in October, but you won't be thrown cold to the dragons. ICEHOUSE CEO Andrew Hamilton and Ken Erskine, director of the ICE Accelerator and ICE Angels investors, will host a content-crammed seminar session on October 8: ‘The 3 keys to successful pitches’. Learn what investors and big customers are really looking for; find out how to tailor your language to the critical questions they will ask; and hear how pitching well has helped other businesses take leaps into high growth.

Take that information and prepare your 60-second pitch (yep, 60 seconds!) for delivery in a small group coaching session with an ICEHOUSE expert on Thursday 15 October. The leading pitchers from each group will compete in front of the whole audience for a chance to be one of ten finalists in FAST Pitch 2009. Finalists each receive two hours of individual coaching by ICEHOUSE experts.

And on October 27, finalists get to pitch to a panel of judges (including Idealog publisher Vincent Heeringa), angel investors, venture capitalists and businesspeople. There are four category awards: Best Intellectual Property Idea, Best Funding Opportunity for Investors, Best Presentation Skills and the People’s Choice Award. The overall winner will be selected from the winners of those categories.

The grand prize is valued at over $15,000 and includes three months in The ICEHOUSE'S leading incubator ICE Accelerator and the opportunity to pitch directly to any of the participating investors. The total prize pool is valued at over $45,000 and is supported by ICEHOUSE founder The University of Auckland Business School and corporate partners BNZ, BCG, Ernst & Young, HP, Gen-i, Microsoft, Minter Ellison Rudd Watts and Telecom.

All that for just an $85 entry fee. Register at www.theicehouse.co.nz, and here's ICEHOUSE's Andrew Hamilton explaining FAST Pitch on the telly.

Give us a hand

Idealog is now four years old. Like all four-year-olds, we could do with a little guidance. So help us out: we've put together an easy five-minute survey to let us know what you think of Idealog: the things you love, and the things only a mother could love. We know your time is precious so we'll make it worth your while: every completed response we receive will be entered into a prize draw with the opportunity to win a THERMAGENIUS heat pump water-heating system worth $4,500, plus $500 towards installation from Leap. So tell us what you think, and don't hold back!

You can complete the survey online in just five minutes; there’s also a print version of the survey included with newsstand and subscriber copies of the current Idealog.

The Tracy Awards are calling for nominations for the Worst Advertising of 2009. Here are the submissions so far. Words fail us (and failed these advertisers, too).

Who can you trust?

Last week’s Weekly was sent out with an erroneous link that resulted in a message saying the destination website was “untrusted”. The mistake was ours, and we'd like to reassure readers that there was nothing untrustworthy at the end of the wire. We’re sorry for any confusion.

Quote of the week

The way to get good products is really good design up front. Once you do a good design people will copy it. You have to be putting out good design twice as fast as everybody else to stay ahead.

-Ian McCrae, a few clicks ahead of the rest of us

More at Idealog online

Read more on our website: web exclusives, opinion, creative directory, Idealog TV, the Idealog blogs and the Idealog podcast. See you at idealog.co.nz.

  The Idealog team

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2006-08-31 00:00:00: August 31, 2006

2006-08-24 00:00:00: August 24, 2006

2006-08-17 00:00:00: August 17, 2006

2006-08-11 00:00:00: August 11, 2006

2006-08-03 00:00:00: August 3, 2006

2006-07-27 00:00:00: July 27, 2006

2006-07-21 00:00:00: July 21, 2006

2006-07-13 00:00:00: July 13, 2006

2006-07-06 00:00:00: July 6, 2006

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