More information and registration at: www.wellington-iaido.com

All going well, regular weekly classes should be starting in mid to late July.

UPDATE: Thanks to those who attended the workshop last Saturday, keep checking back for regular training times TBA.

We spent the first half of the day teaching all the Kendo students a little Iaido as many of them have never tried (and have usually seen us Iai people practicing our strange moves lol).
It was a really good experience to teach, rather than learn or practice, it really tests how much you really know about the art you are practicing.  I taught the first kata of the Seitei set, Ipponme Mae, a very important one as it is always the first one you learn when starting out in Iaido.
Sensei Eynon Philips has always told me that knowing this kata inside out is like knowing ALL kata as it contains all the elements that make up all kata. I think I must have done this kata 100′s if not 100′s of times now over the last couple of years of training!

The rest for the day was spent training and perfecting our kata and of course doing the ever popular “make up your own kata” kata, a lot of fun!

Since moving to Wellington, I have not managed to find an Iaido club to train at as of yet. Despite enquiring at a few martial arts stores (who all seem to say “yeah someone else asked about that a few months back”).  So I am looking into starting the Wellington Iaido “study group” under guidance of the Canterbury Kendo/Iaido teacher and hopefully talk more with the other Sensei at the Auckland Kendo club (where I attended the very first NZ Iaido seminar last year).

What I am really hoping to achieve is to bring together all those people that may have trained in the past or are looking to start in Wellington.  I still am yet to find a venue, though the Brooklyn Community Centre is looking promising.

So this is a call out to any one in the Wellington area interested in training in Iaido…. get in touch!

Email: iaido@camfindlay.com

It will be great to get something going and build the art of Iaido in New Zealand even stronger!

UPDATE: I have been speaking with the Brooklyn Community Centre in Wellington, they seem very open to the idea of setting up Iaido classes at their venue! Will continue to update once I have met with them and organised some dates and times for possible training sessions.

The goal was to pull together a declaration to be presented  to the negotiators at ACTA and call for more transparency and public consultation.

The so called “anti-counterfeiting” trade agreement really takes more action on digital copyrights, trademarks and patent infringement than dealing with the sort of counterfeiting that we normally associate with the word, that is “he problem of large-scale commercial infringement, for profit, that is direct and intentional” (PublicACTA Wellington Declaration, 2010).
Instead it seeks enforce criminal liability, statutory damages and possible Internet connection termination for BOTH commercial and non-commercial “infringements” utilising intermediaries such as ISP’s, public Internet access points, workplaces, website hosting to do the dirty work.

I could go on about the concerns of this agreement but really it is un-required and will not offer benefits to any parties that it seeks to protect (See Kimberlee Weatheral’s  and Micheal Giest’s keynotes from Public ACTA available from the PublicACTA website for more information).

The key issues, concerns and then subsequently suggestions from the 120 people that attended the conference (as well as many hundreds more following along at home on the live video stream and twitter hash tag #PublicACTA) have been complied and crafted into a concise declaration to what we as Internet professionals, consumers, producers, freaks and geeks would like to see taken on board within the Wellington negotiation round of ACTA.

The declaration and petition can be accessed here, please take the time to read through and sign the petition if you are in favour of fair democratic process and your rights as consumers of digital content.

Let’s start a movement.. like this guy…

PublicACTA copyright InternetNZ and is used under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.

So whats next for the blog? Well I have planned a series of posts with some great info on how to become more independent from your computer and make use of some of the great cloud computing tools available out there.

Also before I forget a big shout out to Simon Waterhouse a great photographer and designer here in Christchurch for his help on the photos and design of my personal development plan(PDP) assessment. Be sure to check out his great photography here www.simonwaterhouse.com

Another shout out to the great guys at Silverstripe CMS… i used this to power my PDP website… once I had the design I was able to integrate and drop in the content in just under 4 hours work! A killer speedy content management system for anyone looking to jazz up their website.
My final big thank you goes out to Juliette Powell, Author of “33 Million People in the Room” who sent me a signed copy of her book… made my day! A great read if you are interested in social media, co-creation, and where things are headed online. I was lucky enough to meet her at a conference this year and really enjoy her contributions online through twitter and facebook.

On the leadership tip, I will leave you with some words of wisdom from the women herself, Juliette Powell, enjoy….

The plans moving forward are to start building numbers and really promoting Iaido in NZ and I am hoping that I can add my knowledge of social networking and online communities to work towards this.

Thursday saw a full day of training and learning some new kata in the Kendo Federation Seitei Iaido which consists of 12 kata (I know up to number 11 at the moment!)
It is interesting learning from others as each teacher does seem to put their own knowledge and spin on each kata.  At the end of it all I think gathering as much knowledge as you can from as many teachers as you can and then combining that with what feels natural with your own movement and focus is the way to go.

Thursday evening I dug deep despite extreme tiredness and a rather painful toe injury I performed the best I could at the grading and came away with a 2nd Kyu (ni-kyu) grading! A jump of 8 grades as I had been previously ungraded.

Friday saw more training and a Shiai (competition) and something even more fun… getting to invent our own kata!

The “build your own” kata concoctions were all very interesting with one of our (chch) dojos students ideas using an umbrella as a sword took it top marks.

The 2 days were a great challenge that everyone who attended met and got something out of…

Before I left for Auckland I flicked to a random page in my copy of Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s “Hagakure” (a classic Japanese warrior code text) and thinking back on it now it shared some insight into the days ahead, it read:

The talented rise to the challenge-
There is a saying, “As the water rises the boat rises”. When a person of talent … encounters a difficulty, his [or her] heart rises to meet the challenge, and the greater the challenge the more he [or she] is spurred to take it on. – Hagakure, Book 2, Line 42

Rather fitting I think! A big thanks to all those at Auckland Kendo as to all those who attended the Seminar. Look forward to next year!

The Auckland Kendo Club is hosting this event for all NZKF
Members currently training in Iaido or for members who would
like to try this art for the first time.
Date: 8th & 9th October
Location: Auckland Kendo Club, 165 Pilkington Rd, Glen Innes
Start time: 9am – 5pm
Drinks provided
Meal out on Thursday night
Seminar Fee $30
Grading – Thursday night at 6pm / up to and including 3 Dan
For more information please contact either –
Brent Hansen – brent.hansen@frucor.com 021 352 605
Alan Stephenson – kendoalan6@hotmail.com 021 677 364

See more about the Auckland Kendo and Iaido Club

• Good at listening and understanding others.
• problem solving and learning.
• translating “geek”… that is I have always been able to communicate technical concepts clearly and concise to people that aren’t very technical.
• Anything technology and computer related, programming, web development.
  
• I often see opportunities and uses for technology to make working easier.
  
• Helping others understand and make use of new technology, website, social networking.
• I have a good feel for music, i have played several instruments, DJ’d and written music.
• I have recently found a “talent” within my chosen martial art, iaido which also offers time to work on a clear mind and a greater sense of spirit.
  

What are the images you associate with you doing work that you love?

Gadgets, computers, communities of people both online in forums, social network and offline in professional networks and hobbies, music, solving challenging problems, writing useful website code.

Think of the three greatest/most significant experiences/achievements of your life. What are the images that you associate with them?

1. Completing my Diploma of Multimedia – Being creative with computers, solving problems, working with clients and to a brief, self paced learning.
2. Getting my current job at RockStar Recipes – Getting to combine computing with music, teaching others to play guitar, building an online community around learning, solving technical problems and contributing to the vision of the organisation.
   
3. Attending the X:Media:lab Conferences – Getting to learn about the latest technology and ideas, meeting the worlds best in my industry, being able to speak on a highly technical level and being understood by others who are as technical as myself.
   

If you were to do work in the future that you loved and that was totally aligned with these images what would it look like? How would it feel?

I would be using the latest new technology on the internet to help people communicate there would be a sense or feeling that I am contributing to making the world online a better, easier and more fun place for everyone to interact, have conversations, do business and hopefully it would be so easy, integrated and intuitive that everyone can participate and contribute without the current technical barriers.